…on the bottom of the screen on CNN in our lobby as I type:
Delay Means “DEEPENING DISASTER”
Guess who?
Pass the Pork Package…
…or else! (Shivers should have just gone down your spine)
…another reminder that the best thing Congress and Comrade Obama could do right now is simply make sure that unemployment benefits are well funded nationwide and otherwise stay out of the way.
[Despite a tough employment report], stocks traded strong on Friday, with the Dow industrials finishing up over 200 points. Broad stock indexes are up 15% to 20% from their November lows. How can this be?
Well, the stock market is telling us that the economy’s future is a lot brighter than its past. The stock market looks ahead; the employment report looks behind.
Which is to say while this particular recession is a wee bit longer than most, it is otherwise reasonably predictable. Unemployment numbers will peak while the stock market moves up and small businesses and large corporations will start hiring again, usually before they are done laying off all that were slated for release.
By the way, in Friday’s jobs report, wages rose again, and now stand nearly 4% higher than a year ago. With zero inflation, that’s a real increase in worker purchasing power for the 92.4%, or 135 million workers, still employed.
Mr. President? Curious. I thought we were in the midst of a national catastrophe (actually we are – it started on January 20th).
…stocks may now be telling us that the gloom-and-doom crowd — and its pessimistic economic prognostications that cover all of 2009 and in some cases 2010 — is about to be proven wrong.
Or you could believe the President, what with his track record of truthiness and all. It’s going to suck to tell America “we screwed up” again and again.
The commodity markets — among the first asset sectors to respond to [the lowering of rates and increase in the money supply by the fed] — are stabilizing. Broad commodity indexes are 6% or so above their lows. Ditto for energy.
So, let’s spend a trillion dollars any way.
Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.
That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy.
Is there anything good about the Spendulus Package?
And as Art Laffer has taught us all, taxes also matter — a lot. In fact, the only real stimulative part of the behemoth stimulus package is the simple fact that marginal tax rates will not be raised.
Oh, you mean the Republican version. Gotcha.
So cheaper energy, bundles of new money creation, zero inflation and no tax hikes could very well combine to produce a stronger economy as the year progresses — to the great surprise of the majority of economic pundits.
…and to the dismay of The Little President that Cried Wolf.
Too late for that now.
…but in hindsight, if one considers our economic woes the current regime’s “9/11”, clearly America chose poorly.
While Obama is caving in…
Stopping just short of a take-it-or-leave-it stand, Obama has mocked the notion that a stimulus bill shouldn’t include huge spending. He’s also defended earmarks as inevitable in such a package. And he’s pointedly reminded Republicans about who won the November election.
…John McCain is on point:
“The whole point, Mr. President, is to enact tax cuts and spending measures that truly stimulate the economy,” McCain said. “There are billions and tens of billions of dollars in this bill which will have no effect within three, four, five or more years, or ever. Or ever.”
While Obama is turning up the rhetorical amplitude, favoring expedition over the more contemplative approach that came and then went on the hill, and preying on American fears with his “National Catastrophe” rhetoric, cooler heads like John McCain are leading a growing opposition to the liberal crooks and liars that have dominated Congress for a handful of years now. Falling poll numbers for their Pork Pie stimuless package initiative (once Americans had a gander under the hood) are favoring restraint.
Congress and the Bush Administration got it wrong with the TARP monies and the Big Three bailouts. History will show neither were necessary nor effective. Both were costly and damaging to our reputation and currency. Both scenarios would have played out very differently given a more iterative approach to their design, and even moreso under the auspices of a Republican majority; but they squandered their chances for a fiscal overhaul under the Gingrich regime.
But hindsight as it were, doesn’t appear to be 20/20 for “That One.”
“They did not choose more of the same in November,” Obama said Friday. “They did not send us to Washington to get stuck in partisan posturing, to try to score political points. They did not send us here to turn back to the same tried and failed approaches that were rejected because we saw the results. They sent us here to make change with the expectation that we would act.”
How ironic is that statement? Three weeks in, and Obammy is calling earmarks “inevitable”, unprecedented government spending “stimulus,” lamenting political posturing while repeatedly reminding “who won in November,” and at the same time decrying the “tried and failed approaches that were rejected because we saw the results?”
How did the Bush stimulus work for us? TARP is a failure. GM and Chrysler will ultimately file Chapter 11.
Where’s our Change© Mr. Jimmy? A few weeks in office and you’ve already succumbed to politics as usual when what we need is a man with a spine.
Someone like John McCain.
An enema with a sandblaster or a foot massage by a Pittsburgh Steelers Cheerleader?
Coming home to a raging house fire or arriving at your cabana on the beach replete with a fully stocked mini-fridge?
A hijacked jetliner crashing into the ocean off the coast of East Africa or a skillful landing on the Hudson River?
Five minutes in the ring with a folding metal chair in the hands of a steroid-ridden Jesse Ventura, or a playful moment in a pile of fallen leaves with your little girls?
Last one…don’t let me influence your choice:
A bloated pork-ridden stimulus package of some eight hundred billion (soon to be worthless) dollars including billions for liberal pet projects and paybacks or
$430 billion dollars on tax cuts.
$114 billion for infrastructure projects.
$138 billion for extending unemployment insurance, food stamps and other provisions to help “Americans in need.”
$31 billion to address the housing crisis ($11 billion for a loan modification program, $20.4 billion in tax incentives for home purchases, $50 million to temporarily increase loan limits for Freddie, Fannie and FHA)
For those of you that can’t do math (sorry Mr. President, yes I am including you) that’s over one hundred billion dollars less than the current proposal.
…and
…it actually sounds like a real stimulus package – the lesser of two evils version at least.
Sadly, Barack Obama’s flavor of bipartisanship means we probably don’t have a choice.
…and they can’t all be Republicans.
45.6% thought the [stimulus] plan was a bad idea. Meanwhile, 29.7% thought it was a good idea, and 24.7% were unsure.
“I think most of us are opposed to it because it’s a bailout in nature, and people are concerned about how it will be allocated,” said Eric Toya, vice president of Trovena LLC of Redondo Beach, Calif., which manages $400 million in assets. “It’s so anti-free-market-capitalism, which is what most financial advisers and the public believe in.”
…until they were told that they don’t believe in that any more by rockstars, the media and The Messiah.
“The fact that the size and price of the plan keeps growing should be a major concern,” said Greg Zandlo, president of The Zandlo Financial Group of Minneapolis, which has $50 million in assets under advisement.
What’s the difference between The New Deal and The New New Deal? Scale. Scope.
There’s only one thing worse than a liberal that doesn’t know what to do. A liberal that doesn’t know what to do and does it any way.
The survey also found that 36.4% of advisers did not have much confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to fix the economy. Meanwhile, 31.5% said they had a “fair amount” of confidence, and 12.2% said they had a “great deal” of confidence.
About 15.5% of respondents said they had no confidence in Mr. Obama’s ability to fix the economy, the online survey found.
Which can only mean another “Fairness Doctrine” aimed at financial advisers is on it’s way.
…unless it’s ours.
Glenn Beck explains the folly that is our Stimulus habit…using the Al Gore method.
Strap yourselves in, Republicans across America. You’ll get to live life the way we lived it here in Minnesota for decades; liberal supermajorities who believe your earnings belong to government first and foremost, backed by a media establishment that portrays dissent as one degree of depravity or another. Oh, and about the portrayal of Republicans – remember how for the past eight years Chuck Hagel got more mic time than the rest of the GOP caucus put together? Two words for ya; Lori Sturdevant.
Worse? The alternatives that the opposition provides will disappear down the memory hole – or at least they will as far as the mainstream media is concerned.
Of course, we have an alternative media now (until Congress or the Administration sneak the “Fairness” Doctrine back in the door). And the truth will be there somewhere.
Last Saturday, I talked with Michele Bachmann’s New Media director Dave Dziok. He’s behind a new project – The Majority Tracker, which aims to drop a videocam down the memory hole.
What is the GOP doing? Well, you’ll find out there.
Back in 1994, I left the GOP. A large part of the reason was the party’s caving-in on the 1994 “Crime Bill”, which served as sort of a high-water mark for gun control legislation. It (along with the 1996 Counterterrorism Act) was an attack on civil liberties like George W. Bush never attempted in the lefties’ most fevered deliria; sweeping-yet-irrational gun bans, wiretaps, property forfeiture and a shopping list of other atrocities against liberty.
The Republicans – as opposed to conservatives – went along with it. So I left.
“The GOP”, I told people who cared – which in those pre-blog days was pretty much nobody, “is perfectly happy to take us gunnies’ contributions and use up our shoe leather. But turning around and gutting the Second Amendment? Huh?”
Larrey Anderson at AmThink is finding the same problem with conservatives and the GOP in general.
Conservatives are the engine that drives the party…:
The GOP heavily (almost exclusively) relies on conservatives for grassroots campaign workers and financial support. But the Republican Party has a long history of exploiting conservatives’ efforts and misusing conservatives’ financial contributions. In many ways, the situation is reminiscent of an abusive marriage. Is it time for conservatives to finally recognize the lies and abuse and move out of the house? Or is some sort of reconciliation still possible?
Anderson notes that there’s really only one answer to that question:
I will make my position clear from the outset. A divorce by conservatives from the GOP would be a disaster for all of the parties involved. Just like most marriages, the grass may look greener on the other side of the fence — but it almost always isn’t. This is true for the GOP and for conservatives.
Conservatism is the heart, the muscle and the feet of the party.
The problem lies with too many people at the “Brain” (scare quotes intentional) level:
The “big tent” speeches may be staple rhetoric of the GOP hierarchy; but, if conservatives pack up and leave, the GOP will be a big empty tent. (This mass migration would include the growing number of black and Hispanic conservatives in the GOP. These good hard working people are in the GOP because they understand and live by conservative principles — not because they are part of some equal opportunity RNC scheme.)
There’s a great point: minority conservatives are like Minneapolis and Saint Paul conservatives; they have to swim upstream, and hard; the black, hispanic and asian Republicans I’ve met have been intense and very, very considered in their conservatism. Most of the dimmest RINOs seem to be the same crowd that makes the most obnoxious liberals; as white as a Bachman-Turner Overdrive fan club.
The GOP needs to understand, and it needs to understand this soon, that there is no Republican Party without conservatives — and conservatives need to start acting on this fact…Here are some tough love suggestions for how this can be done:
(1) No more money. The first thing conservatives must do is stop giving any money to the GOP. All contributions must stop — at least for the short term. We have all received letters from the RNC that ask for money to help fight “liberal tax and spend Democrats.”
Heh. The joke’s been on us.
(2) No more excuses. Conservatives must stop making excuses for the GOP and start demanding change. I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of defending the lightly veiled socialist policies of “compassionate conservatism.”
I’m gratified to see some conservative GOP activists actually following through – moving to hold Republicans’ feet in the fire. The shredding of four of the “Override Six” at caucuses (four were denied endorsement; two retired, two lost at the polls) was, for all of Lori Sturdevant and the Sorosphere’s caterwaling, a wonderful sign. The rank and file does get it.
They just have to follow through.
(3) No more manipulation. Republicans have manipulated conservatives for far too long with empty promises of governmental reform. John McCain received a standing ovation from the delegates at the RNC when he proclaimed the end of big government spending. In less than two months he suspended his campaign to fly back to Washington so that he could work and vote for the first bailout bill — the largest single government expenditure in peacetime history…
Senatitis kills.
(4) New leadership now. The GOP must dump its current crop of congressional leaders. These men seem to be comfortable being in the minority. They know how to say “bi-partisan” and “compromise” — but they have no clue about how to say the simplest of words: “No.”
Listen to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s take on his recent meeting with then President-elect Obama on the next trillion-dollar bailout. Listen to the words from his own website. Boehner wants “to craft a plan [trillion-dollar bailout — the sequel] that can pass in a bipartisan fashion.”
Here, I’m going to differ from Anderson – but only for a moment.
Boehner’s a legislator – and he’s in the minority. The very word “politics” at its root means to compromise. While Boehner isn’t necessarily my choice to lead us in the House, it’s not his fault that the GOP fell flat in two straight elections – at least, far from his fault alone.
It is the GOP’s fault that over the past four years it has, at most levels,marginalized conservatives. Boehner is the symptom.
(5) Finally, let’s take this bull by the horns. Conservatives need to start running for office. I know. I know. This is a daunting idea. But stop and think about it for a moment.
And not just Congress.
That’s been my big push this past year,and will be a bigger one this year; conservative Republicans need to get involved in local politics, especially in liberal gulags like Minneapolis and Saint Paul. They need to run for community councils, school boards, library boards, whatever is available. They also need to seek and accept the myriad appointed positions that abound at all levels of government; sitting on budget boards, community planning and zoning councils, library boards, school board advisory committees, and on and on. This is not only how conservatives get to control parties; it’s how communities led by generations of intellectually corrupt fearmongering ideologues (I’m looking at you, Twin Cities) realize that conservatives don’t drink the blood of infants, sacrifice old people, and light their cigars with bills pilfered from the poor.
If Nancy Pelosi is fit to be the Speaker of the House, then at least 90% of the rest of America’s citizens are qualified to run for some public office. (This includes 99.99% of America’s conservative stay at home moms. Run ladies run!)
Of course, then there’s the little matter of helping them withstand the character assassination that faces any woman or ethnic or social minority that comes out as a conservative
But that’ll be a “smile problem”.
David Horowitz on the importance of the events of the past two days – the Inauguration and the Martin Luther King holiday before it – to conservatives:
…In order to do [observe and celebrate the events] as conservatives — as conservatives who have been through the culture wars — we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.
If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it. If Americans now have accepted an African American to lead their country in war and peace that is in part because an hysterically maligned Republican made two African Americans his secretaries of state. And if, after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, race has continued to be a divisive factor in our politics over the last 40 years that is because the generation of Sharpton and Jackson and their liberal supporters have made it so. What conservatives need to recognize in getting past these feelings (and therefore to celebrate) is that because of this political reality, it is only they themselves who could end it.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.
Conservative Republicans in Congress may out-numbered but they may still be in the majority.
The real fiscal policy battle is going to be among liberal and conservative Democrats, the “Blue Dogs” as they are known, and they seem to think Barack Obama is one of them.
“Barack totally gets it . . . He is smarter than Bill Clinton and disciplined.” So says Tennessee Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper on the Thursday before Mr. Obama’s inauguration.
Sitting in his office a stone’s throw from where the festivities will take place, I ask about his role in the big transformation coming to Washington. He’s one of the leaders of a gang of moderate Democrats called the Blue Dogs. They’re meeting their first Democratic president in a while, and Mr. Cooper may have a big effect on the agenda. He smiles gently and says, “If we were to ally with the Republicans, we could swing any vote in the House of Representatives.”
The Blue Dogs gang is growing and is made up of a number of Democrats that didn’t vote for the first Stimuless Package, or the Big Three (…Two…One) Bailout, are against tax increases and actually favor “targeted” tax cuts.
So far they want to play nice with Lefty Pond Scum like Frank ‘n Beans, Pelosi and Reid, but this could be the makings of a surprise and possibly epic battle for the high ground.
If they are inclined to wrangle with Nancy Pelosi and the more liberal contingent in the Democratic Party, they will drive policy, especially as a check on spending. “Ideally the White House will see things our way, so they will present legislation on the Hill that we find acceptable,” Mr. Cooper says. “If they stray too much from that or if a certain part of Congress strays too much from that, then we may have to object.”
But is Barack one of them?
Obama said that he has made clear to his advisers that some of the difficult choices–particularly in regards to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – should be made on his watch. “We’ve kicked this can down the road and now we are at the end of the road,” he said.
The question is whether Obama actually used the perjorative “entitlement” and whether his idea of “choices” is cutting benefits and/or forcing Social Security and other entitlements to do more with less…or just raising taxes.
If the Blue Dogs are right, we might actually have another Bill Clinton on our hands, one that won’t dip his pen in the company ink (Michelle would rip his head off I surmise), which given the fiscal policies of GWB, might be Change© we fiscal conservatives can live with.
…albeit given the lack of choice in the matter for the next two to four years.
But what of the monster stimulus package? What doth the Chien Bleu say of that?
“…I think there are infrastructure things that are legitimate to spend money on,” like the interstate highway system. “For the stimulus package to work in the economy, you have to have long-term credibility. If people think we are inviting inflation back in, or if we’re not going to prudently manage the nation’s finances, the stimulus package is largely a waste of time.”
A great thing about Mr. Obama’s plan, he says, is the tax cuts. “I think stimulus can come in a variety of forms, but I think the key message is Democrats are not for tax increases. Democrats can be for tax cuts when appropriate, when needed, when targeted. We can argue about the type of cut, but the key element of this proposal was facing the payroll tax. That is the most regressive, most antijob tax in America and very few presidents in American history have touched it. And Barack is touching it in this package. That is an achievement of immense proportions in and of itself.”
I’m still not convinced this stimulus will stimulate anything and I remain skeptical of Barack Obama’s definition of a “tax cut.”
In the mean time, check out these quotes…from a Democrat no less…Blue Dog Cooper:
[The deficit is] even worse than most people think, he says, because of dodgy accounting used by the federal government.
“The U.S. government uses cash accounting,” he says. “That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam.”
Barack Obama is inheriting over $60 trillion of problems. This is not counting the bailout, or Social Security or anything.”
Standard & Poor’s reported that the U.S. Treasury bond would lose its AAA rating by 2012 because of the way Washington has been carrying on. America would have the same credit rating as Estonia and Greece, and then the same as Poland and Brazil, and then it would be like . . . Mexico. “Yet no one knows about this,” he says.
We will be watching Congressman Cooper and his Dogs.
Let the battle begin.
For most of human history, humans have had to reproduce as fast as they could; children were the only 401K, and infant/child mortality was harder on that retirement plan than the recession is on your Roth IRA today.
Capitalism and the generalized prosperity that’s attended it in the past 150-odd years has changed that dynamic. In a sense relative to the rest of the world throughout history, capitalism and general prosperity has taken human life from “nasty, brutish and short” to “relatively civilized, at least modestly comfortable, and where obesity is the biggest health problem among the poor“.
One of the blessings that’s attended these changes is the existence, throughout the world, of “cheap food”. When I say “cheap”, I’m not talking about supermarket shelf price, by the way; 500 years ago, over 95% of the world’s population worked from dawn to dusk six or seven days a week trying to subsist. Do you work two shifts seven days a week just to feed your family and live in a hovel? Who does? No – food is incomparably cheap these days, historically speaking, even if the price of eggs is getting kinda out of hand.
“Cheap food” has enabled the parts of the world still governed by dictators, petty overlords and warlords to sustain populations that would have been mathematically and logistically impossible 100 years ago. Of course, the lack of actual personal prosperity, and the attendant uncertainty of life, has kept the birthrates in these places high (albeit lower than when I was a kid). The presence of global media, communications and markets have also made life safer in the parts of the world run by despots, warlords, and amok bureaucrats; it’s a truism that no famine can take place in a nation with a free market and a free media (every famine in the past 100 years has taken place in places with neither); the globalization of communications and markets has made it possible for weathy nations (with their epic surpluses of food) to ameliorate the worst ravages of famines, the great population-leveler of days gone by.
So on the one hand, a tide that has been rising since the birth of the modern world has been lifting all boats.
On the other, this has led the world into two basic demographic paths:
This might lead to a vicious cycle – as we’re starting to see in Western Europe, where ageing populations, which for almost two generations have been at zero or negative native population growth are having to import labor from other younger, poorer countries. Who are changing the political face of these countries – sometimes against immense resistance from the natives, and all of the attendant strife.
(There are actually two vicious cycles: overpopulation in the world’s current context happens when populations in un-free nations continue pre-prosperity growth rates; there’s a reason that Paul Ehrlich, overpopulation alarmist of the sixties and seventies, is largely a risible figure these days; widening prosperity (in a historical context) obsoleted his theory in many countries that he’d used as case studies. Remember when people expected India to become a famine-ridden wasteland?).
The US’ average age is still relatively low – partly due to immigration, partly because our national birth rate is above replacement levels (and even moreso outside the “blue” states – which could reflect anything from lower standards of living or greater optimism in the red states, depending on your point of view, and it’s a digression we won’t follow in any case), but we have a “baby boom” moving through the pipeline that’ll drag things upward a bit in short order. Still, the US is faring better than most, controversies over illegal immigration notwithstanding.
But here’s the question: how does the “First” world react to the demographic fact that prosperity itself renders its populations older and less capable of continued economic growth?
What’s a hypothetical, ageing society to do?
Barack Obama has outlined his plans to create jobs in America via speeches during his inspiring campaign and his calming and reassuring tone as Occupier of the Office of the President Elect.
As economic conditions have evolved and Obama’s confidence in his magical powers has grown, he has revised his goals and ambitions for job creation over the past year.
In an effort to be a progressive source of economic guidance and as a public service, we have gathered and cataloged the President-Elect’s “Job” Creation Goals as outlined in his many and factual addresses to the nation.
Using the same mathematics and economic theory* employed by Obama’s advisers and cutting-edge spreadsheet technology, we have analyzed and extrapolated Barack Obama’s “job” creation predictions.
Here is a sampling of the data and its sources (emphasis mine-JR):
Feb 13, 2008 WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday that as president he would spend $210 billion to create jobs in construction and environmental industries, as he tried to win over economically struggling voters.
Obama’s investment would be over 10 years as part of two programs. The larger is $150 billion to create 5 million so-called “green collar” jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.
December 24th, 2008 Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama is still four weeks away from inauguration, and already the size of government is growing. His initial goal of creating 2.5 million new jobs has been upped to 3 million, rising in lockstep with a proposed economic stimulus package.
We know money buys influence. Now we find out it can buy jobs as well.
If only it were that simple.
Jan 10, 2008 Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama said his two-year plan to boost the U.S. economy will generate up to 4 million jobs, higher than his previous estimates, the biggest portion of them in construction, manufacturing and retail.
Here is our analysis:
As you can see, by this time next year, Barack Obama will have predicted the unprecedented creation of over 32 Million Jobs by the end of 2011. This is cause for great rejoicing and a renewed confidence in our political system.
The surplus of new jobs will actually allow many workers to choose more than one, although experts predict an executive order will limit job selection to two per worker and three per household for American citizens and three per worker and five per household for illegal aliens undocumented workers that can document a contribution to the Obama ’08 campaign.
We will revise our estimates as new data is made available to us via the media.
*Hopey Changey©
John Candy (God rest his soul) probably couldn’t have anticipated that world events would transform his 1995 film Canadian Bacon into a docu-drama.
Among the most unthinkable scenarios for most Americans is the unthinkable idea that the United States could become the disunited or turn into divided states. Even though this union accumulated very slowly in the first place, and against all odds — in other words it was not inevitable — the fact that the USA will not always be as united, or at least united in the way it is now, is considered, well… unthinkable.
But as Juan Enriquez notes in his amazing PopTech talk, based on his book “The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future”, no US president has ever died under the same flag that he was born under. That is, the borders of the United States has constantly shifted even in modern times. The last state was added in 1959 (after I was born!) and more could be added still. Americans are comfortable ADDING states, but it might not take much to subtract one. The outcome of the US Civil War has biased Americans to disbelieving in subtraction, but that might change.
In these scenarios, Minnesota becomes part of Canada, which of course we Minnesotans have known all along.
Right?
The upside: The Canadians will put an end to all this outdoor stadium foolishness.
HT Althouse
Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar economic and job creation stimulus is a Trojan Horse for his Grand Vision of Mass Transit and The Battle for the Planet.
Obama wants a large portion of the money spent on mass transit but exactly how does the expansion of infrastructure that requires permanent public subsidy to serve a small segment of society qualify as a stimulus? You could argue that highways are of the same ilk, but highways are used by everyone in the food chain whereas mass transit requires the majority to subsidize the minority that are it’s patrons.
The states that would be in receipt of these ill-borrowed billions have it right.
Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — Missouri’s plan to spend $750 million in federal money on highways and nothing on mass transit in St. Louis doesn’t square with President-elect Barack Obama’s vision for a revolutionary re-engineering of the nation’s infrastructure.
Utah would pour 87 percent of the funds it may receive in a new economic stimulus bill into new road capacity. Arizona would spend $869 million of its $1.2 billion wish list on highways.
The argument is a labyrinth of cautionary tales.
Speaking of digging holes, Obama also wants to spend $60 billion to “provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation.” He says “these projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.”
Fixing a bridge, widening a highway or building a light rail system may or may not make economic sense. But the fact that it involves paying people to operate jackhammers and pour concrete does not make it any more worthwhile. If creating jobs can justify transportation projects, why not fill the country with bridges to nowhere?
Consider:
We all know what a Liberal means when they use the word “innovative.” It condescends whatever their over-educated “elite” brains deem shall be the object of increased government spending. It’s how socialism became “progressive.”
In proposing a stimulus plan that could total as much as $1 trillion, Obama has promised a new federal infrastructure program that would dwarf President Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system that began in 1956. Obama told reporters at a Dec. 7 news conference that his effort would go beyond “roads and bridges” and fund more innovative projects.
I wonder if anyone has considered that the value of our national interstate system was not the temporary and transient jobs it created but rather the stimulus it created for the economy via efficiencies and freedoms it afforded capitalism and the consumer?
We are fast realizing that Obama isn’t any more innovative than any of his liberal predecessors in the White House. His ideas are warmed-over versions of Eisenhower’s and FDR’s and differ only in scale. What glory after all could be gathered to the bosom of the motherland by a project “half as big” as Eisenhower’s?
If, as widely expected, Barack Obama faces a recession when he takes office in January, many Americans will expect him to deliver on his promise to “create jobs.” They probably will be disappointed, because Obama seems to view job creation not only as something the government does with taxpayers’ money but as an end in itself. That’s a recipe for wasteful spending that will divert resources from more productive uses, and ultimately for higher unemployment than would otherwise occur.
Obama says he will “transform the challenge of global climate change into an opportunity to create 5 million new green jobs,” which he likens to the economic activity triggered by the personal computer. This rosy way of looking at global warming is a variation on the “broken window” fallacy dissected by the classical liberal economist Frederic Bastiat, according to which the loss caused by smashing a window is offset by the employment it gives the glazier.
Leaving aside the desirability of “energy independence” and the merits of Obama’s approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions (which has the government, rather than the market, picking the most efficient methods), the fact that he lists “jobs that can’t be outsourced” as a distinct goal is troubling. Paying people to dig holes and fill them in again also creates “jobs that can’t be outsourced,” but that doesn’t mean it’s a smart investment or an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.Obama’s job fetish is apparent even when he talks about spontaneous economic activity. “Businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs,” he declared in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In a free market, businesses exist because they provide goods or services that people value. A business that makes job creation its overriding goal will not be employing anyone for long.
The preclusion is that stimulus packages in the whole (pun intended), and especially those spent on social engineering projects or contrived global crises aren’t worth it.
All Hope® for Change® is lost.
I used to hate these bumper stickers.
Now I want one.
Visiting with business-owner and otherwise conservative clients these past few days, I have found a consistent level of puzzlement at best – ire more often – with President Bush’s move to override Congress, a GOP filibuster, and public opinion with his move this week to issue a bailout for GM and Chrysler in the waning days of his Presidency.
Why, Mr. President, Why?
To divide the GOP even further?
…exit the White House on a positive note (one that resonates only with other liberals)?
Use it or lose it? Did George Bush feel the need to spend his last dollar of political capital?
Conservatives are more pissed off with Bush than ever before.
Ford says “No Thanks.” Henry would be proud.
Cerberus, Chrysler’s privately-held owner says “You first”, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
Cerberus Capital Management…said Friday that it would put $2 billion from Chrysler Financial into the automaker’s operations after being granted a $4 billion government loan.
Cerberus…previously resisted making further investments in Chrysler, citing its obligations to its investors (who must not be taxpayers?-JR). But Friday, after the government announced emergency loans for Chrysler and General Motors, Cerberus relented.
“In connection with the loan to be provided by Treasury, Cerberus has agreed to utilize the first $2 billion of proceeds from Chrysler Financial to backstop the loan allocated to Chrysler automotive,” the firm said in statement.
As for General Motors, Chapter 11 is the best and inevitable option – the only way to force true restructuring of the nation’s largest automaker.
As for you George, Don’t let the door hitcha’.
Rick Wagoner, CEO and G.W. share the same fate as their careers wind down.
They are both on the wrong side of public opinion. Bush is also on the wrong side of the aisle.
Good for GM, Good for America?
The Washington Post reports that its poll finds 55% of Americans oppose the Detroit handout, while only 42% support it. Democrats have become the party of corporate welfare, with 52% supporting the bailout; majorities of Republicans (69%) and independents (57%) are opposed.
Most surprising finding: “Union households are no more apt than those without a union member to favor the plan, 44 percent compared with 42 percent.” The United Auto Workers wants government money so as to protect the work rules and artificially high emoluments that have helped make Detroit uncompetitive.
Wagoner argues that without a bailout, GM will have to go Chapter “Belly Up” and won’t survive it. At the same time Bush is circumventing a Republican filibuster and overwhelming public opinion to open up the TARP checkbook for the Big Three; two of which don’t need the money; one of which has resorted to begging.
We keep hearing the argument, originally put forward last month by Rick Wagoner, GM’s delightfully named CEO, that people won’t buy cars from companies that have filed bankruptcy, for fear that parts and service will become unavailable. Are consumers really so stupid that they would have more confidence in a company that goes on welfare to support an unsustainable business model than in one that is being restructured through bankruptcy court?
It turns out the Unions aren’t as pro-bailout and foreign competitors may be more pro-bailout than one would imagine.
One major problem is that Japanese carmakers in the United States share many of the same parts suppliers. If a Detroit automaker were to collapse, suppliers would likely follow, setting off a chain reaction that could wreak havoc for Japanese production in a vital market.
More broadly, the U.S. crisis could lead to huge job losses and further weaken consumer spending, especially for big-ticket items such as automobiles. Together, the three big American automakers employ 239,000 workers in the United States.
I have teetered back and forth on this issue. Not unlike the unfolding of the financial system crisis, the more time that elapses, urgency fades in favor of clarity, and the more prized clear-headed thinkers become.
Let GM file bankruptcy. Let Cerberus feed their child so we don’t have to. Let Ford Navigate the waters unfettered by bailout dollars and the restrictions they would entail.
Let capitalism do what capitalism does: make stronger companies.
As long as health insurance is predominantly accessed through a third-party payer – employers – most Americans will have to rely on their them to shop for them. This has been a great deal for those who suffer from preexisting conditions as the insurance provider takes on the employer group in toto.
It’s also been a great deal for those whose conditions are of their own volition, or lack thereof as it were, as they are able to average in their morbidity and get a break.
Politicians talk of a health care crisis and how a country as prosperous as ours should not allow anyone to be without health care. It’s a right, not a privilege; a matter of dignity.
Fact is, our national health care “crisis” is not being caused solely by the insurance companies, nor the current delivery system but rather by the insureds themselves. In a way, our prosperity is our downfall. Everyone can afford Twinkies and smokes.
Experts say that upwards of 40 percent of U.S. medical costs are linked to obesity, smoking and other lifestyle factors — a statistic not lost on the nation’s employers. As a result, more than half of large corporations now use incentives to get employees to shape up, a 2008 survey found.
America is fat, and still surprisingly smoky too. Health insurers have been prodding consumers to get off their duffs, join clubs and live healthier lifestyles to no avail. Have you seen the insipid television commercials?
Now employers want a crack at it.
Sheila Kromer doesn’t want any help.
She enjoys smoking and she doesn’t want to quit.
Nor does she want advice on how to eat right. Or how to exercise. “I’m smart enough to take care of myself,” she says.
As a chemist at 3M, she’s had plenty of chances to join health and fitness programs on the job. But like many Minnesotans, she’s simply chosen not to.
Smart is as smart does. As it stands Sheila, you’re a jackass, and you’re gonna pay for it. Now and later.
…so that we can load it up with the most useless projects we can devise…but we’ll call them “Infrastructure,” and taxpayers will look the other way.
From a couple posts ago…
“We understand that we’ve got to provide a blood infusion to the patient right now to make sure that the patient is stabilized. And that means that we can’t worry short term about the deficit. We’ve got to make sure that the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving,” he said.
Let’s dissect what Mr. Jimmy just said. We have to make sure to print and/or borrow so much money that the economy will have to get better?
Obama’s words rang out like a dog whistle for liberals everywhere.
And not surprisingly, the term “Infrastructure” gained a new, broader meaning.
On Monday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors went to Capitol Hill to ask for a handout, or as they put it: “We are reporting that in 427 cities of all sizes in all regions of the country, a total of 11,391 infrastructure projects (emphasis mine-JR) are ‘ready to go.’ These projects represent an infrastructure investment of $73,163,299,303 that would be capable of producing an estimated 847,641 jobs in 2009 and 2010.”
…it turns out $73 Billion is “capable” of producing 847,641 temporary jobs.
A wish list that is 11,391 projects strong! What vital infrastructure projects would cash-strapped taxpayers get for their $73 billion? Here’s a sampling:
– Hercules, Calif., wants $2.5 million in hard-earned taxpayer money for a “Waterfront Duck Pond Park,” and another $200,000 for a dog park.
– Euless, Texas, wants $15 million for the Midway Park Family Life Center, which, you’ll be glad to note, includes both a senior center and aquatic facility.
– Natchez, Miss., “needs” a new $9.5 million sports complex “which would allow our city to host major regional and national sports tournaments.”
– Henderson, Nev., is asking for $20 million to help “develop a 60 acre multi-use sports field complex.”
– Brigham City, Utah, wants $15 million for a sports park.
– Arlington, Texas, needs $4 million to expand its tennis center.
It’s a simple fact. Liberals can not be trusted with the nation’s checkbook. In a time of world financial crisis, their solution is to spend more taxpayer money on even more useless pork.
The government does have a role to play: stimulate the economy by creating incentives for growth, incentives that will be permanent, paid for by cutting government down to size. But liberals would entertain that notion. Liberals seek to justify and extend government largess, not reduce it to it’s rightful weight.
Instead of stimulating the economy, Barack Obama and his faithful liberal lunatics in Congress aspire to become the economy.
Cy Thao – a state senator from Saint Paul – earned what (in a just world) would be a footnote in history two years ago, when he summed up the true meaning of socialist/fabian statist/Big-L “Liberal” government as concisely as anyone in history:
When you guys win, you get to keep your money.
When we win, we take your money
Cy Thao (DFL St. Paul), 2007
Seriously – this is Bartlett’s-grade stuff.
Yesterday, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Tom Brokaw gave The Interview That Will Live In Infamy, on Meet The Press.
Money quote (among many – this one closely paraphrased from memory):
BROKAW: “Whoy nault teik thus ulpurtoonitty tull raise thul taxes un gaaaus to fower dullars uh gaullon, luyeek peopull wurr prupared tull pay?”
Literal Translation: “Why not take this opportunity to raise the taxes on gas to $4/gallon, like people were prepared to pay”.
Ethical Translation, from Condo-Pink Limo-Liberal to English: “Neither of us have paid for gas in years, and if you jacked the income tax to levels that even choked the Swedes to death I’ll still be netting seven figures; why not sit down at the great Drum Stool of Power in the White House and imitate Keith Moon?”
Unless it’s my pork!
Barack Obama on “Meet the Press:”
“What we need to do is examine: What are the projects where we’re going to get the most bang for the buck? How are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected?
“You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over.”
Yeah! All Pork will now emanate from the White House.
“We are not going to simply write a bunch of checks and let them be spent without some very clear criteria as to how this money is going to benefit the overall economy and put people back to work. We’re not going to be making decisions on projects simply based on politics and — and lobbying.”
You know, like I did when I was a Senator.
“It makes no sense for us to shovel more money into the problem if you have not seen an auto industry that is committed to restructuring — restructuring that, frankly, should have been done 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago,” he told reporters.
“It makes no sense for us to shovel more money into the [economy] if you have not seen a [Federal Government] that is committed to restructuring — restructuring that, frankly, should have been done 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago,” he [should have] told reporters.
Despite the nation’s massive debt, Obama said he won’t be focusing on building a balanced budget at the start of his administration.
…or the middle of his administration.
…or the end of his administration.
“We understand that we’ve got to provide a blood infusion to the patient right now to make sure that the patient is stabilized. And that means that we can’t worry short term about the deficit. We’ve got to make sure that the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving,” he said.
Let’s dissect what Mr. Jimmy just said. We have to make sure to print and/or borrow so much money that the economy will have to get better?
“But the overall thrust is going to be that 95 percent of working families are going to get a tax cut and the wealthiest Americans … are going to give up a little bit more,” Obama said.
Over 30% of Americans already have a zero federal income tax liability. Ah, there’s the problem, Mr. Oprahma sir.
You can’t do math.
Since Barack Obama’s entry into the presidential horserace, and especially since the election, the number of legitimate reader comments winding up in my “moderation queue” – the place where my blog’s publishing software stacks up comments that have “questionable content” – has skyrocketed.
Now, if you include links in your comments, your comment automatically winds up in this blog’s moderation queue; many/most “spam” comments include links in an attempt to crank someone‘s traffic up.
But lately, there’ve been more link-less comments ending up in moderation – indeed, quite a few.
It has a lot to do with the fact that the economic philosophy that many on the right would accuse the President-Elect of espousing – socialism – has embedded within it the name of a rather common anti-impotence drug that is the subject of a hell of a lot of spam. It’s one of the good-sized list of keywords that my blog filters just to make sure the comment is legit.
So if you plan to write comments about “socialists” and so on, either don’t be alarmed if it doesn’t get published until the next time I get online…
…or call it something like “fabian statism”.
Thanks. That is all.
They say you can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps, or in this case, appoints. President-Elect Barack Obama may acknowledge his lack of executive or business experience but will he recruit to reinforce these deficits?
Not as of yet.
Where are the advocates for businesspeople and investors in President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration? So far, not one of his cabinet appointments, especially those dealing with the economy, has any significant business experience, and there is little to be seen on the résumés of the likely candidates for as-yet-unfilled positions.
Some might argue that the business background of key members of the Bush administration — from the president himself to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — did no good for the economy.
But going to the other extreme — totally ignoring experience in how the business world works — is unlikely to be good for the country as a whole or for investors. This is particularly true for the senior economic-policy team.
The Obama economic team so far is dominated by academics with no real-life experience, from his choices for Treasury secretary to chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to secretary of commerce.
If the business community was overrepresented in the Bush administration, it looks to be underrepresented in the incoming Obama administration.
As they say, stupid is as stupid does. If Barack Obama is to be judged by his selections thus far, the economy and the business community that represents its only hope for recovery will soon be in the hands of a cadre of theorists and academicians that won’t have a clue about what to do with it.
Worse yet, and I fear more likely, is that Obama’s economic team may actually think they know what to.
Obama’s campaign monologue displayed a remarkable dearth of any understanding of basic economics and a veiled disdain for business and capitalism. Joe the Plumber made headlines for this very fact. Obama’s most recent appeal, to create the largest welfare program in the history of America under the guise of “investment” and “job creation” is a patent example of liberal lunacy and may be the undoing of what is left of America’s economy.
You can’t creat jobs by taking more money from taxpayers.
Obama will apparently not be governing as close to the center as the media had been reporting, as recently as this past week.
A liberal only has one lever to pull and Obama plans on pulling it with all his might.
Infect everyone else.
The unions are largely to blame for a crisis that it appears will cost taxpayers between $15 and $25 Billion but not for the reason you think.
Even if a deal for a $15-billion to $17-billion preliminary bailout comes together this weekend to keep carmakers afloat into 2009, they will continue to be dogged by their most significant competitive disadvantage: a high-priced, unionized workforce.
And yet there is nothing inherently unsustainable about employing a high-priced, unionized workforce. The crisis of Detroit’s wage bill is entirely relative. Specifically, their labor costs far exceed the low-cost, nonunion American workforce at the U.S.-based, foreign-owned plants of competitors Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru.
If the UAW really is to blame at all, then, it is because of the union’s utter failure to unionize any of the transplants. What has the UAW been doing all these years? Isn’t it the responsibility of any good union to protect union employers from competitive labor disadvantages by organizing wall to wall, throughout the industry? How could it have left these transplants unorganized? As is now clear, when the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat.
The UAW is to blame for the Big Three Crisis. Not because they sucked the Big Three dry. Because they didn’t suck everyone dry.
Foreign automotive manufacturing transplants here in America produce some of the highest quality cars in the world, subject to the same safety and emissions regulations as the Big Three, and historically with some of the most satisfied workers in the industry. Honda has and Toyota will soon export product from here.
They’ve proven it can be done profitably; in America with Americans, and without the UAW.
What is being posited here is not a foreign concept (no pun intended). Force successful automakers to drag the dead weight of the failed strategies of the Big Three.
Mr. Obama calls it “spreading the wealth.”
I call it Socialism.
As I noted the earlier in a piece I thought I’d posted Friday, but did not, Sisyphus at Nihilist In Golf Pants commented on the State Arts Board’s grants of taxpayer money to “promising” “Minnesota” artists and their art.
Now, for years I’ve said that conservatives need to get engaged in the world of the arts; to stop ceding this utterly important aspect of the human condition to the grant-pimps, the pseudoacademic weenies – the left. Conservatives need to make their presences felt in literature, music, theatre, film, multi-media, comedy (albeit I think we can, and must, continue to cede dance to the left, since I have no idea how to take a conservative swipe at that particular medium. I’m open to suggestions).
In this spirit, Sisyphus takes a game swat at proposing his own grant applications (and, it seems, granting them, if only fictionally):
1. $3,000 to purchase extra large glass basin and cases of light beer for composition of art work in which an entire year’s worth of Nick Coleman columns are submerged in the collective artists’ urine.
Sisyphus makes a fantastic effort at getting the ball rolling. But we need to build on this to achieve more.
So here’s your assignment: Read the State Arts Board’s list of grants. And fill in your own applications in the comment section. We’ll be taking applications for
Take your best shot. The best? Well, maybe we’ll just forward them to the SAB and see what happens.
You never know.
I had a conversation with a very intelligent acquaintance last week. He’s from the UK. We were talking about financial planning and the topic of college costs and health care came up.
He moved here to marry an American and has been here long enough to offer a personal comparison between costs and accessibility for college and health care here and in the UK.
He was extolling the virtues of near-free college and universal (read socialized) health care in the UK.
Coincidentally, I came across this today (from the Telegraph in the UK):
Okay, so Superman, he’s a champion of good, not evil. Supertramp; a favorite 70’s band. Super Bowl: a clash of the best in the NFL. Supermodels. All good.
And yet…supertax? That can’t be good. Now that my acquaintance is making that kind of dough, here in the rebel states I might add, I wonder if his comparison would be so glowing?
As widely predicted, Alistair Darling (he’s the [liberal] dude with the eybrows-JR) introduced a new top level of tax, which will be imposed on people earning over £150,000 a year. They will pay 45p in the pound, up from 40p, from April 2011.
That’s a nice little holiday gift. A five percent tax hike. As of this writing, $1 trades for $1.5166 Pounds. So £150,000 a year is about $230,000 a year in the US.
Hey, we should nationalize health care so we can join the other taxed up the wazoo nations of the world that pay more to stand in line for crappy health care – and soon everything else as socialism bleeds their economies dry.
Another timely coincidence:
Today I finally went to the doctor to see about the pain in my shoulder that commenced during a volleyball match in August and has sustained a searing continuum. My doctor referred me to TRIA Orthopaedic Center a couple weeks back (this is not a veiled endorsement of Tria by the way). I was advised an appointment was’t necessary. Just show up and they would see me.
If I learned anything today (other than that thankfully surgery wasn’t indicated) was that health care in America can be a lot better and TRIA, from my vantage point, is the standard.
Bear in mind, it was one visit, to one provider; behold:
All in, I was there for little more than a half hour. It was pleasant, efficient and I got the feeling, inexpensive; as health care goes any way. An extraordinarily well-choreographed experience. And they were busy.
As for my chap from the UK, he was selling it. I wasn’t buying it. Plus I pretty much believe the exact opposite of anything Michael Moore flaps his flaccid jowls about.
Contrast my experience today with anything run by the government (save the military – those guys are so cool plus they have bravery, guns and bombs and stuff).
Is one experience, one day, with one health care provider proof of anything? Yes. That healthcare can be done right and without the government.
My shoulder feels better already.
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