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

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

President Obama really should NOT be called "The Foodstamp President"

Not because it's "racist", or because it's inaccurate.

But because he prefers the term "The Unemployment President". At least, that's what I hear.


The most critical question facing us in November is whether enough American people have become slaves to government. That is: willing to vote for more entitlements, more wealth redistribution, more lawful plunder, more centralized government, and -- ultimately -- a European form of socialism, dependency and economic misery.


Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Six charts from the CBO that spell big trouble for the U.S.

Jim Pethokoukis points us to a just-released report from the Congressional Budget Office (PDF) that includes some extremely troubling graphs.

Catastrophic budget deficits and unemployment levels (purposefully understated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) as far as the eye can see. The good news? By 2022 the economy will have collapsed been "fundamentally transformed" under soaring interest rates and unpayable debts.

Obama can blame Bush, Martin Van Buren, or Mary Tyler Moore -- but the facts are simple: those last four bars are owned 100% by the Democrat Party. The Stimulus package, which I like to call "the most audacious armed robbery in world history" continues to be spent every year as it is built into the baseline budget. Which somehow seems to escape legacy media's attention as they discuss taxing "the rich", "oil companies", "doctors who charge $30,000 for an amputation", and anyone else who tries to make an honest living.

The CBO defines the GDP gap as, essentially, the delta between where the GDP is and where it should be. They're too diplomatic to put it the way I would, which is: "the difference between where the GDP is now and where it would be if we didn't have a radical ideologue beholden to the environmental flat-Earth no-growth Marxists and the public sector union bosses as president".

I don't believe the CBO's projections for the future, especially in the case of this chart. There's a concept called "reversion to mean" that, roughly translated, says that figures generally return to their average. Note the average interest rates the country's seen over the last four decades. Now add in the monstrous amounts of global debt that lies lurking, ready to smash into the global economy at any moment thanks to the insanity of bankers and their surrogates in government. We'll be lucky if we only see a reversion to the mean over the next 10 or 15 years.

• "The U.S. housing industry, where experts believe the economic crisis began, is the target of President Barack Obama's latest initiative to strengthen the economy. Mr. Obama has unveiled a $75 billion plan to prevent as many as nine million Americans from losing their homes." (2/18/2009)

• "Obama expands mortgage modification effort - Under fire to do more to stop the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration announced new mortgage modification steps on Friday to help the unemployed and those who are "underwater" with a bigger loan than their home is worth." (3/26/2010)

• "OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR TARGETED FORECLOSURE-PREVENTION PROGRAMS TO HELP HOMEOWNERS STRUGGLING WITH UNEMPLOYMENT - Treasury’s Hardest Hit Fund Will Provide $2 Billion of Additional Assistance in 17 states and the District of Columbia; HUD to Launch a New $1 Billion Program to Help Unemployed Borrowers in Other Areas..." (8/11/2010)

• "Obama’s Plan Announced - On Monday, the Obama administration announced a plan which will attempt to help struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages." (10/31/2011)

I got a million more of 'em.

Hey, isn't central planning grand?

If we don't vote these malevolent Statists out of office in November, this country may be gone.


Monday, January 30, 2012

The Most Audacious Armed Robbery in History -- and Those Who Would Sit Out an Election

The Democrats' 2009 Stimulus package was, in my estimation, the most audacious armed robbery in world history. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen from American taxpayers -- and generations yet unborn -- to reward Democrat campaign contributors.

Solyndra was only the most basic example of these crimes. In fact, though you wouldn't know it from reading the funny papers, a whole series of "green energy" companies are in varying stages of collapse. For the most recent example, please consider: "Another Stimulus-Backed Energy Company Files for Bankruptcy":

After months of financial turmoil, an Energy Department-backed lithium ion battery company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company, Ener1, received a $118 million grant from DOE in 2010 as part of the president’s stimulus package. The money, which went to Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel, aimed to promote renewable energy storage battery technology for electrical grid use.

Oh, and don't forget about Beacon Power:

Beacon Power Company received $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan before it filed for bankruptcy. Beacon Power developed new technology that supposedly provides energy storage designed to help the intermittent solar and wind power be used by power grids, which need stable power to remain reliable.

Not to mention Amonix:

Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc. opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas, the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce... Amonix received a $5.9 million investment tax credit through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2010...

I've got a million of 'em. In fact, that's why I created "The Handy-Dandy EnergyGate Cheat Sheet" -- to keep track of all the wanton criminality associated with the "green collar" jobs that are disappearing faster than a double-chocolate brownie placed in front of Michael Moore.

I would wager $1,000 that a complete investigation of each "green energy" company and its backers -- by third-party, forensic accountants -- would expose a web of ties linking those who benefited to some of the Democrat Party's largest donors. Cause that's the way they roll.

The most shocking aspect of these crimes is that the White House privately admitted that the Stimulus had nothing -- Nuh. Thing. -- to do with rescuing the economy. A recently revealed, December 15, 2008 memo from Obama's senior economic adviser Larry Summers to the president stated explicitly that the suggested spending packages were not about rescuing the economy... they were about rewarding Obama's backers.

The Stimulus is an ongoing crime perpetrated by the Democrats against the American people.

And why do I call this thievery an "armed robbery"? Said simply, Obama and his minions plundered America's wealth -- indebting an untold number of future generations in the process -- using the force of law. This is, as Bastiat put it, "legal plunder."

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Bastiat was describing, more than 150 years before they came to power, the 111th Congress and President Obama.

While I support Rick Santorum in this primary process, I don't care if a crippled kangaroo is the GOP candidate. I will vote to oust Obama and to begin to save this precious country. Those who want to "sit it out" in protest should consider the impact of their inaction on subsequent generations, who we've already condemned to an ominous future. If collapse is what you seek, remember that this generation -- our generation -- will be forever marked as those who lost America.

This theft will not stand. It must not stand. And I will walk on broken glass and hot coals to vote this failed president out of office in November, while bolstering the number of true conservatives in Congress. It's the least we can do. So stop bitching about Mitt Romney, the GOP establishment, or the fact that your latte isn't hot enough. We've been at this for little more than two years. And Rome wasn't built in a day.

You and I, we've got a country to save.


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Photos: Occupy DC Girds Its Loins for Eviction Tomorrow

My brother and I went down to McPherson Square today to mock some of the Occupiers for their upcoming eviction tomorrow.

Hopefully this isn't the tent of an English teacher.

Curiously, the encampment appears to be more reminiscent of a ghost town rather than a bustling village gearing up for a confrontation.

Eviction notices were taped to most of the tents.

Compliance bullet #2 could prove problematic in inclement weather.

The crowd couldn't get enough of the Daily Activity Board.

6:00AM Monday - a "General Assembly" will greet the Park Service eviction crew.

A raucous crowd of Occupiers met some tourists taking pictures.

"Comfort Station".

Sensible: fighting "American Fascism" by demanding more government.

Confrontational.

Occupy DC's art gallery: always a popular attraction.

If these guys expect to be teargassed and flash-banged tomorrow, they'd better get rowdier.


Saturday, January 28, 2012

I accuse this chart of being racist!

James Pethokoukis calls this "the economic chart that may doom the Obama presidency."

Even if [Friday's] GDP report—for the fourth quarter of 2011—shows 3 percent growth or better [Ed: it did not, coming in at 2.8, worse than expected], it would be just the fourth time that has happened since the economy began turning up in June 2009: 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010, and 3.8 percent in the second quarter of 2010. But no 3 percent-plus quarters since then.

The first nine quarters of the Reagan Recovery, by contrast, looked like this: 5.1 percent, 9.3 percent, 8.1 percent, 8.5 percent, 8.0 percent, 7.1 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.3 percent, 3.8, percent, 3.4 percent. In fact, the Reagan Boom went from the first quarter of 1983 until the second quarter of 1986 without notching a sub-3 percent GDP quarter.

So, while the Reagan Recovery quickly made up for lost years of growth, not so much for the Obama Recovery, as this chart in today’s Wall Street Journal makes clear:


Over at Business Insider, a surprisingly left-wing rag given its ostensible focus on the private sector economy, some ludicrous hack named Joe Weisenthal insists that all of this data is irrelevant. His latest piece, basically a troll's post with a larger-than-usual website, is entitled "Why The Obama Recovery Has Been Much More Impressive Than Reagan's" (no link, you can find it if you want to).

Another thing about Reagan was that he was a deficit-lover.
Reagan presided over the largest (still) one-year annual jump in the size of the national debt. (And PS: that just happened to be right after the recession, when the economy started growing like crazy as Pethokoukis notes)... The conditions behind the Great Recession were far worse than anything Reagan inherited, and Obama has pulled off a recovery with less of a sustained growth in Federal Government spending.

Hey, Joe - I wonder who was in control of the House during the Reagan years? Oh, yeah -- that's right. The Democrats, who insisted every one of Reagan's austerity budgets was "Dead On Arrival". Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, for instance. Sound like a big spender to you, Joe?

Reagan inherited double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, an oil crisis, a resurgent Soviet Union, and he'd turned America around in three years with a Democrat-controlled Congress. As a commenter observes:

A recap of Hope and Change since President Obama took office in Jan 2009. Comparing economic indicators starting in Jan 2009 to present day:

1. Federal debt has increased by 43% from $10.6 trillion to $15 trillion.
2. Americans living in poverty have increased by 16% from 39.8 million to 46.2 million.
3. Total unemployment (U6) has increased by 68% from 13.7 million to 23 million.
4. Price of gasoline has increased by 80% from $1.86/gal to $3.35/gal
5. Americans on food stamps have increased 42% from 31.8 million to 45.2 million
6. Home foreclosures per year have increased by 34% from 850,000 to 1,140,000
7. Total bankruptcy filings per year have increased by 42% from 1,117,641 to 1,593,081.
8. Median Household incomes have declined by 4%.
9. Average selling price of new homes has declined by 10%.
10. US dollar compared to foreign currencies has declined by 8.7%. [US dollar index of 85.9 in Jan 2009 to 78.5 in Dec 2011.]
11. US dollar compared to gold has declined 105%. [$855/oz. to $1750/oz.]

Not to mention adding a new, wildly unpopular and massive new entitlement program (Obamacare) when our existing entitlements are circling the drain.

Hey, Joe: you gonna put some ice on that, brother?


A simple illustration anyone can understand: why liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid

"The reason I say that liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid is because we can look at what's going around in the country today. If, in your own lives, you were pursuing policies that were destroying your own home ownership, that were destroying your own job, that were creating a massive, impossible debt for your family and your children in particular, you'd stop it. You wouldn't keep doing it!

"And yet for the liberal, if it's imposed on you -- and they feel that they can be immune from it -- they're for it.

"They wouldn't do to themselves and their own family what they're doing to you, and your family, and the whole nation!

"Take Barack Obama. Does Barack Obama conduct himself in his own, personal affairs, in his family's affairs, as recklessly as he conducts the affairs of the nation? No. Would he run up the kind of relative personal debt that he's running up for the nation? No way.

"Would he do anything that would endanger his position as president? Of course not -- he thinks his agenda will return him to office. He's taking care of his constituent groups...

So they do to us -- and they do to our society -- what they would never do to their own families. They do not live in their own lives as they seek to have the rest of us live. Or as they seek to have our society conduct itself." --Mark Levin, "Why Liberalism is the Philosophy of the Stupid".


Friday, January 27, 2012

The numbers do not lie -- although it's possible they're racist

I love how these inside-the-Beltway hacks say that Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum "can't win" against Obama. The numbers say different. Obama got 52.7% of the vote as a messianic, post-partisan, post-racial and completely unknown quantity. Now we know he's not a messiah, he's highly partisan, he's also willing to divide Americans along racial, ethnic, income and any other lines he can come up with to dredge up votes, and he is a highly known quantity, which is to say a SCOAMF.

Following President Barack Obama’s self-congratulatory State of the Union address, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, produced a simple chart that tells the real story of the Obama administration:

America Before President Obama Took Office and Now

 

Before

Now

Change

Number of Unemployed1

12.0 Million

13.1 Million

+9%

Long-Term Unemployed2

2.7 Million

5.6 Million

+107%

Unemployment Rate3

7.8%

8.5%

+9%

“High Unemployment” States4

22

43

+95%

Misery Index5

7.83

11.46

+46%

Price of Gas6

$1.85

$3.39

+83%

“Typical” Monthly Family Food Cost7

$974

$1,013

+4%

Median Value of Single-Family Home8

$196,600

$169,100

-14%

Rate of Mortgage Delinquencies9

6.62%

10.23%

+55%

U.S. National Debt10

$10.6 Trillion

$15.2 Trillion

+43%


For more, and for references, visit the House Ways and Means Committee website here.


Shhh... no one tell Leonard Pitts.


Good News: Average Federal Worker Getting Paid As Much As a Microsoft, Intel or Cisco Employee

But remember, folks: there's nothing to cut.

The average federal government employee receives [a total] annual compensation of around $133,000. How does this match up to the private sector?

CNN Money has a nice survey of the 25 highest-paying companies in the country, outlining the average total compensation per employee in each one. According to CNN, the closest match to federal employment is Microsoft, whose average employee compensation is $132,023 per year, making it the 17th highest-paying company in the country.

When high federal pay is pointed out, public employee unions counter that federal employees are more productive than the average private sector worker, due to their greater education and experience. But do you think that the average federal employee is more productive than the average Microsoft employee? Or Intel, or Qualcomm, both of which pay around the same?

Have you ever called a federal agency to try to get help? It's kinda like the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, only without the prompt customer service. So I can't wait until we get BMV-style health care.

Say, I wonder if Leonard Pitts thinks this chart is racist?


Hat tip: BadBlue.

Hey, Leonard Pitts: Is This Chart More or Less Racist Than Newt Gingrich?

Leonard who? Exactly. Leonard Pitts -- for the 99.9999999% of Americans who've never heard of him -- is a back-bencher op-ed columnist who never met an opportunity to race-bait that he didn't like. Pitts' specialty is interpreting every statement --- including the terms "food stamps", "arugula", and "golfer-in-chief" -- as a secret racist code known only to Republicans... and Leonard Pitts.

Let's listen in as all six of Pitt's neurons fire at once to create version 17,031 of the same column he's written weekly for years (subtitled, "Republican are racists"):

I got my first job when I was 12. The deacons at my church paid me $2 a week to keep it swept and mopped... So I do not need Newt Gingrich to lecture me about a good work ethic. In this, I suspect I speak for the vast majority of 39 million African Americans.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Gingrich’s recent language , including his performance at last week’s South Carolina debate and his earlier declaration that Barack Obama has been America’s best “food-stamp president,” amounts to a coded appeal to racist sensitivities. The answer is simple: yes.

In this, Gingrich joins a line of Republicans stretching back at least to Richard Nixon. From that president’s trumpeting of “law and order” (i.e., “I will get these black demonstrators off the streets.”) to Ronald Reagan’s denunciation of “welfare queens” (i.e., “I will stop these lazy black women from living high on your tax dollars.”) to George H.W. Bush’s use of Willie Horton (i.e., “Elect me or this scary black man will get you..”) the GOP long ago mastered the craft of using nonracial language to say racial things.

So I assume Pitts will agree with me when I categorically condemn the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Census Bureau and the USDA for helping to produce this chart:

...While it's true that the country has been headed in this direction for many years — with the explosion in entitlements since the 1960s and the aging of the population — Obama has, in fact, greatly accelerated the trend...

Direct payments. The amount of money the federal government hands out in direct payments to individuals steadily increased over the past four decades, but shot up under Obama, climbing by almost $600 billion — a 32% increase — in his first three years. And Obama's last budget called for these payments to climb another $500 billion by 2016, at which point they would account for fully two-thirds of all federal spending.

...Food stamps. This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That's 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. This surge was driven in part by the recession, but also because Obama boosted the benefit amount as part of his stimulus plan.

...In just nine years, entitlement spending is on track to eat up 61% of the federal budget, according to the CBO. And unless these programs are cut back, they will soon consume all federal taxes, one CBO budget scenario predicts.

In other words, we're headed for complete fiscal collapse -- and Pitts is cheering Obama on with unsustainable programs wracked with fraud, cronyism, and ill-intentions.

And are things better for African-Americans under Obama? Of course not. In fact, a new low -- less than 80% of African-Americans (I assume Pitts thinks they're racist, too) -- now support President Obama.

Ronald Reagan inherited a far worse economy from Jimmy Carter: double-digit inflation; double-digit unemployment; and a Soviet Empire that was extending its tentacles all over the globe while the U.S. had single-handedly begun disarming itself.

In three years' time, Reagan had transformed the economy to the benefit of all Americans by unleashing the private sector through smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes for all -- especially the productive members of society, irrespective of race, religion, creed or hair color.

Instead of building on a proven template of color-blind success, Pitts continues his failed career of race-baiting, which requires him to ignore history, facts, logic and reason in pursuit of a Utopian society that can't exist, won't exist and has never existed in all of human history. His path is the path to misery and, like all drones, he's too stupid to even comprehend his own endgame.


Thursday, January 26, 2012

Here are some photos you'll never see in legacy media: the Volt crash test that torched a whole series of cars

Odd. I must have missed this report on ABC, NBC, CBS and in The New York Slimes:

I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled:

Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?

The witnesses [included] National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland... [and] General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.

...This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze. The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House. But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.

...Joan Claybrook, a former administrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.” ...For Obama, notifying Americans of their potential immolation-by-Volt is of less import than his keeping his gig past November.

The one NHTSA Volt fire discussed at the hearing was not the only NHTSA Volt fire that occurred. In November, there were two others. After conducting three different tests two weeks ago, the NHTSA found that the Volt’s battery either caught fire or began to smoke in two out of the three.

So that’s three Volt fires – all in the hands of the Obama Administration, all after crashes... There were [also] three other, private-owner Volt fires. None of which involved Volts that were in crashes.

...There was the Volt that in April burst into flames – twice. These were the fires that led to Obama’s NHTSA beginning its investigation. And then in November another Volt leapt into flames. While Obama’s NHTSA was still investigating – but after the NHTSA-Obama Administration-GM cover-up had come to light (get it?)...

...We still have no idea what caused these fires. The only thing we do know is that they were not caused by crashes – because these cars were never in crashes. So why did Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration and Obama’s GM singularly focus on (but one of three) post-crash Volt fires ... [w]hen none of these three privately-owned combustible Volts had been in accidents?

We – still – don’t know. Anything.

But don’t worry: The Obama Administration has declared that the Obama-owned GM Chevy Volt is perfectly safe – just in time for Obama’s reelection campaign.

Indeed. The Volt is safe. We guarantee it. Who's we? Shut the hell up, peons.


Related: Exclusive Photo: First Chevy Volts arrive at local dealers


Photos: Charging Point.

Before we worry about Mitt Romney's tax rate, perhaps we could get Obama's henchmen to pay their taxes

I don't know why the White House keeps talking about Mitt Romney's tax return or the fact that Warren Buffett's secretary can't buy a third home in a golf community.

Turns out that Obama's staff includes a whole posse of tax scofflaws (and we're not even counting the guys we knew about like Turbotax Tim Geithner):

How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes.

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.

...Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each... The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.

The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year.

...The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million... [and] the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.

The country's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too.

Charley "Rental Income" Rangel couldn't be reached for comment at press time.


They're for the Common Man [Amalaur]

Amalaur:

All the Details on Michelle Obama’s State of the Union Dress


...Michelle Obama‘s wardrobe choices always turn heads.

Last night’s State of the Union ensemble was no exception. As the President declared his intent to help buoy the 99 percent (“Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense,” he declared), his wife dazzled in a cobalt sheath from Barbara Tfank’s resort collection.

While reps for the brand won’t reveal the item’s retail price, a similar style from the collection is currently available at Barneys New York for $2,400.

This isn’t the first time the First Lady has worn the Los Angeles-based designer’s sophisticated wares. Last year, she met with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge wearing a seafoam brocade design topped with a bubblegum pink stole.

“Everything in my closet is something that I love,” Obama has said. “So that I can make choices based on what makes sense, knowing that I’m going to love whatever it is.”

I see another Target shopping trip in the near future for FLOTUS, with plenty of access for the press and especially photographers.


Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Breaking: Indiana poised to deal crushing blow to labor

In other words, Indiana is banning indentured servitude, which is how I define being forced to pay union dues when you have no desire to belong to a union.

In another blow to organized labor in the traditionally union heavy Midwest, Indiana is poised to become the first right-to-work state in more than a decade after Republican lawmakers cleared the way on Wednesday to ban unions from collecting mandatory fees from workers.

Over the past year, Republicans have pushed for other anti-union laws in battleground Rust Belt states where many of the country's manufacturing jobs reside, including Wisconsin and Ohio, but they also have faced backlash from Democrats and union supporters. Wisconsin last year stripped public sector unions of collective bargaining rights.

Despite massive protests outside the Capitol, Wisconsin's GOP-dominated Assembly passed a law backed by Gov. Scott Walker in March that strips nearly all collective bargaining rights from organized labor. Walker is now preparing for a recall election after opponents turned in a million signatures aimed at forcing a vote and ousting him from office. In November, Ohio voters repealed a law limiting collective bargaining rights that was championed by Gov. John Kasich and fellow Republican lawmakers.

Indiana would mark the first win in 10 years for national right-to-work advocates who have pushed unsuccessfully for the measure in other states following a Republican sweep of statehouses in 2010. But few right-work states boast Indiana's union clout, borne of a long manufacturing legacy... Oklahoma, with its rural-based economy that produces comparatively fewer union jobs than Indiana, passed right-to-work legislation in 2001.

Indiana's vote came after weeks of protest by minority Democrats who tried various tactics to stop the bill. They refused to show up to debate despite the threat of fines that totaled $1,000 per day and introduced dozens of amendments aimed at delaying a vote. But conceding their tactics could not last forever because they were outnumbered, they finally agreed to allow the vote to take place.

Marxist Democrat Rep. Linda Lawson termed the anti-slavery law an attack on the community.

"What you are doing is destroying my community!" said Lawson, who represents a northwest Indiana district packed with heavy manufacturers and a major BP oil refinery. "We want to turn my district into Detroit!"

I might have misheard that last sentence.


Hat tip: Winterspirit.

It's another historic first: Obama uses State of the Union address as an official campaign fundraiser

Remember how some of the drones and nincompoops voted for President Obama because he was "historic"?

Turns out he really was, only not in the way they'd expected.

If there was any question whether President Obama’s State of the Union address was actually a prettied up campaign speech, Obama himself answered it with an email to supporters just before his appearance asking them to contribute to his campaign... titled “Before I speak,” was sent by “Barack Obama” through the campaign email system and signed, “Barack”...

I’m heading to Capitol Hill soon to deliver my third State of the Union address... Tonight, we set the tone for the year ahead. I’m going to lay out in concrete terms the path we need to take as a country if we want an economy that works for everyone and rewards hard work and responsibility.

I’m glad to know you’ll be standing with me up there.

Barack

—–

Support President Obama. Make a donation today.

The last sentence in the email includes a link that brings recipients to a page where they can make their donation.

This is a man who appears to have literally no respect for the office of the President or, for that matter, America's traditions, values and mores.

Good news, though: November is coming. And I will walk on hot coals to vote this person out of office.


Say, if we're really in a "recovery", could someone tell me why the total number of vehicle-miles driven in the U.S. is still declining?

Answer: because someone in the administration forgot to doctor the numbers (like they do with unemployment).

The Department of Transportation (DOT) reported:

• Travel on all roads and streets changed by -0.9% (-2.1 billion vehicle miles) for November 2011 as compared with November 2010.

• Travel for the month is estimated to be 240.9 billion vehicle miles.

• Cumulative Travel for 2011 changed by -1.4% (-38.3 billion vehicle miles).
The following graph shows the rolling 12 month total vehicle miles driven.


...In the early '80s, miles driven (rolling 12 months) stayed below the previous peak for 39 months.

Currently miles driven has been below the previous peak for 48 months - and still counting! And not just moving sideways ... the rolling 12 month total is still declining.

...This is the ninth straight month with a year-over-year decline in miles driven...

But if only the obstinate Republicans would give President Obama more money and more power, he'll make everything better. If he can just tax the rich more, tax oil companies more, maybe add a VAT tax, maybe convert all private retirement funds into annuities backed by government bonds, and find some other creative ways to raise cash for the government to redistribute, all will be well.

All will be well.


Awesome: Senior Romney Adviser Says a Republican President Could Never Repeal Obamacare

Yet another reason to support one of the two non-Romneys in the race:

Mitt Romney adviser Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, predicted the GOP won't repeal the Democrats' healthcare reform law even if a Republican candidate defeats President Obama this November.

"You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president," Coleman told BioCentury This Week television in an interview that aired on Sunday. "You can't whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what's been done."

...Coleman's remarks are remarkable because every Republican candidate — including Romney — has vowed to make repealing the law a priority. Coleman is also the chairman of the American Action Network, which has urged the courts to strike down the law's individual mandate and its Medicaid expansion.

Squishes like Norm Coleman, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are cowards who are either too scared or too invested in the status quo to try to save this country.

Folks, I don't mean to be a polyanna, but every expert from Obama adviser Peter Orszag to the CBO says that America is headed into a fiscal abyss. And these clowns are waving the white flag before the fight has even started?

So what do we do? We need to demand -- demand, not ask! -- that these establishment RINOs are replaced as Congressional leaders in 2012 by Tea Party conservatives like Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio, etc. If it takes a march on Washington, so be it. We're tired of being ignored by these numbskulls. Enough is enough.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Say, didn't Illinois just try Obama's "tax the rich" crap last year? And didn't it fail, miserably?

Why, yes. Yes it did.

Republicans looking to combat President Obama's Castro-like State of the Union speech have an easy case laid out for them. It's called the state of Illinois, which dramatically increased taxes on individuals (especially the "rich") and businesses last year.

And not only did Illinois fail to close its budget gap, but Obama's ultra-left wing, union-controlled home state also got a ratings downgrade. Which means -- for you drones out there -- that its future borrowing costs will go still higher.

It's called circling the drain: more borrowing begets lower ratings, which increases borrowing costs, and so on...

Run up spending and debt, raise taxes in the naming of balancing the budget, but then watch as deficits rise and your credit-rating falls anyway. That’s been the sad pattern in Europe, and now it’s hitting that mecca of tax-and-spend government known as Illinois.

…Moody’s downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. That’s worse even than California.

…This wasn’t supposed to happen. Only a year ago, Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to “get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing” and improve the state’s credit rating. So much for that.

…And—no surprise—in part because the tax increases have caused companies to leave Illinois, the state budget office confesses that as of this month the state still has $6.8 billion in unpaid bills and unaddressed obligations.

Turn out that raising taxes, especially on the "rich", does three basic things:

• It destroys productivity, because the "rich" are the ones who invest, take risks, start businesses, and -- in general -- create productivity in the economy;

• It encourages the government to continue reckless spending;

• And never raises as much money as projected.

In other words, allowing government to raise taxes without first restraining spending is irresponsible at best.

And such a plan, should Obama somehow convince people to support it, is guaranteed to fail just like every other one of his fiascoes*.


* Including, but not limited to: "Stimulus" programs, HAMP, HARP, Cash-for-Clunkers, Obamacare, "Financial Reform", permanent 9% unemployment and 20% underemployment, the unlawful takeovers of GM and Chrysler, "Quantitative Easing", a new war, and $5.2 trillion in new Obama debt.


Obama Henchman John Podesta Lumps Canada In With Terror States To Justify the Disastrous Keystone XL Decision

John Podesta is one of a long line of Soros-funded Obama stooges (which is the term they prefer, I hear) who runs the ill-named "Center for American Progress". From all appearances, CAP's mission is three-fold: (a) to de-industrialize America through eco-Marxism; (b) to continue pushing the country down the road to a failed, European social welfare state; and (c) to manufacture propaganda for the state, Hugo Chavez-style.

For the latter purpose, Podesta was able to secure a forum at The Wall Street Journal this morning. He used it to deliver one of the more malicious pieces of propaganda ever printed in an American newspaper. The op-ed was timed, of course, to reinforce tonight's State of the Union address and, in particular, to justify Obama's disastrous Keystone XL pipeline decision.

In the hubbub around the president's decision not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the United States, Americans missed the big picture. While conservatives have been fighting to build a pipeline to import more foreign oil and deepen U.S. dependence, the U.S. is poised to transform its energy portfolio by developing domestic resources—renewable and mineral—that will let it become a net exporter of clean energy and energy technology in this decade...

Renewable energy resources like those produced by Solyndra?

And since when was Canada lumped in with America's enemies?

Only in the mind of a malevolent, Soros-controlled drone could Canada be equated with a totalitarian Islamist terror state.

Under President Obama's leadership, we appear to be at the beginning of a domestic gas and oil boom. After a four-decade decline in oil production, the U.S. is now producing more than half of our oil domestically. This can free us from our addiction to foreign-sourced barrels, particularly if we utilize our dramatically larger and cheaper natural gas reserves. Natural gas now costs the equivalent of less than $15 per barrel, versus the $100-plus barrels we import from the Middle East... [But there] are critical environmental questions associated with developing these resources, particularly concerning methane leakage and water pollution.

Buried in this pile of literary excrement is the caveat that applies to all Obama dictums: companies will get regulated out of business by the EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and dozens of other elements of the bloated federal bureaucracy long before a single watt of energy is ever produced.

I'll spare you the rest of Podesta's verbal diarrhea.

Decades from now, when the complete history of the Obama administration is written, its accomplices like John Podesta -- who betrayed their country for a few pieces of Soros' gold -- will receive the full measure of scorn and hatred they deserve. Future generations destined to suffer because of nefarious individuals like Podesta will curse their names and, if there is any justice at all, turn their gravesites into landfills.


Monday, January 23, 2012

Pethokoukis: Secret 2008 Memo to Barack Obama reveals White House knew Stimulus was a partisan scam

Jim Pethokoukis alerts us to the stunning release of a confidential memo sent to Barack Obama by senior economic adviser Larry Summers on December 15, 2008.

In short, Obama and Summers both knew the Stimulus was a scam.

1. The Stimulus Had Nothing to Do With Reviving the Economy, It Was Designed To Reward Allies and Implement Left-Wing Policies - "The short-run economic imperative was to identify as many campaign promises or high priority items that would spend out quickly and be inherently temporary. … The stimulus package is a key tool for advancing clean energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments."

2. Obama knew that the deficits he was about to run were dangerous -- and didn't care - "[The spending] would leave an average deficit over the next decade that would be worse than any post-World War II decade. This would be entirely unsustainable and could cause serious economic problems in the both the short run and the long run."

3. Obama considered a Stimulus package greater than a trillion dollars, but was dissuaded when convinced the markets would rebel - "To accomplish a more significant reduction in the output gap would require stimulus of well over $1 trillion based on purely mechanical assumptions—which would likely not accomplish the goal because of the impact it would have on markets."

4. The Federal Reserve supported the disastrous Stimulus package - "Senior Federal Reserve officials appear to be of the view that a plan that well exceeds $600 billion would be desirable."

5. Obama knew the financial crisis was not solely Wall Street's fault - "A significant cause of the current crisis lies in the failure of regulators to exercise vigorously the authority they already have."

Read the whole thing.

The revelations in this document alone should be enough to bring down the Obama administration. The level of dishonesty laced throughout the Obama White House is both shocking and repellent.


The State of the Union? Profoundly Unhappy

My guess is he won't be mentioning the fact that Tuesday represents the 1,000th day that the country has gone without a budget, thanks to Democrats in the Senate. Let's just call that another Obama record. To accompany record levels of unhappiness with the state of the union:

As Obama takes the stage for tomorrow's State of the Union address, in which, among other things, he probably will not announce that the US debt limit is effectively $16.4 trillion, or 107% of GDP and rising, he faces a very unhappy audience: one which according to Gallup has seen its dissatisfaction with economic and political issues hit record levels...


...Among the Gallup observations: "As President Barack Obama prepares his annual address to Congress, Americans are broadly dissatisfied with the state of the nation in several specific issue areas, with satisfaction down sharply in some cases since January 2008. However, three issues -- the nation's economy, the size and power of the federal government, and the moral and ethical climate in the country -- fit both of these unwelcome criteria." And with the only response the administration has in the past three years consisting of either printing more money which sends all assets, especially energy, higher in price, or fiscal stimulus of which 90% and more is lost due to inefficiencies and corruption, we don't see satisfaction rising any time soon.

Let me be clear. While I prefer Rick Santorum, then Newt Gingrich, and then Mitt Romney for President, I would vote for a lint filter over Barack Obama. Because a lint filter would do considerably less damage to this country.