Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Good news: 83% of Obamacare Grants Awarded to Local Health Centers In States That Supported Obama in 2008

Earlier today, the Department of Heath and Human Services announced it was writing $29 million in checks to "expand access to health care". These Obamacare funds would support "community health center programs across the country", though it would appear Blue states did decidedly better than Red States. Of the $29 million HHS awarded, $24 million of it went to 2008's Blue States.

But I'm sure that's just coincidental. I'm certain that Kathleen Sebelius and her fine cadre of bureaucrats would never, ever permit political bias to impact their decision-making processes.

Except it turns out that more than 83% of the funds went to Blue states.

You may recall that it appears that Nancy Pelosi abused the Obamacare waiver system to reward her restaurateur friends in San Francisco.

Obamacare has nothing at all to do with health care. It's about control. Punishing enemies and rewarding friends. It's about a Soviet-style form of government that has as its core the destruction of the Constitution and of our individual liberties. Removing the options you have for medical treatment and replacing them with a one-size-fits-all, centralized health care regime is a huge step in the direction of totalitarianism.


Translating Today's Fed Statement: Recovery impossible until President Subprime McDowngrade is voted out of office

I'm paraphrasing, but only just:

To promote the ongoing economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent. The Committee currently anticipates that economic conditions--including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run--are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013.

Now, what major economic changes would have taken place by "mid-2013" to allow for higher growth rates?

With any luck, a new President will have assumed office in January. He or she will have have begun unwinding the huge regulatory bureaucracies (the EPA and the NLRB foremost among them) that have destroyed businesses large and small; rescinding the ability for federal employees to unionize; defunding HHS to begin the eradication of Obamacare; begun implementing sensible spending policies like Cut, Cap & Balance; etc.

In other words, the new President will take his job seriously, unlike our current demagogue-in-chief who seems to do little more than fundraise, read from a teleprompter, party and golf.

Does Obama's schedule -- at right -- strike you as that of a man with a care in the world, apart from getting reelected?



Monday, August 08, 2011

Exclusive Photo: Actual Cause of S&P Downgrade and Market Meltdown Discovered

Thanks to David Axelrod, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and President Obama, we now know the true cause of the U.S. debt crisis, S&P's downgrade, and the resulting economic turmoil.

It was not a Democrat refusal to address entitlement reform. Not a failure of the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama to proffer a budget for more than 800 days. Not a "one-time, emergency Stimulus", the most aggressive spending increase in world history, that is now built into the baseline budget. Not a refusal to acknowledge the repeated failure of Keynesian economics. Not passing the most expensive entitlement program ever -- Obamacare -- which passed in the dark of night so Americans could "find out what's in it". Not a massive, command-and-control takeover of the financial industry -- Dodd-Frank -- with a bill so immense and complex that even today no one can predict exactly what it will do to banks and insurers. Not scores of bureaucrats in the EPA and the NLRB, who are shuttering businesses large and small.

No, none of those things were responsible for the debt crisis and downgrade. This was:

So now you know.



When Obama rated himself a "good, solid B+", who knew he meant America's credit rating?

A month ago, Standard & Poor's noted that passage of the Cut, Cap & Balance plan would avert a downgrade to America's debt. Curiously, in his speech this afternoon, President Obama failed to mention that trivial little detail, instead pinning the blame for America's ongoing economic malaise on everyone and everything but his own failed policies.

Losses on Wall Street were, er, 'historic' "...the equity market was a horror show across the board. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 634.76 points, or 5.6%, to put it below 11,000 at 10,809.85... [Since] April 29, the Dow has surrendered more than 15%. In terms of points, the session was the sixth-worst in the index's history..."

Casey Anthony could run against Obama and win at this point: "Registered voters by a significant margin now say they are more likely to vote for the 'Republican Party's candidate for president' than for President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, 47% to 39%."

With the government actively sabotaging businesses through excessive and oppressive regulations, this comes as quite the surprise: "Small and medium-sized companies are increasingly glum about the chances of a pickup in growth in the U.S. economy over the next year... The percentage of chief executives of small companies who expect the economy to improve over the next 12 months dropped sharply to 31 percent from 50 percent last quarter..."

But perhaps the president can successfully pin all of this bad news on tsunamis, Martin Van Buren and Carmen Electra.



Geithner: S&P Acted Stupidly

I'm paraphrasing, of course, though just barely.

The credit rating agency Standard & Poor's showed "terrible judgment" in lowering the U.S. government's credit rating, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday... "They've handled themselves very poorly. And they've shown a stunning lack of knowledge about the basic U.S. fiscal budget math," Geithner said in his first public comments about the credit rating decision.

...Late Friday, S&P announced it was lowering its rating for U.S. debt one notch from AAA to AA+... The other two major credit rating agencies, Moody's Investor service and Fitch Ratings, have not lowered their AAA ratings, although they have warned of a possible downgrade if more is not done to deal with soaring federal deficits.

...S&P had been warning for months of a possible downgrade and said that a credible plan would need to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction. The plan that Congress passed last week seeks to achieve between $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion in deficit cuts.

...He said he had "absolutely no concern" that China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, would stop buying that debt...

While it is true that China has limited options for diversifying its investments, the alarm claxons truly are sounding as the PRC's leadership prepares for a new sheriff in the global economy.

"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone..." -- China's state-owned Xinhua News Agency... Beijing may well increase its reserves held in Yen, as well as in gold. And it will no doubt continue to increase its investment in hard assets...

As for our beloved Commander-in-Chief, who hasn't been heard from for the last 48 hours or so?

President Obama is slated to speak to the country about the ongoing crisis at 1pm Eastern Time today. Expect to hear the blame for the sovereign debt crisis apportioned to S&P, the Tea Party, corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers, oil companies, health insurers, millionaires and billionaires, and the rest of the usual suspects. Though not necessarily in that exact order.

As Steven Hayward observes, "You know who should watch Obama's statement today closely? Standard & Poor's legal team."



Sunday, August 07, 2011

Neither rain, nor snow, nor market declines, nor downgrades, nor chopper crashes shall keep President Obama from his appointed tee time

Good thing there are no pressing matters of state to which the president must attend today.

On Friday the United States lost its coveted AAA credit rating [as] Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s rating for the first time since the U.S. won the top ranking in 1917. 18 countries now have a better credit rating than the US.

So where is Barack Obama?

The president has yet to make a statement on the historic downgrade. [But he did go] to Camp David... Dallas Blog reported:

>Obama, a Democrat, enjoys spending time on the golf course on Andrews Air Force Base, which is nearby Camp David. Regardless of circumstances, Obama loves to play golf. The U.S. stock exchanges are plunging and the S&P has just downgraded the credit rating of United States federal government debt. So, how does the President respond to recent developments of the Obama Depression? He plays golf.

Next up: another vacation, this time to Martha's Vineyard -- which, by my count, will be his family's fifth this year.


Hat tip: Trending Right.

Blame the Messenger [Rich]

Rich:

The Obama administration wants to "pivot" to jobs. A bit late, I would say. They wasted a year pushing health care reform. That passed with zero Republican votes in the House and Senate, and about the same number of Republican ideas. When the Democrats controlled both branches of Congress and the White House, they shoved their approach down the throats of Republican in Congress, and an American public that opposed then and still opposes the legislation by a 3-to-2 margin. There was not a lot of concern about a "balanced approach" to health care reform. That is why tort reform was absent, why HSAs were AWOL, and pro-competitive approaches received the death panel.

An article today confirms that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel favored a much more modest, less costly approach than Obamacare -- one that assisted those who were uninsurable to get coverage. But Obama wanted something big, and he got it- a big and unwieldy approach that will raise health care spending by hundreds of billions a year, at a time when existing spending on government care programs -- on Medicare and Medicaid -- is threatening the fiscal future of both the federal government and many states.

Close to two-thirds of the financing for the new health care entitlement spending comes from new taxes on the wealthy (if you consider making $200,000 a year wealthy). The Democrats never mention the new taxes in Obamacare, since they do not fit neatly with their "storyline" of the need for a balanced approach and shared sacrifice. Taxes already on the book don't count; only new taxes represent the balance that is needed.

The Democrats had their spokespeople on the Sunday TV news programs today to respond to S&P's downgrade of U.S sovereign debt... and to provide the talking points we can now repeat from memory: we need a balanced approach to deficit reduction; that means revenues from taxing the ill-gotten gains of millionaires and billionaires, oil companies, yacht- and jet-owners, and hedge fund managers. And by the way, they noted, S&P was a major contributor to the subprime collapse, plus they made a two-trillion dollar error, so they have no credibility.

We now need to spend hundreds of billions more on jobs and to raise taxes. The New York Times had its short list of suggested tax increases in an editorial today: raise income tax rates for everybody; raise capital gains rates; add a value added tax (VAT); a new carbon tax; higher gasoline taxes; and eliminate all the tax loopholes for corporations and wealthy individuals.

Perhaps the administration thinks it can foment anger at S&P and marshal flash mobs (or their allied union goons, once they are done intimidating people in Wisconsin) to come to New York State and threaten S&P executives in their homes. These S&P rating analysts are like Tea Party leaders in the fevered minds of the Left: they are terrorists and financial jihadists; they threaten the reelection of the President; and they are tearing down the progressive dream to remake America into a European social welfare state, at exactly the time the European nations are coming to realize they have over-promised, and can no longer afford that vision.

In my health care career, I made many presentations to rating agencies to get hospital bonds rated, and answer questions about financial feasibility studies my firm prepared. The analysts were serious and, most of the time, I thought they got it right. Sending out political hacks to insult S&P this weekend is a sign of desperation by the administration. You don't win the future (to use another oft-repeated talking point) with a downgrade of your debt.

The Bush administration did a miserable job with the nation's finances, running up over $4 trillion in new debt in 8 years. Obama will blow past that number in less than three years. The Left can not talk about Medicare, and Medicaid and Social Security. They must be off the table, or they will lose their ability to demagogue Paul Ryan and the Republicans. They will no longer be able to scare seniors, deliberately ignoring the fact that Ryan's plan would not impact anyone over age 55.

The Wisconsin Congressman had the guts to offer a serious multi-decade plan to get spending in line with historic revenues on a glide-path approach, without sudden, sharp hits to anyone. This required addressing big entitlements, including the newest one: Obamacare. Its spending pace guarantees future financial collapse.

We can not be Germany or France as far as social spending, when our current health care costs are twice as a share of GDP of other countries, even with gaps in coverage. The big health care problem is cost, not access. The best estimate was that three million of the uninsured were uninsurable. Obamacare provides subsidies for more than ten times that population, creating a vast new middle class entitlement. Since the Democrats won't consider serious entitlement reform, we will spend our way to oblivion, and the average standard of living will be reduced sharply at specific future points when buyers of our federal debt decide to pass on new bonds, or demand much higher rates.

We will get the kind of standard of living reductions now being enforced in Greece, Iceland, Ireland, and Italy. For the record, I think the private economy is where the engine of job creation exists. Government jobs are costly and make-work jobs are temporary. Ask Rahm Emanuel about the efficiency of unionized government workers, now that he has inherited the waste of the city's financial future delivered to him by Mayor Daley, who basically caved to union demands on wages, pensions and health care benefits.

For the record, I would eliminate pretty much all the noise in the tax code, all the deductions and special interest approaches to incentives for real estate or other industries (green jobs and alternative energy, oil and gas companies, hedge funds), in exchange for a simpler tax code with lower rates that are permanent, for both individual and businesses, and provide real incentives for work, investment, and economic growth, the best approach to creating jobs.

A government that serves K Street is a tool of crony capitalism, serving only the few. Piling on hundreds of thousands of pages of new regulations, issued by unaccountable agencies , such as the EPA, will make Al Gore and Barbara Boxer happy, but also crush job growth. We can send hundreds of billions to the oil cartel each year, or extract our own resources, in shale oil and gas, thereby creating thousands of new private sector jobs in the process.

The Left trusts government to rearrange the wealth and income of society, believing private industry greedy and unfair. The Left went apoplectic last week because the debt deal cut future spending by $2 trillion. But it did not cut spending. It cut $2 trillion from a schedule of $13 trillion in new spending, and $50 trillion in total spending. That is what a "cut" in government spending means.

One angry Pennsylvania Congressman, Mike Doyle, blurted out that "the other side won't let us spend any money". I guess $3.7 trillion in one year does not count as spending any money. Has a more ignorant comment ever been made by a member of Congress? One out of every four dollars in GDP is now federal spending, up from one in five just three short years back. And then there is spending by cities, counties and states, another 15% of GDP. But the Left says we need more spending- extending unemployment insurance and more shovel-ready projects (you know the ones that never got created when money from the stimulus was shoveled to the states to allow them to keep the unions happy and defer the day of reckoning for the spendthrifts).

The Left says to trust big government to get us out of the hole they dug. If you were in S&P's shoes, wouldn't you downgrade this mess?


Reid Lied, Our Rating Died

The leader of the Democrat-controlled Senate is a handsome and charismatic man named Harry Reid.

Reid is a true patriot, who fights tooth-and-nail for higher taxes, to confiscate ever more wealth from the private sector, to exfiltrate more money from the wallets of Americans who can't or won't use the money as effectively as the enormous and critically important federal bureaucracies can.

Further, Reid asserts -- using his typical eloquence and spell-binding, off-the-cuff speaking style (no pre-approved talking points for Harry, mind you) -- that S&P downgraded the United States because Democrats' calls for higher taxes were ignored.

"The action by S&P reaffirms the need for a balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines spending cuts with revenue-raising measures like closing taxpayer-funded giveaways to billionaires, oil companies and corporate jet owners. This makes the work of the joint committee all the more important, and shows why leaders should appoint members who will approach the committee’s work with an open mind – instead of hardliners who have already ruled out the balanced approach that the markets and rating agencies like S&P are demanding."

Uhm, not really, Har. Standard & Poor's has been very clear that it favors huge spending cuts over any tax hikes. Reason being that tax hikes further strangle the private sector and helps to keep unemployment high.

The decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating to “AA+” at once laments the possibility that cuts to entitlement programs will not materialize and the decreasing likelihood of new tax revenues. But it appears to give more weight to the need for more spending cuts, as it warns that a further credit rating downgrade is in the cards if the U.S. does not trim spending.

Pity that our beloved Democrat leadership never studied basic economic theory, mathematics, logic, or American history.


Saturday, August 06, 2011

A Most Worthy Rant

Patrick Richardson, writing at The Tatler, throws down:

We saw this coming. Both rating agencies have been warning us for months this downgrade was coming. So what did the idiots on the left do? Nothing. Not one damn thing.

Well, that’s not quite true. They, their willing accomplices in the MSM, and dupes and useful idiots within the Republican party, (you listening tan-boy John Boehner? Mitch McConnell? Yeah you, I called you idiots, wanna make something of it?) railed about how we couldn’t “fix the deficit on the backs of the most vulnerable among us.” You demonized the only adults in Washington D.C. who were among the Tea Party. You made certain we would end up here.

How hard could it have actually been? The ratings agencies TOLD you what you needed to do — rein in spending – it wasn’t bloody rocket science. Hell anyone who ever balanced a CHECKBOOK could have told you what you needed to do.

But you played politics. You acted like Scarlet O’Hara and just refused to think about anything unpleasant. Well, Barry, I hate to tell you this, but there’s no kindness of strangers here to rely on. This is cold, hard reality. Until YOU, sir, the U.S. credit rating has always been stable or improving. YOU, sir, own this. You and your lickspittle accomplices in Congress and the media have brought us to this point.

Do not think the American people will forget. Do not think we will forgive. This country is angry sir, and nation after nation has discovered there is nothing on Earth more dangerous than a pissed-off American.

This country is on the edge of something very ugly, sir, and you personally have brought us here.

My fellow Americans, this election is our last and only chance to turn this thing around. To call the politicians on both sides of the aisle who have brought us to this point “cretins” is to insult cretins. Get behind the adults in the room. The Tea Partiers. The ones who say “however much it hurts, we have to rein in spending, we must rip off the bandaid or there will be no healing.” Get behind those people.

Before the whole mess comes down in blood and fire.

Uhm, I guess I just copied the whole thing. Hopefully, Roger 'The Executioner' Simon doesn't send his legendary hordes of trademark lawyers after me.

But Richardson is absolutely right. The conservatives -- the Tea Party and others who believe in the Constitution -- railed against the faux "debt ceiling deal" and the idiotic negotiation strategies of Messrs. Boehner and McConnell.

A few of us warned the RINOs repeatedly that failure to enact real cuts would still result in a devastating downgrade.

If we are to save this country, 2012 not only marks the year in which the Democrat Party is politically obliterated -- it also is the year that we throw the feckless, old guard Republicans out of their leadership positions and back into the dugout where they belong.


Hat tip: D&S.

Roundup of Reactions to the Downgrade of the World's Largest Debtor Nation

Mark Steyn envisions Thunderdome in the not-too-distant future.

"Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over 10 years" is Washington-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over 10 years. And, as Washington had originally planned to increase it by $8 trillion, that counts as a cut. If they'd planned to increase it by $20 trillion and then settled for merely $15 trillion, they could have saved five trillion...

...And, if none of these parties seems inclined to pay down the debt now, what are the chances they'll feel like doing so by 2020 when, under these historic "cuts," it's up to $23 trillion-$25 trillion?

...Last week, the firm of Macroeconomic Advisors, one of the Obama administration's favorite economic analysts, predicted that interest rates on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes would be just shy of 9% by 2021. If that number is right, there are two possibilities: The Chinese will be able to quintuple the size of their armed forces and stick us with the tab. Or we'll be living in a Mad Max theme park. I'd bet on the latter myself.

Walter Russell Mead takes an historical view:

China, Europe, America, Japan: each of in its own way is moving toward comprehensive bankruptcy: financial, spiritual, social. Recent tremors in world financial markets are a warning from the invisible hand that we are skirting dangerously close to that final frontier, but we will miss the point if we do nothing more than put our financial affairs in slightly better order.

The blunt and truthful Michele Bachmann piles on:

This president has destroyed the credit rating of the United States through his failed economic policies and his inability to control government spending by raising the debt ceiling. President Obama is destroying the foundations of the U.S. economy one beam at a time.

As reported by China's state news Xinhua, even the Communists want to take control of Ben Bernanke's printing press:

China, the largest creditor of the world's sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets. The US government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone.

International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country.

And Tyler Durden teases a reaction out of the federal commissars:

Presenting the joint statement by The Fed, the FDIC, NCUA, OCC. In essence: the Fed tells S&P to go fornicate itself...

Earlier today, Standard & Poor’s rating agency lowered the long-term rating of the U.S. government and federal agencies from AAA to AA+. With regard to this action, the federal banking agencies are providing the following guidance to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and bank and savings and loan holding companies (collectively, banking organizations)


For risk-based capital purposes, the risk weights for Treasury securities and other securities issued or guaranteed by the U.S. government, government agencies, and government-sponsored entities will not change. The treatment of Treasury securities and other securities issued or guaranteed by the U.S. government, government agencies, and government-sponsored entities under other federal banking agency regulations, including, for example, the Federal Reserve Board’s Regulation W, will also be unaffected.

Have I mentioned before that President Obama is 'historic'?




Friday, August 05, 2011

He's Historic, Alright: Standard & Poor's Downgrades US Debt to AA+

Papa B told me that he had gone liquid a few days ago, anticipating some sort of reaction by the rating agencies after the pathetic debt ceiling "deal". I assume he meant his investments and not some geriatric G.I. condition. And it looks like he was prescient, because rating agency S&P just downgraded U.S. debt to AA+ for the first time in history.

Nice work, RINO dumbasses: "S&P issues unprecedented downgrade of US credit rating, saying debt package falls short"

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s says it has downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings.

The credit rating agency says that it is cutting the country’s top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said late Friday that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation.

As I predicted more than a week ago, the pathetic RINO leadership negotiated against themselves and ended up proferring a deal that helped get the U.S. its first ever downgrade:

Boehner had two nuclear weapons at his disposal. And he chose to use neither. He had the debt ceiling and a threat of a downgrade by the rating agencies.

Cut, Cap & Balance addressed both issues.

If Republicans had united behind CCB, they could have forced a vote in the Senate -- by putting massive pressure on the 20 Democrats who had earlier pledged to support a Balanced Budget Amendment -- and send it to the President's desk.

Boehner could then tell the American people: there's only one plan that addresses the deficit and prevents a downgrade.

And let Obama deal with the fallout of a veto -- if he has the guts.

Instead, we submit a plan that still results in downgrade and default.

Idiocy. Sheer, unmitigated idiocy.

What a bunch of nimrods. Obama and his sycophants are busy destroying the full faith and credit of the American currency... and the RINOs won't even put up a fight.

We need a lot more conservative cavalry for 2012.


Update: Outlook: Negative

Update II: Flashback to Turbo Timmy's prediction:


Update III: I guess that "Tea Party as hostage-takers" meme -- for trying to cut government spending -- was an epic fail.


Unemployment drops 0.1% thanks to uptick in Stripping-copper-from-abandoned-buildings and Prostitution sectors

Earlier today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the long-anticipated jobs report for July. On the surface, the news was good: the official unemployment number (U-3) dropped from 9.2% to 9.1%. But a closer inspection revealed the cockroaches that infest the ongoing Obama depression:

• U-3 went "down" because a record number of workers were statistically removed from the workforce

• The employment-to-population ratio hit 58.1%, the lowest since 1983

• 44% of unemployed Americans, or 6.2 million people, have been seeking work for more than six months

• The actual number of employed persons (by Household Survey) declined by 156,000

• Those dropping out of the labor force rose by 374,000

• Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force for the past two years, the official U-3 unemployment rate would be well over 11%

• While the "official" unemployment rate is an unacceptable 9.1%, the true U-6 unemployment rate is much higher at 16.1%

Tyler Durden observes:

[The] average length of unemployment ... just hit a new all time high of 40.4 weeks in July, up from the previous record of 39.9 in June. Someone should tell the average American who is rapidly approaching one year in average unemployment that the stock market soared on good payroll news. They will be delighted.

There was one real bright spot in hiring: government employment decreased by 37,000.


Thursday, August 04, 2011

'Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover, again'

Have I mentioned that he's historic?

The National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee has collected data on every American recession since the 1850s... [And] since 1854 there have been twelve recessions (out of 33 total) that lasted at least as long as our "Great" one.

Which means that there was ample historical opportunity for a president to preside over a terrible economy, and there are many possible candidates for the worst presidential economic record in modern American history.

...It is perhaps no surprise that Herbert Hoover's job-creation record is the worst, since his first two and a half years encompassed the dawn of the Great Depression. But it is surprising, given how terrible recessions were before World War I, that Barack Obama is solidly entrenched in second place. During his first two and a half years, employment has dropped about half a percentage point. Other than Hoover and Obama, no modern American leader has presided over negative job growth for a comparable period.

Obama's supporters might suggest that the jobs picture would have been far worse without the president's big-government, high-regulation policies. But past presidents were far less ambitious in hard times, and saw far better results. To put that in perspective, consider that government spending has increased relative to GDP by 3.1 percentage points under President Obama. In 1900, total federal spending was 3.1 percent relative to GDP.

Our great-grandparents may have seen worse recessions than we have, but they did not see a worse president.

President Obama's regulatory bureaucracies are now costing the economy $1.75 trillion a year -- or double the amount of all individual taxes the federal government collects.

And, good news, pilgrims: the White House added 608 new regulations in July alone!

But look on the bright side: Obama could have banned automobiles and private doctors altogether!


Reaction o' the Day

Spotted at The Right Scoop's Twitpic feed.





Still Life From Yet Another Recovery Summer

President Obama no longer blames his predecessor for the continued economic malaise; he now assigns responsibility for the ongoing depression to the Japanese Tsunami, the European debt crisis, and global warming climate change.

Remember this quote from more than a year ago? "I will not rest until every American who is able and ready and willing to work can find a job -- and a job that pays a decent wage, and a job that has decent benefits, and is able to support a family... but we're heading in the right direction... we're headed in the right direction... and we can't go backwards, we must go forward."

Yes, forward... right off the cliff.

Of course, given the 608 new regulations issued by the Obama administration in July alone, I'm pretty sure the president has been kidding all along.


Wednesday, August 03, 2011

The Obama depression continues apace: food-stamp use soars... again

It's almost as if our beloved president wants to increase government dependency...

...the just announced jump in foodstamp usage of over 1.1 million is entirely out of the blue, and as the chart below shows, is the highest single monthly jump in Foodstamp participation since mid 2009, when eligibility requirements were adjusted. Yes, that's 45.8 million people (obviously an all time record) living on foodstamps which amount to the whopping $133.80 per person (an increase of $0.54 M/M) and $283.65 (an increase of $1.29) per household...

But wait, there's more. Digging into the numbers reveals something pecuiliar: virtually the entire surge in monthly SNAP participation is due to one state alone: Alabama, which saw those living on foodstamps jump from 868K to 1.762MM. That's 36% of Alabama's population. Is this merely a grand rehearsal for the Jefferson County bankruptcy? Did the state see a mass surge in foodstamp use as hundreds of thousands are trying to game the system in advance of what will be an apic Chapter 9? And if yes, what does that mean for all the other states which will promptly follow in the footsteps of Jefferson County, and for US foodstamp participation?

Which begs the question: will Obama be the first president under whose rule total foodstamp usage hit 100 million? Surely, by then there will be a Nobel price for destroying one's middle class better and faster than any communist in the history of the world, so at least there will be something to memorialize it with.

Hey, everyone says he's "historic", and this is just another data-point.


Great news: all out civil war breaking out on our unprotected southern border between Mexican military and drug cartels

Stratfor Research reports that a gunbattle broke out yesterday in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The combatants were the Mexican military and members of the powerful Los Zetas cartel.

Nuevo Laredo is right across the border from Laredo Texas.

You know what I would do if I was Eric Holder?

I'd implement a 3-step plan:

prosecute American citizens interested in protecting their states from drug- and human-smuggling crime cartels...

arm Mexican drug gangs with heavy weapons...

• and try to touch off a refugee crisis that would send thousands of 'undocumented Democrats' into southern states to help influence the 2012 election cycle

Do I have that about right?


Chart o' the Day: The Debt Ceiling Deal Crap Sandwich

The federal government must now borrow about $125 million an hour -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- to fund its out-of-control spending. And the vaunted "debt ceiling deal", despite Democrat claims that it "slashed" discretionary spending, actually cut only $7 billion from the bloated, cellulite-ridden federal bureaucracy.

How much is $7 billion in the grand scheme of things?

The green segment represents the $2,627 billion in anticipated federal revenue for 2012. The red represents the amount of money the government spends that must be borrowed from suckers investors. And the blue depicts the amount of the vast, slashing cuts to discretionary spending.

What's that? You say you can't see the blue? Let's zoom in:

Hmmm. Still can't see the blue too well. Let's magnify the pie by 100.

The EPA is unleashing reams of regulation, killing jobs in mining, trucking, energy production, and farming. The NLRB is busy suing businesses to prevent them from opening factories in right-to-work states. Eric Holder is busy suing states that are trying to protect citizens from a veritable invasion of illegal aliens. And the failed "Stimulus" program is still built into the baseline budget, funding $315 stainless steel trashcans for bureaucrats.

But there's nothing to cut!

Because John Boehner's peerless strategery saved America from default. Or not.


Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Cash Furnace: How the Obama Democrats Stole Your Money

When the final obituary of Obama's failed "stimulus" program is written, stories like this one will be among the least offensive.

Three stainless-steel trash cans with motion-activated sensor lids: $314.93 each. A 500-lb capacity ottoman for the cafeteria: $469. Mahogany-finished conference room table: $3,000. The line items sound extravagant enough on their own. When you learn that they were to makeover a Detroit city office that handles the federal money for feeding and clothing the poor, and the credenzas and sofas and such came out of that money, it's time to get livid.

The Detroit Free Press blew the lid off this misspending and waste after it used a Freedom of Information Act request to get a copy of the receipt for the pricey office furniture that was delivered to Detroit's Human Services Department. You can look at the entire receipt here (PDF).

The $210,000 used to buy the office furniture came directly a $1.2 million grant that was specifically supposed to cover the salaries and administrative costs of hiring employees for food and clothing banks... this same Human Services Department, saying they were short on funds, didn't open a high-demand warming center for homeless people until late this winter. Employees were amazed to see the new furniture arrive, considering their wages had been cut 10% last year...

Isn't a huge, centralized, unaccountable administrative state awesome?

Faceless bureaucrats are using your hard-earned money to reward friends, enrich themselves, and punish enemies.

This wasn't a "stimulus" -- it was wealth redistribution, plain and simple. Legalized theft.

This country's founders knew that the federal government must be small, accountable and highly limited in its powers. And every day we see more evidence that the Framers were geniuses.



Hat tip: Trending Right.

Survey says: Obamacare will force huge percentage of small businesses to drop or slash health benefits

Consider this just another on-ramp to single-payer:

One-fifth of small business owners who offer health insurance to their workers expect to significantly change their benefits package the next time they renew their health plan as a result of federal health reform, according to a new survey.

About 12% of small business owners say their health plans are or will be likely to be cut because of federal health reform.

...Moreover, an “overwhelming majority” or small business owners do not expect the federal health reform law to reduce costs or their regulatory burden, according to a new National Federation of Independent Business survey marking the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010.

Likely changes to plans would include a decrease in benefits, an increase in employee cost-share, or both, according to the survey. Employers who even slightly alter their benefits packages to reduce costs will likely be exposed to more regulations and cost increases in the future under the health reform law’s provisions, the NFIP said.

...The survey found that nearly two-thirds of owners agree that the law will cause health insurance premium increases, without improving care.

That's the genius of Soviet-style central planning, folks. Having bankrupted Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- and having stolen trillions for failed "stimulus" programs -- Obamacare could help the hard left Democrat Party put the final nail in the coffin of this republic.

Oh, and dude: if you liked your health plan, you most definitely will not be able to keep it.

2012 is coming.