|
Post by philunderwood on Apr 13, 2011 18:07:22 GMT -5
I, ahem, missed it too, but from what I’m hearing it was really a campaign speech that might satisfy a few in the fantasy land of unicorns and moon ponies, and perhaps impress a few moderates, but it contained little in the way of substance. I wouldn’t expect anything else from our present leadership and I consider what they say as propaganda anyway.
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Apr 13, 2011 20:11:10 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Apr 14, 2011 6:40:13 GMT -5
The Presidential DividerObama's toxic speech and even worse plan for deficits and debt.Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign. online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730104576260911986870054.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Apr 14, 2011 16:10:04 GMT -5
Krauthammer reviews Obama's budget speech. Spot on.
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Apr 14, 2011 16:20:35 GMT -5
Well, that's it then. I have seen everything now.
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Apr 14, 2011 19:24:41 GMT -5
The Obama crowd cannot possibly agree to major spending cuts.
A major part of their base are people who voted for them specifically because of promises to tax achievers and send it those who have achieved less and those who don't try to achieve. Obama's base thrives on government spending. The Left's only option is to slander and lie about the GOP's proposed spending cuts toward fiscal sanity.
That tactic used to work, but no more. Obama's vote totals in 2012 can only go down from 2008. It would be hard to imagine any single person who was anti-Obama then being pro-Obama now. But millions of people have seen the error of their vote and his days are numbered. Since their seems to be no level too low for them to stoop, this will probably get quite ugly.
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Apr 17, 2011 10:05:36 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by philunderwood on Apr 17, 2011 11:04:35 GMT -5
Is it any wonder that most of us consider what comes out of our leadership (if you can call it that) as propaganda? Pure smoke and mirrors intended for the uninformed and gullible.
|
|
|
Post by philunderwood on May 2, 2011 7:59:18 GMT -5
Raising the ceiling on a cracked foundation By Mark Steyn www.JewishWorldReview.com | The other day Paul O'Neill said that … Oh, wait. I suppose I ought to explain who Paul O'Neill is. A decade ago, he was President George W. Bush's first Treasury secretary. I have no very clear memory of him except that he toured Africa with Bono and they were photographed in matching tribal dress looking like Col. Gadhafi's Mini-Me twins at a Tripoli sleepover. Other than the dress-up fun, I've no idea why they were in Africa, but you paid for it, so I'm sure there was a good reason. Anyway, Secretary O'Neill popped up the other day on Bloomberg Television to compare debt-ceiling holdouts to jihadists. "The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling," he said, "are our version of al-Qaida terrorists. Really." Really? Absolutely. "They're really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk." But hang on, generally speaking, when you hit your "debt ceiling," your credit is at risk. If you've got a $10,000 credit card, and you run it up to the limit, but you need a couple more grand right now, pronto, because you outspend your earnings by 50 percent every month, and you have no plans to change that anytime soon, well, the bank might increase the limit to $15,000, or $20,000. Or they might not. There is a question mark over your credit because there is a question mark over your creditworthiness: It is at risk. Paul O'Neill seems to regard that attitude as unhelpful. So does Timothy Geithner, his successor at what is still laughingly known as the United States Treasury. Secretary Geithner says that even to be discussing the debt ceiling is "a ridiculous debate to have." Ridiculous? Absolutely. "I mean, the idea that the United States would take the risk that people would start to believe we won't pay our bills," continued Geithner, "is a ridiculous proposition, irresponsible, completely unacceptable." The best way to convince people to believe we'll pay our bills is to borrow up to our limit, and then increase the limit and borrow a whole bunch more. This would be the 75th increase in the debt ceiling in the past half-century. Let's just get it done, and resume the party. But if Geithner thinks that even discussing the question is "ridiculous," then, as my colleague Jonah Goldberg put it, why have a debt limit at all? What's the point? Well, because it gives us more credibility with our creditors, right? Even if we set the debt ceiling way up in cloud-cuckoo land to a bazillion trillion gazillion dollars and 83 cents, even a debt limit entirely unmoored from reality still gives the impression we haven't quite flown the coop. Yes, but why does the U.S. government need to maintain credibility with its creditors when increasingly it's buying its debt from itself? Every month there's more and more U.S. Treasury debt and fewer and fewer people who want it. The Chinese are reducing their exposure. The investment behemoth Pimco, which manages the world's largest mutual fund, recently dumped U.S. Treasuries entirely. To avoid the failure of U.S. bond auctions, or an increase in interest rates to make them more attractive to rational lenders, the U.S. government's debt is bought by the U.S. government's Federal Reserve. I tried up above to come up with a real-world comparison for the debt ceiling – imagine you've got a credit card limit of 10K, etc – but it's harder to do that with the Fed's policy: Imagine your left hand issues an IOU to your right hand in return for an email with a large number on it …oh, never mind, it'll only make your head hurt. "Quantitative easing" is extremely quantitative if not terribly easing, so raising the debt ceiling would enable us to issue more debt for us to buy from ourselves. You can see why Secretary Geithner thinks that's a no-brainer. While Jonah Goldberg was asking why have a debt limit at all, Michael Kinsley took it to the next stage: "If the national debt doesn't matter, why have taxes at all?" Particularly when you no longer have to "print" money, you can just quantitatively ease yourself into it. Once we raise the old debt ceiling, we'll be pretty much at the point where the U.S. government is spending four trillion but only taking in two trillion: For every dollar we raise in taxes, we spend two. No surprise there: The "poorest" half of the population pay no federal income tax. They're not exactly poor as the term would be understood in almost any other country, but in federal revenue terms they're dependents, so in order to fund government services for the wealthiest "poor" people on the planet we borrow money from a nation of subsistence peasants where pigs are such prized possessions they sleep in the house. But, if you can spend four trillion, of which two trillion is borrowed, why not borrow three and make even more Americans dependent? Hell, why not borrow the whole lot? After all, the sums we're borrowing right now – $188 million every hour of every day – are unprecedented. Wouldn't it be easier if we just made them even more unprecedented? That way we could have a federal budget of six trillion, of which, say, five trillion is raised by issuing Treasury bonds for the Federal Reserve to buy. That would stimulate the economy by creating 17 jobs for any remaining Americans who still feel the need to leave the house every morning. Now I think about it, I seem to remember Secretary O'Neill and Bono were swanking around Uganda and Ethiopia in tribal garb as part of the Irish rocker's campaign for African debt-forgiveness. Now there's an idea. And, if it works for Africa, why not closer to home? After all, Bono supported the IMF's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, and America is way more "heavily indebted' than Uganda will ever be. Under the 2011 budget, every hour of every day the government of the United States spends a fifth of a billion dollars it doesn't have. Who does have it? Er, the Federal Reserve? A few years ago, I raised the ceiling on my own house. You can do that – up to a point. It depends on whether your foundation is solid and your framing is structurally sound. But, even if they are, you take it too high, and the roof falls in. We're structurally about as screwed up as you can get, and the foundation is badly cracked. But hey, let's just jack the roof up a little higher one more time. What could go wrong? At this stage, nothing does more damage to our "full faith and credit" than business as usual. If you're going to bandy glib, witless al-Qaida analogies, the conventional wisdom Paul O'Neill represents is the real suicide bomb here. Men like O'Neill and Geithner think they're quantitatively easing American decline. They're not. They're quantitatively accelerating American collapse. Onward and upward!
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on May 5, 2011 19:00:36 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by relenemiller on May 5, 2011 19:06:25 GMT -5
Good, let's ground Air Force One from any sight seeing, non- business trips and oh yeah, Michelle...take the bus!
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on May 18, 2011 22:06:03 GMT -5
Ten Myths of Ryan’s House Budget PlanPublished on May 13, 2011 by Brian Riedl, Robert Moffit, Ph.D. and Romina Boccia Runaway spending and deficits continue to grow unabated in part because any attempts to rein them in are relentlessly demagogued by defenders of big government. The latest example is the budget recently authored by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R–WI) and passed by the House of Representatives. Most critics have failed to provide any credible alternative to the House budget. Yet that has not stopped them from relentlessly misrepresenting the House budget with the following myths. Myth #1: The House budget recklessly cuts taxes by $4 trillion. Fact: It cancels a future tax increase. Critics charge that the House budget is not serious about deficit reduction because it includes a $4 trillion tax cut. This is patently false. The budget would keep tax rates at current levels. What critics call a $4 trillion “tax cut” is actually the cancellation of a $4 trillion tax increase that is currently scheduled to go into effect in 2013. Only in Washington is keeping tax rates at current levels considered a reckless tax cut. The House budget would leave tax revenues slightly above their 18 percent of GDP historical average. Myth #2: The House budget increases the deficit by giving tax cuts to the rich. Fact: The proposed change is a revenue-neutral tax reform plan that simplifies the tax code. The House tax plan proposes reducing the top individual and corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent—and this is fully paid for by eliminating extraneous tax deductions, exemptions, and loopholes that currently allow some wealthy individuals and businesses to escape their fair share of taxes. Because this plan raises the same amount of revenue year by year as does current policy, it is not a net tax cut. The President’s fiscal commission endorsed similar tax reforms because these reforms would make the tax code more efficient, fair, and pro-growth. Myth #3: The House budget represents only minor deficit reduction. Fact: It substantially reduces both short- and long-term budget deficits. Critics claim that the House budget cuts just $1.7 trillion out of the 10-year deficit. As stated above, this measures the House budget against a baseline that already assumes $4 trillion in tax increases—which even President Obama largely opposes. Since the House budget is relatively revenue-neutral compared to current tax policies, the main deficit reduction consists of $5.8 trillion in spending reductions over the next decade. The savings include $1 trillion from phasing down overseas contingency operations, $1.6 trillion from non-defense discretionary spending, $2.2 trillion from repealing Obamacare and block-granting Medicaid, and $1 trillion from other entitlement and net interest savings. Overall, the House budget would run $5.1 trillion in deficits over the next decade, compared to President Obama’s proposed $9.5 trillion in deficits. And these savings grow immensely in future decades. The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) long-term baseline shows runaway spending driving the national debt to 95 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) within a decade and a staggering 344 percent by 2050.[1] By contrast, the House budget would quickly stabilize the debt around 70 percent of GDP before reducing it to just 10 percent by 2050. Myth #4: The House budget exaggerates the long-term spending challenge. Fact: The challenge is real and potentially calamitous. Some suggest there is no long-term fiscal crisis. This is demonstrably false. The coming retirement of 77 million baby boomers is not a theoretical projection. Social Security is already in deficit, and the trust fund represents IOUs that must be redeemed by immediately raising taxes, cutting spending, or running additional deficits. Obamacare is projected to increase federal spending by trillions of dollars over the next few decades. Small reforms like eliminating corporate welfare, ending foreign aid, or repealing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for upper-income families would close merely a small fraction of the long-term debt. In reality, the CBO estimates that the absence of fundamental entitlement reform would push the debt to levels that would create an economic catastrophe.[2] Myth #5: The House budget balances the budget on the backs of seniors. Fact: Current and near-retirees are exempt from reforms. Much of the attention given to the House budget has focused on the effects on retirees. However, virtually none of the $5.8 trillion in spending reductions in the first decade would affect Social Security and Medicare. In fact, seniors would benefit from averting the large tax increases planned in current law and from tax reforms that lower their rates while closing unneeded loopholes. Those currently older than age 55 would be exempt from any future changes to their Social Security and Medicare benefits. Myth #6: The House budget would privatize Medicare and hand seniors vouchers. Fact: Seniors would receive government support to purchase health insurance coverage on a tightly regulated government exchange system. A “voucher” is usually a certificate of specified cash value that is redeemable for the purchase of goods or services. Under Ryan’s House budget plan, seniors would instead choose health plans and the government would make direct and adequate contributions to the premium cost of the plans of their choice. This “premium support” would go to Medicare-certified and -regulated plans that would compete in a Medicare “exchange,” which Ryan himself has described as “tightly regulated.” In effect, this premium support system is broadly similar to the kind of system that Members of Congress and federal employees and retirees enjoy today in the widely popular and successful Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). As for “privatization,” virtually all participating Medicare doctors and hospitals (except public hospitals) are private, a quarter of all seniors are enrolled in private plans in Medicare Advantage, and 60 percent of seniors already purchase drug benefits through private plans in Medicare Part D. So, in effect, the House budget proposal extends the successful Part D financing model to the coverage of benefits under Parts A and B.[3] Myth #7: Medicare is more efficient than private health insurance. Fact: Medicare’s administrative burdens are hidden and they outweigh private-sector costs. On paper, Medicare’s administrative costs compared to the private sector appear comparatively small: 2–3 percent of benefit expenditures. Even accounting for radically different patient profiles and functions of Medicare and private insurance, administrative costs per person under Medicare compared to private insurance plans shows that Medicare’s administrative costs exceed those of private health insurance.[4] Furthermore, Medicare’s administrative costs do not include the enormous costs of provider compliance with massive Medicare red tape and paperwork. A 2001 PricewaterhouseCoopers study showed that for every hour spent treating a typical Medicare patient, hospital officials spent 30 minutes complying with Medicare paperwork.[5] One administrative cost that is often overlooked is the tens of billions of dollars annually of Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse. In sheer volume, there is no comparable cost in the private sector or in the FEHBP. Private insurers have strong incentives to detect fraudulent claims, as undetected fraud hurts their bottom lines. Myth #8: The House budget plan would end Medicare as we know it. Fact: Obamacare ended Medicare as we know it. Obamacare imposes record-breaking payment cuts for Medicare providers—plus an unprecedented hard cap on Medicare spending to be enforced by the newly created Independent Payments Advisory Board, an unelected board of bureaucrats empowered to lower provider payments to preordained levels indexed to inflation and economic growth. This will ensure rationing of care through provider payment cuts.[6] Furthermore, under Section 3021 Congress tasks the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation with transitioning from the current fee-for-service reimbursement system toward capitated or salary-based reimbursements. This would literally be the end of traditional Medicare fee for service “as we know it.” Both the House and Obama proposals impose external spending caps on Medicare. But the House proposal aims to control costs primarily through intense market competition—not just deeper payment cuts for Medicare providers—while preserving and enhancing the right of seniors to choose health care options. Myth #9: The House budget plan would shift Medicaid costs to the states and hurt the poor. Fact: Medicaid block grants would help states lower Medicaid costs and provide them with the flexibility to better serve the poor. The House budget plan would remove the perverse incentives resulting from the open-ended federal reimbursement of state Medicaid spending. The block grant proposal would provide greater budget certainty at the federal and state levels. In addition, states would have greater flexibility and greater incentives to reduce costs. The proposal would also encourage states to spend their Medicaid dollars wisely and to consider innovative ways to deliver better care at lower costs.[7] Myth #10: Most Medicare costs would continue to rise, and retirees would bear those costs with insufficient assistance. Fact: Intense market competition would reduce costs and enable Medicare patients to secure value for their dollars. Projecting far into the future, CBO predicts that under the House budget proposal the government’s share of retirees’ health care costs would decrease from currently about 70 percent to just 32 percent by 2030.[8] But that static analysis assumes that—despite a major change in economic incentives and intense market competition—health care costs will not be reduced. Behavioral responses to such powerful new economic incentives should not be ignored; experience with such changes proves otherwise. Just What the Doctor Ordered The House budget finally puts the brakes on soaring government spending.[9] It is just what the nation needs in order to avert a debt-induced economic calamity. Its critics would do well to read the plan and understand it—and put forward their alternative—before dismissing it. Brian M. Riedl is Grover M. Hermann Research Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies; Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow in the Center for Policy Innovation; and Romina Boccia is Research Coordinator in the Roe Institute at The Heritage Foundation.www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/05/Ten-Myths-of-Ryans-House-Budget-Plan 1. Congressional Budget Office, “The Long-Term Budget Outlook: Federal Debt Held by the Public Under Two Budget Scenarios,” revised August 2010. 2. Ibid. 3. Robert Moffit and Kathryn Nix, “Transforming Medicare into a Modern Premium Support System: What Americans Should Know,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 3227, April 15, 2011. 4. Robert A. Book, “Medicare Administrative Costs Are Higher, Not Lower, Than for Private Insurance,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2505, June 25, 2009. 5. PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Patients or Paperwork: The Regulatory Burden Facing America’s Hospitals,” 2001. 6. Robert Moffit and Kathryn Nix, “The Future of Health Care Reform: Paul Ryan’s ‘Roadmap’ and Its Critics,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2495, December 3, 2010. 7. Brian Blase, “Solving the National Medicaid Crisis,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 3243, May 6, 2011. 8. Congressional Budget Office, “Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan,” April 5, 2011, table 1. 9. Alison Acosta Fraser, “Chairman Ryan’s Budget Resolution Changes America’s Course,” The Foundry, April 5, 2011.
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on May 25, 2011 18:46:49 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on May 25, 2011 19:56:45 GMT -5
Paul Ryan continues his "Path to Prosperity" video: These videos should be prime-time commercials. He makes the case so well. Even NY-26 might understand.
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Jun 8, 2011 15:25:56 GMT -5
The uncomfortable truth about state spendingBy Scott Paterno June 7, 2011 Mark Twain, a true libertarian and a committed realist with a cynic's wit, once noted, "Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable." Nowhere is this more evident than the ongoing budget battle in Harrisburg. First, the facts. For the past two years under former Gov. Ed Rendell we were able to spend far more money than we had, thanks to a federal stimulus package that did little more than stimulate the deficit. Depending on how you count it all up, it allowed us to over spend revenues by about $4 billion - roughly 15 percent of the total budget. Unfortunately - and this is also a fact - the heady days of stimulus dollars are over. So, barring a massive tax increase, Gov. Tom Corbett and the Republicans in the House and the Senate had one choice: slash spending. This is not political posturing; it is a cold, hard fact. There is simply no way to grow revenues by 15 percent this year - not with a Marcellus tax, an income tax, a sales tax, or a property tax. And even if we managed to find another billion dollars, we would still need to cut the budget by over 10 percent this year alone. Faced with this stark reality, Gov. Corbett did the responsible thing - he proposed a budget that lived within our means. Granted, there are legitimate issues of debate over how he allocated those funds, but this one issue is settled given the political realities of the moment - Pennsylvania will have a budget that lives within its revenues - and that means a limit of $27.3 billion. Once this central fact was established, and once the governor made clear he would not sign a budget that exceeded $27.3 billion, the various vested interests started to make their case. The first segment to gather its troops was higher education - a segment that took a huge hit in the governor's proposed budget. There were the usual lines of attack - all valid on some level but totally oblivious to the larger fiscal realities facing the Commonwealth. Significantly, the education industry failed to do one critical thing - they failed to offer the place to either generate the new revenue or to identify what we should cut instead. Essentially they argued for the value of what they do in a vacuum, as if there existed an infinite supply of money somewhere to pay for anything of public value. As our revenue and economic numbers demonstrate, this is simply not the case. And that is a crucial reality we all need to deal with: when there is not enough money in the public coffers we have to make choices - tough choices. NO ONE wants to cut education funding simply for the sake of cutting it; the fact is we don't have enough money and higher education is simply a lot more discretionary than, for example, medical assistance. So, while the fact that education is to be valued is a given, the method by which we pay for that value - and whether we get the results we want for our money - is a political question that must be resolved with the larger budget context. And that is where statistics about economic impact and brain drain lose their relevance - when stacked against the mountain of priorities that have to fit within a $27.3 billion budget. Quite simply, if we want more money for education, you have to cut money from somewhere else - regardless of statistics. Which is exactly what the House proposed last week. In the budget the House passed - along partisan lines - the education cuts were softened significantly. However, limited by the fact of the $27.3 billion budget limit, the House had to cut something to fund education. They did - public welfare. Shortly after the House budget passed, the protests started. The claims about hurting our most vulnerable citizens echoed throughout the capital. Again, there is some validity to these complaints but they too ignore this simple reality: Responsible government budgets are a zero sum game - they have a set amount of money to spend and what they can't afford they have to cut. It is really that simple - the only question within that game is priorities. So, if you want to advocate for more money for higher education, then make your best argument for it. But standing next to you will be AARP asking for more money for senior issues. And next to them will be alternative energy and growing greener projects claiming that they are an investment in the future. And behind them all will be capital budget projects like hospital expansions and training centers. Shushing us all will be the libraries. These interests - and hundreds more - will push and prod the Legislature to protect "their money." The fact is there are a lot of interests in the state budget, and as Twain noted they all are armed with mountains of pliable statistics. The political process requires they make their case. However, in the end, fiscal reality requires they all accept one fact that governs it all - all of their wants and needs have to fit within a budget that spends no more than $27.3 billion. That is what we have and that is what a responsible government does - even when doing so means cutting things we value and want, but simply can no longer afford. I'm Scott Paterno, and that is the uncomfortable truth. --- Scott Paterno is a guest columnist with the Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research, Inc. in Harrisburg. The agency can be reached via email at staff@lincolninstitute.org.lincolnradiojournal.com/features.php?title=Uncomfortable_Truth
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Jun 11, 2011 6:27:27 GMT -5
Obama’s Road to NowhereJune 11, 2011 5:00 A.M. This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road.‘There are always going to be bumps on the road to recovery,’’ President Obama said at a Jeep plant in Toledo the other day. “We’re going to pass through some rough terrain that even a Wrangler would have a tough time with.’’ His audience booed. They’re un-fire-able union members with lavish benefits, and even they weary of the glib lines from his twelve-year-old speechwriters. We’re not on the road to recovery. You can’t get there from here, as they say. Obama was in Toledo to “celebrate” the sale of the government’s remaining stake in Chrysler to Fiat. That’s “Fiat” as in the Italian car manufacturer rather than “an authoritative or arbitrary decree (from the Latin ‘let it be done’),” which would be almost too perfect a name for an Obamafied automobile. The Treasury crowed that Fiat had agreed to pay a whopping $560 million for the government’s Chrysler shares. Wow! 560 million smackeroos! If you laid them out end to end, they’re equivalent to what the federal government borrows every three hours. That’s some windfall! In the time it takes to fly Obama to Toledo to boast about it, he’d already blown through the Italians’ check. But who knows? If every business in the U.S. were to be nationalized and sold to foreigners to cover another three hours’ worth of debt, this summer’s “Recovery Summer” would be going even more gangbusters. I’d ask one of Obama’s egghead economists to explain it to you simpletons, but unfortunately they’ve all resigned and returned to cozy sinecures in academia. The latest is chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, the genius who in 2007, just before the subprime hit the fan, wrote in the New York Times that this exciting new form of home “ownership” was an “innovation” that had “opened doors to the excluded” and was part of an “incredible flowering of new types of home loans.” Where have all the flowers gone? Not to worry. By now, some organization of which you’re a member has already booked Professor Goolsbee to give an after-dinner speech at your annual meeting where you’ll be privileged to get a glimpse of his boundless expertise for a mere six-figure speaking fee. “I’m not concerned about a double-dip recession,” Obama said last week. Nor would I be if I had government housing, a car and driver, and a social secretary for the missus. But I wonder if it’s such a smart idea to let one’s breezy insouciance out of the bag when you’re giving a press conference. In May the U.S. economy added just 54,000 jobs. For the purposes of comparison, that same month over 100,000 new immigrants arrived in America. So what kind of jobs were those 54,000? Economics professorships at the University of Berkeley? Non-executive directorships at Goldman Sachs? That sort of thing? No, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley, half the new jobs created were at McDonald’s. That’s amazing. Not the Mickey D supersized hiring spree, but the fact that there’s fellows at Morgan Stanley making a bazillion dollars a year analyzing fluctuations in minimal-skill fast-food service-job hiring trends. What a great country! For as long as it lasts. Which is probably until some new regulatory agency starts enforcing Michelle Obama’s dietary admonitions. Until then, relax. That bump in the road is just a quarter-pounder with cheese that fell off the counter on the drive-thru lane to recovery. Like every other blessing, we owe the Big MacConomy to the wisdom of Good King Barack. “This plant indirectly supports hundreds of other jobs right here in Toledo,” Obama told the workers at Chrysler. “After all, without you, who’d eat at Chet’s or Inky’s or Rudy’s? . . . Manufacturers from Michigan to Massachusetts are looking for new engineers to build advanced batteries for American-made electric cars. And obviously, Chet’s and Inky’s and Zinger’s, they’ll all have your business for some time to come.” A couple of days later, Chet’s announced it was closing after nine decades. “It was the economy and the smoking ban that hurt us more than anything,” said the owner. But maybe he can retrain and re-open it as a community-organizer grantwriting-application center. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median period of unemployment is now nine months — the longest it’s been since they’ve been tracking the numbers. Long-term unemployment is worse than in the Depression. Life goes slowly waiting for a fast-food job to open up. This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road. But shimmering on the distant horizon, beyond the shuttered diner and the foreclosed homes, is a state-of-the-art electric car, the new Fiat Mirage, that should be wheeling into town in a half-decade or so provided it can find somewhere to charge. “We will be able to look back and tell our children,” declared King Barack the Modest of his own candidacy in 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” Great news for the oceans! Meanwhile, back on dry land, a quarter of American mortgages are “underwater” — that’s to say, the home “owners” owe more than the joint is worth. In Harry Reid’s Nevada, it’s 63 percent. Perhaps Obama’s Aquatic Bodies Water-Level Regulatory Authority, no doubt headed by Jamie Gorelick or Franklin Raines or some other Democrat worthy, could have its jurisdiction extended to the Nevada desert. “Hope”? “Change”? These are the good times. What “change” are you “hoping” for in Obama’s second term? The loss of America’s triple-A credit-rating? The end of the dollar as global currency? Or just a slight upward tick in the same-old-same-old multi-trillion dollar binge-spending? On what? Random example from the headlines: The paramilitarization of the education bureaucracy. The federal Department of Education doesn’t employ a single teacher but it does have a SWAT team: They kicked down a front door in Stockton, Calif. last week and handcuffed Kenneth Wright (erroneously) in connection with a student-loan “investigation.” “We can confirm that we executed a search warrant,” said Department of Education spokesperson Gina Burress. The Department of Education issues search warrants? Who knew? The Brokest Nation in History is the only country in the developed world whose education secretary has his own Delta Force. And, in a land with over a trillion dollars in college debt, I’ll bet it’s got no plans to downsize. Nor has the TSA. A 24-year-old woman has been awarded compensation of $2,350 after TSA agents exposed her breasts to all and sundry at the Corpus Christi Airport security line and provided Weineresque play-by-play commentary. “We regret that the passenger had an unpleasant experience,” said a TSA spokesgroper, also very Weinerly. But hey, those are a couple of cute bumps on the road, lady! The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarized bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour. In a sane world, Americans would be outraged at the government waste that confronts them everywhere you turn: The abolition of the federal Education Department and the TSA is the very least they should be demanding. Instead, our elites worry about sea levels. The oceans will do just fine. It’s America that’s drowning. www.nationalreview.com/articles/269361/obama-s-road-nowhere-mark-steyn
|
|
|
Post by philunderwood on Jun 14, 2011 14:36:57 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?cat=137US in worse shape than Greece June 14th, 2011 | Author: Bruce McQuain I’m not sure how many times we or our politicians have to hear this, but to this point, it hasn’t made the impression it should: Much of the public focus is on the nation’s public debt, which is $14.3 trillion. But that doesn’t include money guaranteed for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which comes to close to $50 trillion, according to government figures. The government also is on the hook for other debts such as the programs related to the bailout of the financial system following the crisis of 2008 and 2009, government figures show. Taken together, Gross puts the total at "nearly $100 trillion," that while perhaps a bit on the high side, places the country in a highly unenviable fiscal position that he said won’t find a solution overnight. Bill Gross runs Pimco, a based in Newport Beach, Calif., manages more than $1.2 trillion in assets and runs the largest bond fund in the world. Gross went on to say: "To think that we can reduce that within the space of a year or two is not a realistic assumption," Gross said in a live interview. "That’s much more than Greece, that’s much more than almost any other developed country. We’ve got a problem and we have to get after it quickly." […] "We’ve always wondered who will buy Treasuries" after the Federal Reserve purchases the last of its $600 billion to end the second leg of its quantitative easing program later this month, Gross said. "It’s certainly not Pimco and it’s probably not the bond funds of the world." Now whether you realize it or not, that’s a good share of the bond market saying, "yeah, you know, not interested". That’s scary. And with China recently unloading some of its US debt notes, it’s not a happy picture for the US, fiscally. As Gross points out, in overall financial condition, we’re worse off than the basket case of Europe – Greece. We have been getting these warning for literally decades. We’ve done absolutely nothing substantial to mitigate them. In fact, we added more to the pile (Medicare D and ObamaCare). We’re going to crash. It is time for a huge reality check, gut check or whatever you want to call it. But like the shopping addicted, we have got to cut up the credit cards, cut spending to the bone, get government out of areas it has no business and take as much power of the purse away from the Fed as we can. This is beyond absurd. And the time to address it is now (if it’s not already too late). ~McQ
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Jun 14, 2011 19:05:52 GMT -5
Reaganomics Vs. Obamanomics: Facts And FiguresMay 5, 2011 By Peter Ferrara In February 2009 I wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal entitled “Reaganomics v Obamanomics,” which argued that the emerging outlines of President Obama’s economic policies were following in close detail exactly the opposite of President Reagan’s economic policies. As a result, I predicted that Obamanomics would have the opposite results of Reaganomics. That prediction seems to be on track. When President Reagan entered office in 1981, he faced actually much worse economic problems than President Obama faced in 2009. Three worsening recessions starting in 1969 were about to culminate in the worst of all in 1981-1982, with unemployment soaring into double digits at a peak of 10.8%. At the same time America suffered roaring double-digit inflation, with the CPI registering at 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980 (25% in two years). The Washington establishment at the time argued that this inflation was now endemic to the American economy, and could not be stopped, at least not without a calamitous economic collapse. All of the above was accompanied by double -igit interest rates, with the prime rate peaking at 21.5% in 1980. The poverty rate started increasing in 1978, eventually climbing by an astounding 33%, from 11.4% to 15.2%. A fall in real median family income that began in 1978 snowballed to a decline of almost 10% by 1982. In addition, from 1968 to 1982, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 70% of its real value, reflecting an overall collapse of stocks. President Reagan campaigned on an explicitly articulated, four-point economic program to reverse this slow motion collapse of the American economy: 1. Cut tax rates to restore incentives for economic growth, which was implemented first with a reduction in the top income tax rate of 70% down to 50%, and then a 25% across-the-board reduction in income tax rates for everyone. The 1986 tax reform then reduced tax rates further, leaving just two rates, 28% and 15%. 2. Spending reductions, including a $31 billion cut in spending in 1981, close to 5% of the federal budget then, or the equivalent of about $175 billion in spending cuts for the year today. In constant dollars, nondefense discretionary spending declined by 14.4% from 1981 to 1982, and by 16.8% from 1981 to 1983. Moreover, in constant dollars, this nondefense discretionary spending never returned to its 1981 level for the rest of Reagan’s two terms! Even with the Reagan defense buildup, which won the Cold War without firing a shot, total federal spending declined from a high of 23.5% of GDP in 1983 to 21.3% in 1988 and 21.2% in 1989. That’s a real reduction in the size of government relative to the economy of 10%. 3. Anti-inflation monetary policy restraining money supply growth compared to demand, to maintain a stronger, more stable dollar value. 4. Deregulation, which saved consumers an estimated $100 billion per year in lower prices. Reagan’s first executive order, in fact, eliminated price controls on oil and natural gas. Production soared, and aided by a strong dollar the price of oil declined by more than 50%. These economic policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery started in official records in November 1982, and lasted 92 months without a recession until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. This set a new record for the longest peacetime expansion ever, the previous high in peacetime being 58 months. During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989. The shocking rise in inflation during the Nixon and Carter years was reversed. Astoundingly, inflation from 1980 was reduced by more than half by 1982, to 6.2%. It was cut in half again for 1983, to 3.2%, never to be heard from again until recently. The contractionary, tight-money policies needed to kill this inflation inexorably created the steep recession of 1981 to 1982, which is why Reagan did not suffer politically catastrophic blame for that recession. Real per-capita disposable income increased by 18% from 1982 to 1989, meaning the American standard of living increased by almost 20% in just seven years. The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one-sixth from its peak. The stock market more than tripled in value from 1980 to 1990, a larger increase than in any previous decade. In The End of Prosperity, supply side guru Art Laffer and Wall Street Journal chief financial writer Steve Moore point out that this Reagan recovery grew into a 25-year boom, with just slight interruptions by shallow, short recessions in 1990 and 2001. They wrote: We call this period, 1982-2007, the twenty-five year boom–the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet. In 1980, the net worth–assets minus liabilities–of all U.S. households and business … was $25 trillion in today’s dollars. By 2007, … net worth was just shy of $57 trillion. Adjusting for inflation, more wealth was created in America in the twenty-five year boom than in the previous two hundred years. What is so striking about Obamanomics is how it so doggedly pursues the opposite of every one of these planks of Reaganomics. Instead of reducing tax rates, President Obama is committed to raising the top tax rates of virtually every major federal tax. As already enacted into current law, in 2013 the top two income tax rates will rise by nearly 20%, counting as well Obama’s proposed deduction phase-outs. The capital gains tax rate will soar by nearly 60%, counting the new Obamacare taxes going into effect that year. The total tax rate on corporate dividends would increase by nearly three times. The Medicare payroll tax would increase by 62% for the nation’s job creators and investors. The death tax rate would go back up to 55%. In his 2012 budget and his recent national budget speech, President Obama proposes still more tax increases. Instead of coming into office with spending cuts, President Obama’s first act was a nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. In his first two years in office he has already increased federal spending by 28%, and his 2012 budget proposes to increase federal spending by another 57% by 2021. His monetary policy is just the opposite as well. Instead of restraining the money supply to match money demand for a stable dollar, slaying an historic inflation, we have QE1 and QE2 and a steadily collapsing dollar, arguably creating a historic reflation. And instead of deregulation we have across-the-board re-regulation, from health care to finance to energy, and elsewhere. While Reagan used to say that his energy policy was to “unleash the private sector,” Obama’s energy policy can be described as precisely to leash the private sector in service to Obama’s central planning “green energy” dictates. As a result, while the Reagan recovery averaged 7.1% economic growth over the first seven quarters, the Obama recovery has produced less than half that at 2.8%, with the last quarter at a dismal 1.8%. After seven quarters of the Reagan recovery, unemployment had fallen 3.3 percentage points from its peak to 7.5%, with only 18% unemployed long-term for 27 weeks or more. After seven quarters of the Obama recovery, unemployment has fallen only 1.3 percentage points from its peak, with a postwar record 45% long-term unemployed. Previously the average recession since World War II lasted 10 months, with the longest at 16 months. Yet today, 40 months after the last recession started, unemployment is still 8.8%, with America suffering the longest period of unemployment that high since the Great Depression. Based on the historic precedents America should be enjoying the second year of a roaring economic recovery by now, especially since, historically, the worse the downturn, the stronger the recovery. Yet while in the Reagan recovery the economy soared past the previous GDP peak after six months, in the Obama recovery that didn’t happen for three years. Last year the Census Bureau reported that the total number of Americans in poverty was the highest in the 51 years that Census has been recording the data. Moreover, the Reagan recovery was achieved while taming a historic inflation, for a period that continued for more than 25 years. By contrast, the less-than-half-hearted Obama recovery seems to be recreating inflation, with the latest Producer Price Index data showing double-digit inflation again, and the latest CPI growing already half as much. These are the reasons why economist John Lott has rightly said, “For the last couple of years, President Obama keeps claiming that the recession was the worst economy since the Great Depression. But this is not correct. This is the worst “recovery” since the Great Depression.” However, the Reagan Recovery took off once the tax rate cuts were fully phased in. Similarly, the full results of Obamanomics won’t be in until his historic, comprehensive tax rate increases of 2013 become effective. While the Reagan Recovery kicked off a historic 25-year economic boom, will the opposite policies of Obamanomics, once fully phased in, kick off 25 years of economic stagnation, unless reversed? Peter Ferrara is director of policy for the Carleson Center for Public Policy and senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at the Heartland Institute. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as associate deputy attorney general of the United States under President George H. W. Bush. He is the author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, forthcoming from HarperCollins.blogs.forbes.com/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/
|
|
|
Post by Ritty77 on Jun 20, 2011 21:22:43 GMT -5
A recent pew poll finds that if the debt ceiling is not raised, 33% would blame Obama, 42% would blame Congressional GOP. Good. At least they know who is responsible for trying to be responsible. pollingreport.com/budget.htm
|
|
|
Post by twinder on Jun 20, 2011 22:07:14 GMT -5
A full 50% of the respondents admitted that they didn't really understand the whole debt ceiling situation. Yet, a bunch know who to blame?
|
|