Come Hell or High Water

indyfromaz|  

The Congress that took the last week of July until Sept 13 off has now left Washington for all-out-war campaigning after working an exhaustive 17 days since late July and won’t be back until after they have had their heads chopped off by the American people.

Poor babies.
They left town without the House passing a budget for the first time since 1974. The 4th time the Senate has done it since 1974.
So the government that started a new fiscal year today with resolutions.
I bet your household budget works the same way. You just fake it. right?
They also left town without dealing with the Tax Increases coming on 1/1/11. They were too chicken. So they split town to save their own asses rather than tell you, your employer, or any potential employers if they were going to get hit with the largest Tax Increase in American History (for real).
Failure to extend the Bush tax cuts will also mean a reinstatement of the marriage penalty that makes some married couples pay higher taxes filing jointly than they would if they were single and filing individual returns. It will mean cutting in half the child tax credit from $1,000 to $500. It will increase tax rates on dividends from a maximum of 15 percent to 39.6 percent, which affects seniors who depend on dividends to supplement their Social Security and pensions. And it will raise the top capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent, stifling business investment.
It will also raise taxes anyone who pays taxes. Regardless of income.

The President repeatedly says he want to raise taxes on the rich as a class warfare tactic, but in all these months has he actually proposed an actual bill for it?
Or was he hoping Pelosi or Reid would do it for him? Be the good Lieutenants and get all the troops in line to set up for the firing squad one more time?
But the fact remains it was all talk and no action. Much like the Congress since the passage of the business buzzsaw killing Financial Reform bill the Democrats have done nothing useful since (not that they did it before to be fair).
And who is to blame for the President not proposing and the Democrats not disposing of this part of the agenda, The Republicans.
The Minority party is at fault for the President not even sending a bill containing his Tax proposals to the House and the House not willing to come up with the bill and vote on it.
It’s all those damn Republicans fault!
HUH??
Now that’s a “transparent” “drain the swamp” “most ethical congress” “responsible”, “post-partisan” government isn’t it?
The real problem was there were enough Democrats  who were willing to join Republicans on an across-the-board extension of the Bush tax cuts that it made the Reid-Pelosi position of raising taxes on some higher earners untenable, so no tax bill moved forward.
But that was the Republicans fault too.


Members of Congress have now returned home to try to save their own jobs, never mind helping the millions of Americans who have lost theirs. “When we come back this fall, the election will be over,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Washington Post. “I hope that it also means that Republicans will finally be able to put the American people ahead of their short-term political interests and ambitions.”
Now that’s responsible government.  and very “post-partisan”.


So it’s time to get your Lame Duck Poisoning Prevention Shot.
The New Roman Empire is being invaded by a hoard of Barbarians are the gate. So it’s time to prep the wells for poisoning and to raze the crops and poison the soil.
What Reid and his counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are hoping is that Democrats who lose their seats in the election will be willing to pass legislation in a lame duck session that they know the voting public doesn’t support. In Reid’s logic, they will be free to vote their liberal ideology. And it won’t matter because they will have already lost their jobs. But it is precisely this kind of arrogance that has Democrats in such poor shape heading into the mid-term elections. (Linda Chavez)
Some say you have to admire our “rock star” (in his own mind and the media’s) President for sticking to his ideology as he is 200% in campaign mode, 2008 campaign mode, that he doesn’t care about moving to the center. He wants to move even farther LEFT. Hoping to spike turnout amongst those who were fainting in his presence 2 years ago.
Now their fainting from working so hard. But that doesn’t matter. And once again, it’s supposed to be how he says it, not what he says.
Let’s party like it’s 2008!

The perception that he’s The Anointed One is supposed to trump the reality of the last 21 months.
A couple of back-to-back statements by President Obama at a town hall rally in Des Moines, Iowa, tell us all we need to know about his economic philosophy and that we aren’t going to climb out of his recession and begin to slow the growth of the national debt as long as he’s calling the shots.
Voters, he said, tell him to “cut government spending.” But “most spending is for veterans, for education, for defense. … Finding $700 billion is not easy.”
Yet a few minutes earlier, in response to criticism over illegal immigrants getting health care in the United States, he had said, “It is very important that we have compassion as part of our national character.” (How about compassion for future generations of Americans?)
Does anyone see the disconnect here? If Obama believes our national character is deficient unless we expand the welfare state to illegal immigrants, then how could he ever preside over a balanced budget?
His wildly inaccurate statement about where the money is spent is equally revealing. For fiscal year 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and other sources, benefits for veterans constituted about 3.5 percent of the budget; education expenditures were 3 percent; and defense and security totaled about 20 percent.
Even worse than these errors is his defeatist statement that “finding $700 billion is not easy.”
Well, of course it’s not easy if you have no desire to trim the size, functions and intrusiveness of government.
Didn’t he just say again the other day that he is “committed to fiscal responsibility”? Hasn’t he incessantly argued that President George W. Bush is the one who ran up these outlandish deficits?
We all know what a distortion and exercise in scapegoatery that is. President Bush fulfilled his promise to cut the deficit in half by 2006. In fiscal year 2007, the deficit was $161 billion. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
That’s just three years ago, and Obama says it’s nearly impossible to trim much? Even the final Bush year, which Obama continues to blame for all “this mess” and which Obama has used to establish his new deficit base line, was not actually the alleged $1.3 trillion, but closer to $800 billion when TARP repayments are factored in.
Assuming Obama even wants to bring down the deficit, his economic philosophy precludes him from advancing policies likeliest to do it. You cannot make much headway on the deficit in a period of recession, and his policies are leading us toward a double-dip recession.
Indeed, the dirty reality is that Keynesian policy works as a double whammy against fiscal sanity. It involves government’s spending money it doesn’t have, which, by definition, increases the deficit and debt. And it also increases the deficit by smothering the private sector and deterring real economic growth. There is no appreciable “multiplier effect” from monies that are spent by government fiat, as opposed to those spent in response to true market forces, including real consumer demand — as opposed to government  command.

We saw the devastating impact of reckless Keynesian policies during the Great Depression, and we’re witnessing them again today. As long as Obama is married to his redistributionist profligacy, we cannot reduce the deficit. And it’s even worse when you consider that Obama wants to raise taxes on the primary generators of economic growth, small businesses, during a slow economic period.
With his signature audacity, Obama told town hall attendees their taxes haven’t gone up in his administration. Puleeze! Obamacare, anyone — for starters? He also said Republicans haven’t been honest with voters about what needs to be done to revive the economy. “We can’t pretend that there are shortcuts,” he said.
Sorry, but he’s the one being dishonest. The Bush years saw robust economic growth until the last year of Bush’s second term. The policies that led to the subprime collapse, the recession and the skyrocketing deficit in his final year were brought upon mostly by liberal Democrats hellbent on demonstrating their “compassion” for people by insisting on loans to people who couldn’t repay them and cynically resisting President Bush’s efforts to rein in Fannie and Freddie.
President Reagan didn’t continue to blame Jimmy Carter for his malaise-ridden economy during his term. He didn’t implement policies that didn’t work after promising they would and then whine that it would “take 10 years to get out of this mess because it took us 10 years to get into this mess.” He passed tax cuts that launched an unprecedented period of peacetime growth — and not at the expense of federal revenues, as has been falsely alleged.
I don’t expect President Obama to come clean with the American people or to ever accept responsibility for his disastrous policies, much less to voluntarily change course, but it’s gratifying to see that people, including some of his supporters, are finally onto him. (David Limbaugh)

And if you were expecting the Media to do their job, of journalism. Forget it. The Propaganda ministers for Obama are in full damage control, but unlike 2008, people are less inclined to believe their spin.
But it’s all they have and if they say it often enough people will believe their lies.

Gallup: Distrust in Media Hits New High and Three Times as Many See Media as ‘Too Liberal’ Over ‘Too Conservative’

They are too busy kissing up to Rep. Alan Grayson’s so-blatant-it’s-a-supernova misrepresentation attack ad, Obama’a 2008 “glory days” (they actually use that term repeatedly) and the manipulation by the far left of a Maid of California Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman who was an illegal alien (she was fired last year for this by Whitman) and now is being paraded around the media with a prepared speech and lots of crying in the most cynical of acts.

And the Liberal media eats it up and regurgitates it.

So don’t expect anything from them expect spin.

“I’m sad to report today a death of a good friend to all of us…..Journalism, the once esteemed 4th estate of our nation and the protector of our freedoms and a watchdog of our rights has passed away after a long struggle with a crippling and debilitating disease of acute dishonesty aggravated by advanced laziness and the loss of brain function.” — Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2009.

Doubt me?:
Watch ABC’s World News Runs White House Produced Pro-ObamaCare Video as ‘News’: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUkUQueu

CNN urging liberals to promote the “Amazing Achievements” of the liberals: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUSUZunz

Matt Lauer (Today Show) urging the President to be more forceful about attacking the Republicans: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUSUqG6U

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

All aboard the Democrats Unsinkable Ship of Keynesian Economic  State, The Titanic!

And don’t forget to destroy the land behind you.

If they can’t have it, no one can!

Film at 11.

Incestuous Narcissism Part 2

indyfromaz|

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -Old Chinese Proverb.

And these days not only do people get fish, they demand that you catch it for them and/or “the rich” give them their fish because it’s only “fair”.
And if that fish isn’t good enough for them they will throw it back until they get a bigger, better fish that THEY like!
Unemployment insurance prior to the Age of Obama was for 26 weeks. 6 months and was only meant to help you out in between jobs. Not be de-facto welfare.
Or a stimulus, if you remember what Speaker Pelosi said in July 2010:
“Let me say that unemployment insurance… is one of the biggest stimuluses (sic) to our economy. Economists will tell you, this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and it’s job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
So unemployment is good for everyone! So nearly 10% unemployment is great!
Aren’t you happy? Don’t you have lots of Hope!?
Now it stretch to 2 YEARS or more. Because Democrats have made finding a job so hard they have to cover their own buts by bribing people.
They call it “compassion”. I call it a bribe. Democrats are very good at paternalistic bribes.
The government pays you not to work. You in turn don’t bother looking. And if you aren’t looking you aren’t one of the statistics on Unemployment numbers because you aren’t looking.
Thus, the government can keep it artificially lower than it already is. Which is very high indeed.
So the Unemployment rate is just another political game to be manipulated.
Meanwhile, you have people just sitting around eating Doritos and hanging out doing nothing and getting paid for it!
And the government doesn’t make it easy to get off the dole either. Whether on purpose or not.
In the first year of unemployment, the size of the benefit check is based on your old salary. You can go right back on unemployment after a temp job, and nothing changes. But federal law requires states to recalculate benefits for the second year. If you worked a few days or a few months, the second year’s checks will be based on that lower earnings total. (Hartford Courant)

So you’re on unemployment, you get a temp job, your benefits get cut. So the obvious answer is to not take the temp job, right?
The government makes you want to stay.
But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson’s unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing.
“Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job,” Hanson says. (CSM)
Incentives to stay unemployed. Incestuous you might ask? At least I would.
Employers and economists point to several explanations. Extending jobless benefits to 99 weeks gives the unemployed less incentive to search out new work. Millions of homeowners are unable to move for a job because the real-estate collapse leaves them owing more on their homes than they are worth.
The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work…
Many of the applicants he (Mark Sperry of Catepillar) saw at job fairs, he says, were just going through the motions so they could collect their unemployment checks. Some workers agree that unemployment benefits make them less likely to take whatever job comes along, particularly when those jobs don’t pay much. Michael Hatchell, a 52-year-old mechanic in Lumberton, N.C., says he turned down more than a dozen offers during the 59 weeks he was unemployed, because they didn’t pay more than the $450 a week he was collecting in benefits.
It is particularly troubling at a time when 4.3% of the labor force has been out of work for more than six months—a level much higher than after any other recession since 1948. (WSJ)
So what are you to do if Unemployment pays better than the job?
Just game the system.
And the system shall provide.
The disconnect between workers and jobs could constrain the economy for some time. It makes it hard for even small firms, which as a group typically account for an outsize share of job growth in a rebound. (WSJ)
So if you have 99 weeks of unemployment, you go out “looking” for a job but not really, then when it gets to about 95 weeks you get serious about it. But that’s nearly 2 years later!
There was a Swedish study that when they cut the benefit time, the amount of time people kept “looking” decreased in proportion.
Alan Krueger, the current Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and a highly respected labor economist has said in his academic writing exactly that: unemployment insurance causes the unemployed to stay unemployed longer.
In his academic studies Dr. Krueger wrote that “more generous unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been found to be associated with longer spells of unemployment,” and further finds that “the job finding rate jumps up around the time benefits are exhausted. Most importantly, we find that job search intensity is inversely related to UI benefit generosity for those who are eligible for UI.” In other words, a senior Obama administration official finds that less generous UI benefits cause the unemployed to search harder for new work.
Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council has said the same:
“government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.”
“Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job.”-Liberal Economist Paul Krugman’s Macroeconomics textbook.
The Same Paul Krugman  recently described Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) statement that unemployment insurance causes individuals to stay out of work longer “a bizarre point of view.”(Heritage.org)
More specifically, In the NY Times:  In Mr. Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now — with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression — is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view — but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.
So, like everything with Liberals, it’s all politics.
We, The Democrats, who have the patent on “compassion” will kiss your behind and let you sit on your ass for 2 years. As long as those evil Republicans don’t come in and demand you have some self-respect that is.
Even if they do, the Democrats will trot out their “grandma eating dog food” “they want to cut you off” “they’re heartless” “mean” “Cruel” class warfare hoaries anyhow.
Or as Mr. Krugman put it, “How can the parties agree on policy when they have utterly different visions of how the economy works, when one party feels for the unemployed, while the other weeps over affluent victims of the “death tax”?
Democrats feel your pain (good,sense they are the cause of most of it!). And Republicans are heartless, greedy and obsessed with the kiss up to “the rich”.
Meanwhile, you sit on your behind for up to 2 years eating Doritos and watching Judge Judy.
Who are you going to vote for, the pimp or Mom who says get you lazy ass off the couch?
Unemployment has become a political weapon and a tool, akin to welfare.
You don’t work, we pay you. You vote for us, we keep paying you.
Regardless of the economic and social cost.
Unemployment insurance exists for good reason, and no-one has suggested abolishing it. However, the good that it does also comes with a cost in delaying the return of the unemployed to work. Economists from right to left and in the Obama administration agree about this. Wishing it were not so does not make it true. Congress should consider both the costs and benefits of extended UI benefits when weighing how many years of benefits to provide unemployed workers. (Heritage).
But what we have now is incest at it’s best.

Cynical Ploy

Stimulus: President Obama’s new plan to cut taxes on all but those most likely to create jobs is little more than an exercise in class warfare to divide Americans and win votes — not to get the economy growing again.
Much was made of Obama’s “compromise” on taxes, including his plan to keep lower rates on the 98% of Americans who earn less than $250,000, and spend $180 billion or more to cut some business taxes and invest in more infrastructure repair.
The president’s supporters say this is a good plan — giving Republicans the tax cuts they want while letting average Americans keep their current tax rates. Only the “rich” get hit.
This plan is actually quite cynical, as even the New York Times tacitly admits, saying Obama “intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.” In short, it’s not really about jobs at all. It’s about politics.
Obama, though himself wealthy, seems to truly hate the private-sector rich — believing the neo-Marxist pap that as a “class” they create nothing, but rather exploit the rest of us.
When he told Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign that he wanted to “spread the wealth,” he was at least telling the truth.
In fact, the wealthy are the nation’s creators, innovators and job makers. The small businesses they run account for more than four of every five new jobs. Obama’s tax hikes target them — and you.
As economists Kevin Hassett and Alan Viard recently noted, “Fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.”
A recent National Federation of Independent Business survey found that 50% of the small-business owners who employ 20 to 249 workers fall in the top two income brackets. They’re the “rich.”
So half of all small-business profits — maybe more — will be hit by Obama’s tax hikes. And guess what? They’ll respond predictably by not expanding their businesses or doing more hiring. If Obama’s plan is passed, expect no meaningful job growth for years.
For two years, we’ve heard repeated verbal assaults leveled at successful people to make the rest of us resent their success — like the canard that the rich don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.
Well, as the National Taxpayers Union recently reported, the richest 1% of Americans earn 23% of all income and pay almost twice that — 40% — toward income taxes. Meantime, the bottom 50% take home 12% of the income and pay only 2.9% of the taxes.

Fair? Since 2002, the year before President Bush’s 2003 across-the-board tax cut went into effect, the share of taxes paid by the wealthy has risen every year. As for Democrats’ claim that the tax cuts “benefited only the wealthy,” 7 million new U.S. jobs were created from 2003 to 2008. How’s that stack up to Obama’s record of 4 million lost and counting?
Instead of emulating past success, Obama continues to push policies that scapegoat the rich while using “stimulus” spending to enlarge government, enrich unions and subsidize favored industries.
To their credit, Republicans have countered with a far better plan — one that freezes tax rates at the Bush levels and rolls back spending to the pre-stimulus levels of 2008. This would have a truly stimulative effect on the economy. It would be even better if the tax changes were made permanent and future spending were cut.
Until something is done to convince businesses that Washington is capable of fiscal sanity, few companies will willingly commit huge amounts of capital to new investments and jobs.
Like the rest of us, they want tax and regulatory relief, entitlement reform and smaller government. Until they get it, they’ll sit on the sidelines waiting for the craziness to end.
As the New York Times last weekend described the new Democratic “firewall” approach, “A national campaign trumpeting Democratic accomplishments on health care, education and Wall Street regulation has given way to a race-by-race defensive strategy.”
Joe Sixpack’s inevitable reaction to such a change in tack is simple: If ObamaCare, more money for teachers unions and preserving too-big-to-fail on Wall Street are so great, why not run on these things?
Instead, the party whose theme song used to be “Happy Days Are Here Again” is battening down the hatches.
“Small businesses drive economic growth, not government,” he added, “but ObamaCare and a slew of upcoming tax hikes are going to make it harder for our district’s small businesses to stay afloat.”
The hyperspending that was supposed to provide jobs has failed — yet those in power plan more of it.

But don’t worry, Obama’s new stimulus-that-isn’t-a-stimulus will solve everything.
After all, Obama was on the TV yesterday touting that “3 Million people had jobs” because of him.
Isn’t he amazing!
The fact that they are union and government union apparatchiks kind of got lost in the ra-ra speech.
That and the millions of people who have lost their jobs SINCE he came to power. They don’t matter.

Obama characterized Republicans as pandering to corporations, millionaires, special interests, and credit card and insurance companies. He asserted they did “not having a plan to govern” and praised the values that “we Democrats believe in.”
The president recalled the principles upon which America was founded — “values of self-reliance and individual responsibility” and “a country that rewards hard work. A country built upon the promise of opportunity and upward mobility” — and contrasted them with his characterization of the Republican attitude in Washington. “They’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness, and a shrinking middle class.”
Said Obama, “This country is greater than the sum of its parts — America is not about the ambitions of any one individual, but the aspirations of an entire people and an entire nation.”(Politics Daily)

<>

We also hoped for a chance to get beyond some of the old political divides -– between Democrats and Republicans, red states and blue states -– that had prevented us from making progress. Because although we are proud to be Democrats, we are prouder to be Americans -– (applause) — and we believed then and we believe now that no single party has a monopoly on wisdom.

We’re just way smarter than you and if we just explain why 2000+ page government takeover bills that we never even read are great then you’ll just love us!

“I ran because I had a different idea about how America was built.”
“Yes, our families believed in the American values of self-reliance and individual responsibility, and they instilled those values in their children. But they also believed in a country that rewards responsibility; a country that rewards hard work; a country built on the promise of opportunity and upward mobility.”

(just don't be too mobile or you'll be an evil "rich" person)
It’s amazing he can say this with a straight face. But then again, he is so much better than you.
It was an America where you didn’t buy things you couldn’t afford (They just expect government handouts to do it for them because they are entitled); where we didn’t just think about today -– we thought about tomorrow. An America that took pride in the goods that we made, not just the things we consumed. An America where a rising tide really did lift all boats, from the company CEO to the guy on the assembly line.
That’s the America I believe in.
<<>>

He’s other deeply, deeply cynical and manipulative and/or delusional and  just thinks his soaring charms and rhetoric will override the reality of what he and democrats have actually been doing.
What matters is scoring cheap,soaringly cynical, disingenuous, arrogant and deeply divisive political rhetoric that sounds good and makes you feel good.
I just feel sick.

It isn’t easy being Liberal

indyfromaz

Al Gore will have a school devoted to the Environment (aka Global Warming Indoctrination)  name after him.
It’s built on a former Toxic Waste dump site.
I love it!
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“In this year of economic uncertainty and critical mid-term elections, the corporate-owned media will not be offering lessons about: our rigged political system; the conservative crusade against Muslims; the phony ‘panic’ over debt; vets abandoned by the VA; taxes and the Tea Party and much, much more,”

The Progressive Left’s magazine The Nation. They want to bring more liberal “education” to the classroom.

More?

Really?

Gee, I guess total domination is the goal then, eh?

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A Gallup survey of registered voters this week had Republicans beating Democrats in a generic ballot by 10 points, 51% to 41%. In the 68-year history of that poll, the GOP had never led by more than five points.

**********************************************************************

ETU ORSZAG!
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated the Obama administration’s opposition to extending tax cuts for America’s highest earners this afternoon, after former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, at left, suggested a two year extension of all the Bush-era tax cuts.
Orszag, who left the Obama administration in July, wrote in an op-ed in today’s New York Times that raising taxes would “crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt.” He suggested the administration extend all the Bush tax cuts for two years before ending them altogether in order to lower the deficit. This includes ending the tax cuts for middle and lower-income people that the Obama administration wants to extend permanently.
In his press briefing this afternoon, Gibbs responded to Orszag’s comments, emphasizing that while the White House is committed to extending tax cuts for middle and low-income Americans, it stands firm in its belief that maintaining similar breaks for the nation’s highest earners is fiscally unsustainable.

“Our viewpoint on this is that we should and must pass legislation that extends the tax cuts for middle-class families,” he said. “But we cannot afford, in this environment to — in our budgetary and fiscal environment to extend the tax cuts for those that make more than $250,000 a year.”
“I don’t think the president believes that we are a $100,000 tax cut from a millionaire away from an economy that works for families that are making $40,000 a year,” Gibbs said.
Wealthy Americans aren’t spending so freely anymore. And the rest of us are feeling the squeeze.
The question is whether the rich will cut back so much as to tip the economy back into recession — or if they will spend at least enough to sustain the recovery.
The answer may not be clear for months. But their cutbacks help explain why the rebound could be stalling. The economy grew at just a 2.4 percent rate in the April-June quarter, the government said Friday, much slower than the 3.7 percent rate for the first quarter.
Economists say overall consumer spending has slowed mainly because the richest 5 percent of Americans — those earning at least $207,000 — are buying less. They account for about 14 percent of total spending. These shoppers have retrenched as their investment values have sunk and home values have languished.
In addition, the most sweeping tax cuts in a generation are due to expire in January, and lawmakers are divided over whether the government can afford to make any of them permanent as the federal budget deficit continues to balloon. President Barack Obama wants to allow the top rates to increase next year for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000. The wealthy may be keeping some money on the sidelines due to uncertainty over whether or not they will soon face higher taxes.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has tumbled 9.5 percent since its high-water mark in late April. Home values fell 3.2 percent in the first quarter, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index.
Think of the wealthy as the main engine of the economy: When they buy more, the economy hums. When they cut back, it sputters. The rest of us mainly go along for the ride.
“It isn’t a good omen for the consumer recovery, which cannot exist without the luxury spender,” said Mike Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers.
At the same time, government reports show shoppers as a whole cut back on their spending in both May and June.
Companies have responded by refusing to step up hiring. The housing market is stalling. And Americans are seeing little or no pay raises. It adds up to a recipe for a grinding recovery to slow further.
And it helps explain why economists expect the rebound to lose momentum in the second half of the year. Especially if the rich don’t resume bigger spending.
“They are the bellwether for the economy,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The fact that they turned more cautious is why the recovery is losing momentum. If they panic again, that would be the fodder for a double-dip recession.”
That’s because whether they’re saving or spending, the wealthy deliver an outsize impact on the economy. (CNS)

So the obvious answer is to tax them even more. So we take it away from them.

After all, the greedy bastards deserve it!

Mind you, the 47% of the people who don’t even pay taxes to begin with need a good class ware fare motivation to vote for Democrats.

Firedoglake: “For the thousandth time, tax cuts aren’t very effective, and those applied to rich people suck. When the government gives a tax cut — essentially a gift — to the richest Americans, they spend proportionally less to stimulate Mainstreet’s economy and gamble a lot more on Wall Street’s casinos. Everyone should know this by now. Transferring money from the middle class to the rich impoverishes Mainstreet and enriches Wall Street. So retaining lower taxes for the middle class is as much a democratic equity argument to help redress the egregious distribution of wealth to the richest people as it is an economic stimulus plan.”

***

At least five of the 34 House Democrats who voted against their party’s health care reform bill are highlighting their “no” votes in ads back home. By contrast, party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a “yes” vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March.

One Democratic strategist said it would be “political malfeasance” to run such an ad now.

Democrats have taken that advice to heart; it appears that no Democratic incumbent — in the House or in the Senate — has run a pro-reform TV ad since April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ran one.
Most of the Democrats running ads highlighting their opposition to the law are in conservative-leaning districts and considered the most endangered. They’re using their vote against the overhaul as proof of their willingness to buck party leadership and their commitment to watching the nation’s debt.
Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Va.) says in an ad that went up last week that he voted against the law “because it cost too much.”
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) says she voted against “all the bailouts and the trillion dollar health care plan” because “it wasn’t right for South Dakota” or for children anywhere.
And an ad for Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) quotes constituents who say, “I like that Jason Altmire is not afraid to stand up to the president … and Nancy Pelosi.”

As for the members who voted yes? A Democratic strategist familiar with the polling on the issue says the most effective approach — when asked — is to highlight that the law provides consumers with the same health care that members of Congress get.
Another method is to tell voters that the law bans insurance companies from denying coverage once a customer gets sick — a provision that would be undone if Republicans repeal the law, as they have promised to do if given the opportunity.
The Kaiser survey found that likely voters listed health care as the third most important factor in determining how they will vote. It’s behind the economy and “dissatisfaction with government.”
About one-third of voters said support for the health reform law would make it more likely that they’d vote for a candidate. But one-third said it would make it less likely, and another third said it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Those figures haven’t changed much since the law passed. (Politico)

Emphasize that the unpopularity is mostly about the messy process, and that when voters appreciate the benefits, they will come around.

And if that doesn’t work, well, you’re just a racist, a bigot, or just plain stupid!

Insanity

  indyfromaz|

The definition of insanity is doing the same things the same way over and over again, expecting a different outcome.
From BarackObama.com (2009):

• 
  

  Get the economy back on track:

  President Obama signed legislation to jumpstart our economy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, less than a month after his inauguration. The plan will save or create 3.5 million new jobs, make critical investments in our infrastructure and give 95 percent of working Americans a tax cut.

Barack Sept 2010:
WASHINGTON (AP) – Vowing to find new ways to stimulate the sputtering economy, President Barack Obama will call for long-term investments in the nation’s roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion.
The infrastructure investments are one part of a package of targeted proposals the White House is expected to announce in hopes of jump-starting the economy ahead of the November election. Obama will outline the infrastructure proposal Monday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee.
While the proposal calls for investments over six years, the White House said spending would be front-loaded with an initial $50 billion to help create jobs in the near future.
The goals of the infrastructure plan include: rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads; constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, enough to go coast-to-coast; and rehabilitating or reconstructing 150 miles of airport runways, while also installing a new air navigation system designed to reduce travel times and delays.
Obama will also call for the creation of a permanent infrastructure bank that would focus on funding national and regional infrastructure projects.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this new “stimulus” that can’t be called “stimulus” sound amazingly similar to the one that has already failed miserably?
Officials said this infrastructure package differs from the stimulus because it’s aimed at long-term growth, while still focusing on creating jobs in the short-term.
Wary of the public’s concern over rising deficits, the administration insists a second stimulus plan, similar to last year’s $814 billion bill, is not in the works.
It just sounds like it.

But if we change the name in a very Orwellian fashion this failed duck is not a duck so this stimulus is not a stimulus.
And a permanent Bank of The United States to boot. A new cash cow. After all, who could be against an “infrastructure” bank?
Me.
***********************************
LET THEM EAT CREDIT!
It’s interesting why behavior that we readily recognize, on an individual level, as undesirable, we routinely promote and accept as government and social policy.
What rational person would suggest that being detached from reality is a good thing?
Or what rational person does not want good information when making important decisions?
But increasingly we live in an environment, created by government driven policies, in which the picture of reality we have is false, and the information available to us for making routine decisions is distorted.
University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan demonstrates this problem in what he calls “let them eat credit.”
According to Rajan, we have a big problem at the lower end of our income spectrum. Low end incomes not only are languishing, but adjusted for inflation, are dropping. From 2002 to 2008, real wages for the top ten percent of earners increased, but for everyone else they dropped.
What to do?
Rajan points out that the real culprit is education. As the economy gets increasingly sophisticated, the penalty for lack of education gets greater. But we’re failing to deliver this needed education to lower income Americans.
Core to the problem, Rajan argues, is that politicians are more interested in being popular than solving problems. They’d rather offer free money in the form of subsidies and easy credit to low wage earners than take on real problems.
Programs like subsidized mortgages, which contributed much to the housing bubble, make life look artificially cheap and reduce the sense of immediacy regarding the need to get educated.
The rate of U.S. home ownership increased from 1995 to 2005 from 65% to 69%. Over the same period of time home prices doubled, before everything fell apart.
As reported by Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, in 1992 government backed lending enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were directed to “promote affordable housing” and to do this by enabling down payments of less than 5% and approving credit for borrowers with shaky credit history.
Through the 1990s and 2000s HUD continued to push Fannie and Freddie to relax standards, requiring them, according to Wallison, “to buy increasing numbers of subprime and other risky mortgages.”
The faulty assumption behind all this, which we’ve learned the hard way, is that politicians think they can use taxpayers and the money printing press as a bottomless pit of funds to promote government schemes.
Many low income families, bought homes they couldn’t afford. Not just because of lying mortgage brokers, but because the whole artificial reality that distorted prices and credit was created by government policy. (Now the Government owns 80% of Fannie & Freddie and around 70-80% of all mortgages are written under Fannie and Freddie  so has anything been learned or are we just insane?)
It’s hard to find a place to turn where we don’t deal with a reality distorted by government.
We’re all concerned about runaway costs of health care and health insurance. What’s behind it?
In 1960, 50% of our health expenditures were out of pocket and 50% were OPM (Other People’s Money – Insurance, Employers, Government).
Today, 12% of our health care expenditures are out of pocket and 88% are Other People’s Money.
So what was the solution: National Health Care! Health Care run by the Government!
According to Harvard economist Robert Barro, the current persistent high unemployment rate, helping drag out this recession, is traceable to the unprecedented extension of unemployment benefits from the normal 26 weeks to almost two years. The argument that we are currently in unchartered territory and must do the unusual is not true.
Barro points out that unemployment in the 1982 recession reached 10.8% – higher than today.
The perhaps not so funny joke that neurotics build castles in the air and psychotics move into them is worth thinking about.
The ability to succeed is predicated on both freedom and having good information on which to make decisions.
As we distort, through government policies, reality around us, and citizens increasingly get bad information for matters about which they have important decisions to make, we’re not going to recover. (Star Parker)

I think one could argue, successfully, that Government, especially this one, is not interested in recovery- not really.
Because recovery mean less people dependent on them.
Sure they want to appear to give a crap because appearing not to or looking like you’re failing is also not desired.
So you have to look and sound like you’re succeeding and give every that false sense of reality that works for you.
Reality is an overrated and under-appreciated, well, reality.
One Question: Hows that “War on Poverty” that was started over 40 years ago going exactly? Won yet?

The Peasants are Revolting!

indyfromaz| Speaker Nancy Pelosi 2/4/09: “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.”
9/3/10: Obama said a recovery is taking place, but not at the speed he’d hope. “That’s why we need to take further steps to create jobs and keep the economy growing, including extending tax cuts for the middle class and investing in the areas of our economy where the potential for job growth is greatest,” Obama said Friday. “In the weeks ahead, I’ll be discussing some of these ideas in more detail.”
Doesn’t the anticipation of more Keynesian economics just make you twitch with excitement?


This is not “better than expected”; it’s worse than expected. This can be gauged not by market expectations for modest job creation, but by long-term experience watching how jobs are created in a normal recovery. By that gauge, we’re in the worst jobs slump since World War II.
Even the normally bland Surveys of Consumers, put out by Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan, warned Friday that “the probability of a double dip (recession) is high enough for everyone to include such an event in their contingency plans.”
Job data can be misleading. Gallup’s biweekly measure of “underemployment” — the share of workers who are either unemployed or working part-time but want to work full-time — stood at 18.6% in late August, the highest level since June.
“Worse yet,” said Gallup, “(our) job data show that 28% of Americans 18 to 29, 24% of those with no college education, and 22% of women, were underemployed in August.”
For those who have no job but want one, it may be a long wait.
In 2009, President Obama vowed to create 3.5 million jobs, lifting the total by the end of this year to 137.8 million. The actual number as of August was 130.3 million — leaving, as Heritage Foundation economist J.D. Foster puts it, a “jobs deficit” of 7.5 million.
Put differently, at August’s pace of private-sector job creation — 68,000 a month — it would take more than nine years for Obama to reach his goal. And that assumes that there’s no growth in the work force at all.
If it wasn’t clear to everyone by now, it should be: All the actions this government has taken — the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion “stimulus,” the health care takeover, financial reform — haven’t “saved or created” 3.8 million jobs, as claimed. Instead, they’ve destroyed millions of jobs — and with them, the hopes and dreams of those who’ve lost the jobs.
But the administration remains clueless, hinting that it may seek another “stimulus” costing billions. This bunch is either willfully doing damage to the U.S. economy, or completely incompetent.
On Friday, the president actually patted himself on the back, saying the employment report was “positive news” that “reflects the steps we’ve already taken to break the back of this recession.”
If there’s one thing that marks this administration as different from others, it’s the steadfast refusal to remove its ideological blinders and learn from its mistakes.
The Democrats’ politicized housing and mortgage policies pushed our economy into its worst downturn since the Great Depression. So, of course, it’s a perfect time for the biggest tax increase in history.
Why is the economy still paralyzed after the president’s much-touted “Recovery Summer”? It may be that private investment, too, has been immobilized.
With unemployment now up to 9.6%, Americans fear that the economy won’t get moving again anytime soon. As a new report from Americans for Tax Reform shows, that fear is completely rational. The report outlines the impact of the largest-ever tax hike that’s coming in just 120 days as the Bush tax cuts expire.
On New Year’s Day, “The top income tax rate will rise from 35% to 39.6% (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10% to 15%. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.”
Of crucial importance to entrepreneurship and job creation, the top capital gains tax rate rises from 15% to 20% next year, while the top rate for taxation of dividends rises from 15% to 39.6%.
And, “These rates will rise another 3.8% in 2013,” ATR points out.
Then there are the 20 new or increased taxes dictated by the ObamaCare government takeover of the health care system. All told, Americans’ taxes will go up by $3.1 trillion, as Heartland Institute economist John Nothdurft noted in IBD last week.
With all that on the horizon for an already-crippled U.S. economy, the Obama administration has saturated the Internet with WhiteHouse.gov propaganda — like an interactive map in which you can “Roll over states to learn how many estimated jobs have been created and saved due to Recovery Act funding.”
Maybe playing with that map of fictional jobs on their computer can give unemployed breadwinners something to do.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in July sent an open letter to the president, Congress and the American people, warning: “Through their legislative and regulatory proposals — some passed, some pending, and others simply talked about — the congressional majority and the administration have injected tremendous uncertainty into economic decision making and business planning.”
“This is why banks are reluctant to lend and why American corporations are sitting on well over a trillion dollars,” the Chamber wrote. “It is why America’s small businesses and entrepreneurs, the engines of innovation and job creation, are starving for capital and are either struggling to survive or unable to expand.”
Amid all this, the president is reportedly mulling “emergency” infrastructure spending — another stimulus to throw tens of billions more in good taxpayer money after bad. (IBD)


Though the Democrats won’t call it a “stimulus” anymore. That word is persona non-grata. It’s now a “jobs bill” And how could you be against that?
But in reality, the Democrats are going into a siege mentality. The villagers are coming for them with pitchforks so they are shoring up their defenses.
It’s not like they can admit to being wrong. After all, they are the morally and intellectually superior Masters of all that they survey.

Eugene Robinson, Mega-Lefist: According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls (by Liberals no doubt) , the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an “electoral wave,” it’s a temper tantrum.
Maybe the american people just need a time out in the corner to think about how badly they have been treating their Intellectual Superiors.
But at this point, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. (IBD)


It’s just a bunch of ignorant peasants wanting to storm the gates of their castle, after all.
To hold the line against Republicans, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, issued an urgent plea for members in safe districts to help their endangered colleagues by contributing money. She called out to Democrats who were delinquent on paying their party dues and instructed members with no re-election worries to tap into a combined $218 million from their campaign accounts to help save their majority.
“We need to know your commitment,” Pelosi wrote to lawmakers last week in a private letter, demanding that they call her within 72 hours to explain how they plan to help.
She added, “The day after the election, we do not want to have any regrets.”
They are circling the wagons. The hostile natives are after them and they have fight them off.
They have the liberal media to use as their ammunition.
So expect an all out nuclear war.

The following headline appeared at Time.com shortly after the release of Friday’s jobs report:

What’s Good About Rising Unemployment

What should jump out at the eagle-eyed reader is that headline didn’t end with a question mark.
Time senior writer Stephen Gandel was actually making the case that the rising unemployment rate was good news.
He also argues a fallacy: What economists know very well, but most of the rest of us do not is that the unemployment rate never hits 0%. It never even gets close.
So why are you worried now?  It’s not like we can solve the problem, so just be patient, you’re an ignoramus for being so short-sighted.
Watch just how far a liberal media member is willing to go today to make economic data look favorable for the Party currently in power, and imagine the unlikelihood of such a thing happening if a Republican was in the White House.(Newbusters)

You mean like, the uptick in unemployment is good because more people are LOOKING for work instead of sitting on their asses waiting for their Mama Government to take care of them?

Orwell would be proud of you my sons.
Not that they will find them. That doesn’t really matter in the end. Just the perception.
The Hope.
And Change.

And it won’t stop there. Many Democrats are running as “moderates” and “against Washington” and all I have to say to that is, stay tuned to see if voters remember and apply this old adage come Election Day: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

So don’t be fooled.

And if the Republicans don’t get it, the same applies.

Period.

 

Cynthia Tucker (AJC): Our long, hot summer needed another ingredient to induce a fever-like madness in the national psyche: demographic change. Over the last year and a half, many Americans have begun to see a deeper message in President Obama’s inauguration — the end of the white majority. For some,  especially those who are middle-aged and older, it’s a jarring and unwelcome message.

Then she goes on to say she’s not calling you a racist…sort of.

While some prognosticators were naïve enough to believe that Obama’s election signaled the beginning of a post-racial era, it prompted something altogether different: a backlash against the browning of America. The winds of resentment would have blown in even if the economy were booming, but an anemic recovery provided the perfect fuel for a summer of discontent.
Timing is everything. Just as many Americans came to understand that the nation they knew was undergoing a dramatic demographic change, the economy collapsed. Unable to account for the disappearance of jobs and financial security, they linked those developments as cause and effect. The backlash is now at gale force.
So we’ve seen a summer of fury over illegal immigration, despite the fact that illegal border-crossings have plunged in the last two or three years, according to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center. Islamophobia spiked as conservatives made a case against a proposed Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero, claiming that it would represent a victory for jihadists. It didn’t seem to matter that the imam proposing the center has publicly denounced jihadists.
Just not terrorists, Iran, or Sharia Law. Nothing too big to fail.
So in the coming months as the Democrats turn up the spin to the point where the Earth should stop rotating because it, just keep it in mind this science fact:

If you raise the middle while trying to crush the top you squash the middle.

Uncle Sam becoming Santa Claus

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter. And those who matter don’t mind. ~Dr. Seuss

Government’s role in the economy has reached an unprecedented scale by at least one measure.
A record 30 cents of every dollar in personal income comes directly from government, Commerce Department data show.
And since government produces nothing and gets it money from you and me (the private sector) and there is now 47% of the people who don’t pay taxes at all and One in six Americans receives some form of government aid because of effects of the recession that started in 2007, a review of data indicates.
More than 50 million people are on Medicaid, a program principally designed to help the poor, and nearly 10 million Americans receive unemployment benefits, USA Today said Monday in a report based on data from state officials.
“Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,” said Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, a company that compiles data for the Kaiser Family Foundation.
More than 40 million people now receive food stamps, a jump of nearly 50 percent since the recession began, the report said. The unemployment rate in the United States remains above 9 percent.

You have more people dependent on less people for more money!

But don’t worry, this was the “Summer of Recovery” and everything is fine. It just needs more time , according to our Harvard Educated Academic Elites — aka the Obama boys and girls.
And they just need to explain it better and suddenly you’ll have an epiphany and see how wonderful they are!
Including transfer payments (income support and health insurance benefits) and compensation to public employees, government paid out $3.8 trillion of $12.5 trillion in total personal income in July on an annualized basis.
And remember their “urgent” August bailout of state workers for  $26 billion was supposed to be partially paid by cuts in Food Stamps in 2014 (when the Health Care Mandate is set to kick in).
So if they just explain better how their Wimpy “I’ll bailout you today for a payment in 4 years” economics work for you, you’ll suddenly fall madly in love with them and bask in their greatness.
That 30.3% share of personal income compares to 25.5% before the recession and 23.5% in 2000. The level topped 27% in the wake of the 1991 recession and hit a prior peak of 28% in 1975.
So government workers personal income has risen 7.5 % SINCE the recession started (and Congress was taken over by Democrats in 2007). And you’re on the hook for it. Doesn’t that make you happy?
The government’s record share reflects the dismal state of private wages and the ramping of federal transfer payments from a historically high base.
“The private economy has been put through the wringer and thus policymakers have been working hard to fill the hole,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Real private wages remain 8.4% below their December 2007 level and just 1.3% above their February bottom. That low was a level first reached in March 2001.
The weakness in private wages reflects deep layoffs and shorter workweeks due to the recession, and the “not terribly robust” prior economic expansion, said Josh Feinman, chief economist at Deutsche Asset Management in the Americas.
Meanwhile, government income payments are up 17% in real terms since the start of the recession. The real mover has been transfer payments, which accounted for a record 18.4% of personal income in July. That’s up by nearly half from 12.7% in 2000 and more than a quarter from 14.4% in 2007.
The growth is a combination of the inexorable rise of spending on Social Security and health care entitlement programs, as well as a spike in unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid due to weak labor markets and expanded benefits included in the Recovery Act.
Real personal income less government transfer payments remains 5.5% below its December 2007 peak, yet real disposable income is up 2.7% since the start of the recession. That’s due to increases in government income payments and lower tax payments.
Too Much To Get Out?
The government’s role in supporting the recovery is already raising questions about how the economy will fare as the crutches are removed.
“Given how significant its role has become, it does make it more difficult for the government to exit out in a graceful way,” Zandi said.
The stimulus has already begun to fade, with more than a million unemployed exhausting jobless benefits of up to 99 weeks.
Zandi says even further government stimulus would be prudent, given the current slowdown.
In addition to tax cuts and spending hikes, another option would be a government-led mortgage refinancing push to make low-rate loans available to those with insufficient equity in their homes to qualify.
“To have a meaningful recovery, the private sector has to step back up to the plate,” Feinman said.
In prior recoveries, policy stimulus and inventory building eventually allowed for a handoff to a healing private sector, he says.
That handoff “is just not happening” said Feinman. He expects “a long climb back.”
The one area of private compensation that is growing, nonsalary benefits, is not as helpful as wage growth, which puts cash in people’s pockets, Zandi notes.
Real nonsalary compensation (private and government) is up 4.1%, likely reflecting rising health care costs and perhaps some catchup pension contributions.
During the Great Depression, when fiscal stabilizers and safety nets were in their infancy, the government’s share of personal income peaked at just over 16%. Even in World War II, when the government payroll ballooned, its share only briefly neared 25%, falling back below 20% until the 1960s.
The share of personal income is an incomplete gauge of government’s economic role because it doesn’t include direct spending. A better, though imperfect, measure would be the combined federal, state and local government budgets as a share of gross domestic product.
By this score, government was far bigger during World War II, when the federal budget alone topped 43% of GDP. While state and local figures are out of date, total government spending probably will be around 40% of GDP this year. (IBD)


And Obama & Co’s solution, they want to spend more money and still raise taxes on 1/1/11.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
But that’s what happens when you’re in an ideological ditch and you can’t get out.

So bring out the talking points:
“In the month I took office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month,” the president said. “This morning, new figures show the economy produced 67,000 private sector jobs in August, the eighth consecutive month of private job growth.  Additionally, the numbers for July were revised upward to 107,000. Now that’s positive news, and it reflects the steps we’ve already taken to break the back of this recession.”
The net job loss for August is largely because of the layoffs of 114,000 Census temporary workers.
When May’s job numbers showed a net increase of 431,000 jobs – 411,000 of which were Census jobs — the president did note that “most of these jobs this month that we’re seeing in the statistics represent workers who’ve been hired to complete the 2010 census.” But in those June 4 remarks the president didn’t detail just how many of the 431,000 jobs were Census jobs – 95% of them — and he cited the overall report, and its deceptively large number as evidence that businesses are “starting to hire again. Workers who were laid off, they’re starting to get their jobs back. Companies that were almost forced to close their doors are making plans to expand and invest in new equipment.” (ABC)

So you can have you’re cake and eat it too! So Let them Eat Cake!
…and said he would “in the weeks ahead” be detailing “further steps to create jobs and keep the economy growing, including extending tax cuts for the middle class and investing in the areas of our economy where the potential for job growth is greatest.”
And judging from past performance that means more government jobs and more bailouts for states and unions.
Yeah, that’s the ticket…:(


Asked to what degree he regrets his administration’s decision to call this Recovery Summer, the president stammered then said, “I don’t regret the notion that we are moving forward, but because of the steps that we’ve taken.  And I’m going to have a press conference next week, where, after you guys are able to hear where we’re at, we’ll be able to answer some specific questions.” (ABC)

Oh god, he’s going to EXPLAIN IT AGAIN! Just in case you were too stupid to understand it every other time he’s said it!
If he just explains it repeatedly enough you’ll get it.


“This is what change looks like,” Obama said on signing into law the Health Care Cram down Bill.
So in November, we have to show HIM what change looks like then we have change ourselves too because they are the pimps, and we are the ho’s.  So we have to take them out of the drug dealing business and we have to stop using them.

It's all about Me!

Today is primary day in Arizona. But as a registered Independent I have become used to the way of things. I am not allowed to vote today because I am not a partisan of either main party.
I have no voice.
But our President has a voice. And boy does he love the sound of it.

From David Limbaugh’s new book Crimes Against Liberty: Who is Barack Obama? To say that he has an enormous ego is an understatement. Many commentators, including psychological analysts and foreign leaders, have described him as a narcissist.
Obama’s patent self-confidence is not just posturing. It’s evident he truly believes he is special. He did, after all, pen two largely autobiographical books before he had accomplished much of anything. He once told campaign aide Patrick Gaspard, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Obama’s belief that he is a gift to the world is a theme he would carry forward into his presidency. He truly believes he alone has the power to reverse the mess America has allegedly made of world affairs, and that only he can restore America’s supposedly tattered reputation.
Indeed, it often seems that for our president, American policy is not about the United States, but about him personally. At the Summit of the Americas, Obama sat through a 50-minute harangue against the United States by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who eviscerated the United States for a century of “terroristic” aggression in Central America. When it was Obama’s turn, he did not defend the United States, but made himself the issue: “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”
Obama’s numerous self-references soon became legendary. Obama referred to himself 114 times in his first State of the Union. By September 23, 2009, Obama had given forty-one speeches so far that year, referring to himself 1,198 times.  At his West Point speech in December, he referred to himself forty-four times. In a speech in Ohio in January, Obama referred to himself no fewer than 132 times and, in the same speech, had the audacity to proclaim, “This is not about me.”
That phrase, “This is not about me,” cropped up in many of Obama’s speeches, signaling that whatever “this” is, it’s precisely about him—his ego, his ideology, his agenda, his legacy, or his unbending ambition to have his way. The rhetorical device, “It’s not about me,” is a long established pattern in which he self-servingly pretends to project an air of humility to leave the impression that he is modest about accomplishing great things—thereby shamelessly seeking credit both for his modesty and his greatness.
Yet Obama continues to tell us—either as a brazen practitioner of Orwellian deception or as a poster child for political tone-deafness, “I won’t stop fighting for you.” If he were truly fighting for the people, he wouldn’t have mocked the tea partiers or closed his own counterfeit public forums on health care to all but union and other special interest supporters of ObamaCare.
Candidate Obama overtly cultivated a messianic image, from the grandiose pomp accompanying his campaign speech in Berlin to the Greek columns that adorned his acceptance speech at Chicago’s Invesco Field. His advisers fully bought into the façade, especially to the idea that Obama possessed a superior intellect—so far above the masses that it was difficult to convey his ideas in terms simple enough for the people to understand.
At a forum at the Kennedy School of Government, one participant suggested to Obama’s adviser and long-time confidant, Valerie Jarrett, that Obama’s ideas were so complex that the administration should consider writing simple booklets to explain them to ordinary people, just like the computer industry originally wrote DOS For Dummies. Jarrett said it was an excellent idea. “Everyone understood hope and change” because “they were simple . . . part of our challenge is to find a very simple way of communicating. . . . When I first got here people kept talking about ‘cloture’ and ‘reconciliation’ and ‘people don’t know what that’s talking about.’” Then it really got thick as Jarrett proclaimed, “There’s nobody more self-critical than President Obama. Part of the burden of being so bright is that he sees his error immediately.”
Obama didn’t exactly discourage this quasi-deification. In noting Obama’s “pathological self-regard,” former George W. Bush aide Pete Wehner reported that Obama surrounded himself by aides who referred to him as a “Black Jesus.” Wehner noted, “Obama didn’t appear to object.”
Surrounding himself with sycophants and egged on by an adoring media, Obama assumed the presidency with the arrogant ambition of transforming America. He believed he was The One—a visionary whose great deeds would be remembered generations from now. But while his charisma was a great asset on the campaign trail, as president he quickly found that his trademark oratory could not convince a skeptical nation of the wisdom of his extravagant plans.(Daily Caller)

“We were told we were getting a cool, calm, steady leader who could rise above emotional impulses to deliver classic statesmanship and prudent governance. But all too often we witness in him a petulant and vindictive bully who doesn’t seem to understand why anyone would challenge his omniscience,” Limbaugh writes.

Leftist Comedian Bill Maher in 2008: “New Rule: Republicans need to stop saying Barack Obama is an elitist, or looks down on rural people, and just admit you don’t like him because of something he can’t help, something that’s a result of the way he was born. Admit it, you’re not voting for him because he’s smarter than you. Barack Obama can’t help it if he’s a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you’re a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us. That’s why George Bush is president.”


One of the questions a lot of pundits are speculating on is whether Barack Obama will make the great pivot after 2010, the way Bill Clinton did after 1994. Remember, Clinton made a big pivot to the right. Privately, a number of Democratic pollsters and others tell me they fundamentally believe Barack Obama is ideologically incapable of such a pivot. Limbaugh’s book provides the first real evidence that this is true. After 2010, there will be no moderation or pivot right. Obama is wedded to the failed liberal policies of the past hundred years that again and again the American public has repudiated.
But Obama holds that repudiation in contempt. As Limbaugh writes, “Obama’s disingenuousness is not just a matter of stretching the truth once in a while or engaging in a little old-fashioned hyperbole. His outright, habitual lies are a fundamental aspect of his governance…Inside a few months, he showed himself to be deeply racial, aggressively partisan, grossly incompetent, often verbally awkward apart from his teleprompter, an inflexible liberal ideologue, secretive, dishonest, undemocratic, dogmatic and dictatorial, and intolerant and dismissive of his opposition.”
“Based on his behavior as president, it is clear he truly believes his own hype, for we have discovered that instead of messianic, Obama is acutely, perhaps clinically, narcissistic…. Unless stopped, and reversed, the casualties of Obama’s systematic assault on this nation will be our prosperity, our security, and ultimately, our liberty.”(Red State.com)

On Fox Last Night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSBnzFtN6tk&feature=player_embedded
But don’t worry, he’s on vacation, AGAIN.
“It’s really inspiring, this vision they have for the future,” The president said at an event for Sen. Patty Murray. “Gives you a little pep in your step when you hear it.” referring to his new slogan for the GOP, “No We Can’t”.
Now that’s not petulant and childish now is it folks!


The net result of Obama’s failed policies is that consumers are reluctant to spend, entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest, and employers are reluctant to hire to the degree necessary to spur economic growth.–Doug Schoen, Democrat Strategist

But there’s always spin from the Ministry of Truth, In this case, CBS:
“President Obama’s approval ratings are certainly lower than they have been in the past, but it is worth noting they’re higher than President Clinton’s approval ratings were in 1994 at the same time and even higher than President Reagan’s approval ratings were in 1982 at this same time. I think the Reagan and Obama situation are sort of good comparisons because Reagan also had inherited a very difficult economy,” Jennifer Palmieri, of the liberal thinktank Center for American Progress, told the “Early Show.”
“The president’s had a lot of legislative victories but the White House understands very clearly that you don’t get points with the American people for legislative victories. They want to see results. The uncomfortable truth the white house is wrestling with [is] a lot of these policies they’ve enacted take time for people to see results in their everyday lives … that’s just going to take some time.” 

Be patient. He’s genius takes a long to appreciate, if you’re smart enough that is.
Reach for that Hope!
Anyone got Sisyphus on speed dial?

The Ditch

Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its mid-year budget update, has projected that the 2010 budget deficit will be the second highest on record since the end of World War II, eclipsed only by the deficit of 2009.
The CBO says that the total 2010 deficit will reach $1.3 trillion, down slightly from 2009’s $1.4 trillion record. All told, CBO projects that the government will run up a total of $6.2 trillion in new deficits between 2011 and 2020.
Making it over $20 Trillion, double what it was in 2007 and 4 times what it was 20 years prior! a 400% rise in a generation!
But don’t worry it’s all George W Bush and The Republicans Fault! 

During his speech, the president likened Republicans to the “folks who drove the car into the ditch.”
“And so we decided, you know what, we’re going to do the responsible thing,” he said. “We put on our boots, we got into the mud, we got into the ditch. We pushed, we shoved, we’re sweating. They’re standing on the sidelines sipping a Slurpee, sort of watching us, saying, ‘Well, you’re not pushing hard enough,’ or ‘Your shoulder is not positioned the right way,’ giving us a whole bunch of advice on how to push — not lifting a finger to help.
“And finally we get this car up back on the road again, and finally we’re ready to move forward again,” Obama said. “And these guys turn around and say, ‘Give us the keys.’ Well, no, you can’t have the keys back — you don’t know how to drive.”–President Obama

So, children, you can’t hand the keys back to those morons. You have to trust me, I know what I’m doing.
And I’m so much smarter, and so much better than you!
Yeah, the car is back on the road alright, it has a whole in the gas tank, the fuel system is running rich, the steering wheel veers violently to the Left, the muffler has a hole in it and is dragging on the ground. The windows are broken, the transmission needs an overhaul,  and the tires are bald.
But it runs. And you should have more respect and reverence for your Elite Superiors, you ungrateful louts!
And it’s all George W Bush’s Fault after all!
Relative to the size of the economy, the 2010 deficit will reach 9.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, according to the CBO’s projection. The deficit in 2009 was 9.9 percent of GDP.
“As was the case last year, this year’s deficit is attributable in large part to a combination of weak revenues and elevated spending, associated with the economic downturn and the policies implemented in response to it,” the CBO explained.
The current economic downturn is expected to last for several more years, the non-partisan office said, predicting that unemployment will not fall to around a healthy 5 percent until at least 2014.
Oh goody, just in time for the Health Care Mandate and the other taxes to start kicking in!!!
Rejoice!!
After a year and half of “stimulus” and bailouts gone bad, what has the shift towards higher government spending and an encroaching nanny state cost you? This year, it has cost you 231 days out of your life, or 63 percent of 2010.
Every year, the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and its Center for Fiscal Accountability calculate the day on which the average American has paid off his burden of federal, state and local spending and regulations. This year that day falls on August 19, a full eight days later than last year’s date.
That was yesterday folks! Rejoice!
Federal spending, always the largest contributor to the Cost of Government Day, cost taxpayers 104 days this year. This is up from 90 days in 2008, when Cost of Government Day fell on July 16. This is to say that the ill-conceived spending policies of the past two years have cost taxpayers over a month of their lives, and show few signs of abating.
President Obama has proposed spending $3.8 trillion in 2011, a 40 percent increase from pre-bailout, pre-“stimulus” levels. (Daily Caller)
And they want to raise taxes in a recession…sorry “Summer of Recovery”.  Hope 2.0…Recovery from what? a Marxist drunken stupor?
Does it kind of remind you of Hollywood rehab, where they go and attend a rehab then come out and do it all over again and go back to rehab and then come and do it again, ad nauseum…?
But don’t worry, if you’re mad about it,remember  it’s all George W. Bush’s Fault you islamophobic,racist,insensitive, ignorant low country moron!
Listen to your Masters, the Insufferably Superior Left.
They are just better, smarter, more tolerant, and sensitive than you could ever be.
And that’s just the facts, ma’am.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medicare

First off, the Old Gray Lady, the Propaganda Mistress of Liberals, The New York Times: Here’s the bottom line: The recently passed health care reform bill is promising to have a positive effect on Medicare, assuming Republican opponents don’t succeed in killing the reform in court or otherwise undermining its main provisions. Social Security is holding up even in the face of a weak economy.
Would it be a surprise that they are lying.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It’s official: Social Security will reach its tipping point this year. For the first time in nearly 30 years, the system will pay out more benefits than it receives in payroll taxes both this year and next, the government officials who oversee Social Security said on Thursday.
This is “holding up”??
CNN: The controversial Affordable Care Act extends the life of the Medicare Trust Fund to 2029, from 2017.

The actuary of the Medicare Trustees memo attached to the report disagrees:

“(T)he financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range. . . or the long range. . . . I encourage readers to review the ‘illustrative alternative’ projections that are based on more sustainable assumptions for physician and other Medicare price updates.”
These remarkable words are found, in all places, in the “Statement of Actuarial Opinion” in the back of the 2010 annual Medicare Trustees’ Report.
The actuary’s alternative memo explains that “the projections in the report do not represent the ‘best estimate’ of actual future Medicare expenditures.” Worse than that, they are not even in the ballpark of reasonability. The official 2010 Trustees’ Report tells us that total Medicare expenses will be total 6.37% of GDP by 2080. The CMS actuary’s alternative memorandum explains that 10.70% of GDP is a more reasonable estimate for that year – though one that is roughly 68% higher.
If the 2010 report’s projections were arguably within the range of plausibility, perhaps the actuary could have agreed to sign off on them. But this was clearly prohibited by the magnitude of the deviations from reality. (For additional perspective, consider that the previous 2009 Trustees’ Report projected that program costs by 2080 would be 11.18% of GDP – more than 75% higher than this year’s projection.)
The actuary’s memo identifies two principal reasons why the official report’s projections are so far afield from reality.
One is that the official scoring presumes that payments to Medicare physicians will decline on December 1 by 23%, followed by a further 6.5 percent decline in January, 2011, and another 2.9 percent decrease in 2012. The Obama administration and the Congressional leadership are on record as opposing these enormous payment reductions, and no one seriously expects them to happen. The Medicare actuary’s memo refers to this physician payment formula as “clearly unworkable and almost certain to be overridden by Congress.”
The other major source of projection error is the assumption, enshrined in the recent health care law, that future program cost growth will be contained by downward adjustments in annual price updates, reflecting in turn the assumption that health service productivity growth will parallel “economy-wide productivity.” The actuary states, however, that “(t)he best available evidence is that most health care providers cannot improve their productivity to this degree – or even approach this level – as a result of the labor-intensive nature of these services.”
The actuary’s memo provides greater detail on the point. The memo notes the long-acknowledged phenomenon that productivity growth in services industries is generally not as rapid as in industries affected more by technology improvements. It is possible, for example, for productivity in personal computer manufacturing to improve several-fold in a short time. It is not similarly possible for productivity in nursing services to mushroom in the same way. The actuary’s memo rightly notes the generally slower pace of productivity growth in the health care field, which has been slowest of all in such labor-intensive venues as skilled nursing facilities and home health services.
As a result, the memo finds, it “very unlikely” that Medicare productivity growth can mirror productivity growth in the larger economy. The chief consequence of the legislated productivity adjustments, therefore, would be to render 15 percent of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies unprofitable by 2019 — up to 25 percent in 2030 and 40 percent by 2050.
The actuary concludes that “neither of these update reductions is sustainable in the long range, and Congress is very likely to legislatively override or otherwise modify the reductions in the future to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries continue to have access to health care services.”
This is a key point; the glowingly optimistic projections in the official Trustees’ Report assume that we as a nation will be content to have 40% of our medical facilities go under within the next 40 years, and that we will happily accept these severe constraints upon beneficiaries’ access to health care. If that is not in fact the societal will after the enactment of health care reform, then the official cost estimates should be tossed into the nearest receptacle.
Bad though all of this is, none of it is actually the worst gimmick in the official report’s advertised improvement in Medicare solvency. That involves the double-counting of Medicare savings. Earlier this year, Congress passed a health care bill containing various new Medicare taxes and constraints on program expenditures. Such savings are assumed in the official report to extend the solvency of Medicare. But Congress chose instead to spend the savings on a new health care entitlement.
The Medicare actuary wrote a memorandum on April 22 of this year calling attention to this “double-counting.” “In practice,” he stated, “the improved Part A financing cannot simultaneously be used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions under the PPACA) and to extend the trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.”
In other words, money can only be used once. Since the Medicare savings is being spent elsewhere on expanded health care coverage, it is not really being employed to extend Medicare solvency. To claim an improvement in Medicare financing is to mislead about the effects of recent legislation.
All that can be responsibly done is for those associated with the Trustees’ Report is to note the limited utility of the “official projections” and to simultaneously provide their best projections for actual reality. The rest of us, for our part, must take appropriate note of the alternative findings of the scorekeepers. This was an ethic too-little observed during the health care debate, when health care reform’s proponents continued to cite CBO’s purported sign-off on the fiscal gains of health care reform — despite the repeated caveats issued by CBO refuting the validity of such claims.
Treasury Secretary Geithner’s statement on the occasion of the report’s release mischaracterized it as follows:
“The Affordable Care Act has dramatically improved projected Medicare finances. Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is now expected to remain solvent until 2029, 12 years longer than was projected last year, which is a record increase from one report to the next. In addition, the 75-year financial shortfall for HI has been reduced to 0.66 percent of taxable payroll from 3.88 percent of taxable payroll in last year’s report, and the projected costs for the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) program over the next 75 years, expressed as a share of GDP, are down 23 percent relative to the projections in the 2009 report Nearly all of these improvements in projected Medicare finances are due to the Affordable Care Act President Obama signed into law in March.”
Perhaps it is too much to expect the Secretary’s statement to acknowledge the double-counting at the root of this purported solvency extension, or to delve into the full extent to which the Medicare actuary has explained the inapplicability of these particular numbers. But as the Managing Trustee of the Trust Funds, the Secretary bears a duty to represent program finances as accurately as possible, which this statement fails to do.
The implausible projections in the official Trustees’ report will need to be revised downward almost immediately, after the next extension of Medicare physician payments expected later this year. By next year’s report, this year’s official projections may well look silly. It is unfortunate that the Treasury Department statement grotesquely spins the analysis in the Trustees’ report, especially given the clarifying corrections that the CMS actuary has already publicized.
The final page of the Trustees’ report states that “The Board of Trustees will convene an independent panel of expert actuaries and economists to consider these issues further and to make recommendations to the Board regarding the most appropriate long-range growth assumptions for Medicare projections.” Clearly, to be credible, this panel should be assembled with the active guidance of the Medicare actuary’s office, to avoid any appearance that the panel has been convened to over-ride rather than support the non-partisan analytical work of the Medicare actuary. The last thing needed is for the long-respected Trustees’ process to be tainted by its own version of the Gruber episode. (It was revealed that last June the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had awarded a no-bid contract worth nearly $300,000 to MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, the Administration’s star witness for the superior cost-containment features of health care reform.  Obama Administration officials, and most of the journalists celebrating Gruber’s findings, had neglected to mention this detail when trumpeting his supposedly independent confirmation of the Administration’s policy arguments).
There is, regrettably, a striking contrast between the Treasury Department’s statement on the Medicare Trustees’ Report, and the Medicare Actuary’s own repudiation of it. In time, the Treasury Secretary may very well come to regret his statement even as the Medicare Actuary comes to take pride in his own principled stand. (e21)

Gee, I wonder who’s telling the Truth?  The Liberals or the Actuary of Medicare?
Gee, I don’t know…