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

Sunday, September 02, 2012

David Axelrod's not gonna fall for a banana in the tailpipe again!

Methinks it will be quite a while before the President's Senior Red Diaper Baby appears with Chris Wallace again.

Want a preview of the presidential debates? Then spend two and a half minutes with this clip from today’s Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and David Axelrod. Wallace asks Axelrod the quadrennial question: are voters better off now than four years ago?

...When the man running Team Obama tries to run away from the question by talking about the tough environment Barack Obama inherited, Wallace lays out the comparison on economic statistics between January 2009 and today, and asks Axelrod again: are voters better off now than four years ago? Answer: Er...


Here are the stats Wallace uses:

• Unemployment: 7.8% then, 8.3% now
• Median income: $54,983 then, $50,964 now
• Gas prices: $1.85 per gallon then, $3.78 now
• National debt: $10.6 trillion then, $15.9 trillion now

Expect Mitt Romney to memorize these statistics, and perhaps toss in the civilian participation rate, which was at 65.7% in January 2009 and in June 2009 at the start of the “recovery,” but fell to a 30-year low of 63.6% in April and is at 63.7% now.

Axelrod needs friendlier questions, you see, which means only ABC, CBS, NBC, MNSBC and CNN will do.



Ryan's Home-Run Line Turned Into a Bumper Sticker

Paul Ryan's exquisite "close the deal" line at the RNC was an instant classic:

Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

The bumper-sticker just came naturally:


And some folks at Florida's The Villages had a similar idea:


Einstein's definition of insanity applies now more than ever.



Saturday, September 01, 2012

Just Fluke It

Milton Wolf -- cousin of Barack Obama -- asks "Now, which one is the party of responsibility, again?"



Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Dude, where's my recovery?

Pass this on to a college-age student or newly minted grad:


The under-30 crowd has the most to lose from Obamanomics. No society can survive borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends.

Make sure the young people you know are cognizant of this fact. And that they vote to throw the failed Democrat Party out office in November -- at every level of government.



Thursday, August 30, 2012

What do we do all day?

The average (employed) American "spends 9 hours, 12 minutes, and 36 seconds 'Working & Commuting' on an average workday."


Since this survey data primarily reflects working Americans, Democrat viewpoints were largely omitted.



Debbie Wasserman Schultz Continues to Duck Debates With Her Popular GOP Opponent, Karen Harrington

For obvious reasons. After all, who could possibly believe the same set of talking points -- repeated ad nauseum for six years straight -- recited in a nasally, obnoxious Yenta voice, which sounds like a muppet on 'ludes?

During the last day of the RNC convention in Tampa, Florida, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz surprised Republicans by taking a stroll down radio road, in hopes of disseminating more of President Obama’s re-election message. In between radio spots, Wasserman Schultz effectively dodged the question as to whether she was going to debate her Republican congressional opponent Karen Harrington.

‘DWS’ as she is referred to, refused to answer any questions from ‘Republican-leaning’ media outlets.

Wasserman Schultz was asked several times if she was going to accept Harrington’s challenge, but she ignored the the reporter’s question. The Congresswoman was challenged to five debates by Harrington but has yet to agree to any of them- instead she called out Karen Harrington, GOP VP nominnee Ryan and GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney as “Republican Extremists’ in a fundraising letter to her supporters.

Of course, the real extremists are the left-wing kooks who still push for more "Great Society"/Section 8/Democrat Plantation policies despite 50 consecutive years of failure.

Support Karen Harrington for Congress. We don't need any more losers like DWS in Congress. Because we've reached the loser breaking-point.


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

If this is the president's idea of success, what does failure look like?

I refer, of course, to this:

• In the last four years the number of food stamp participants increased by 64.7%


• In the last four years the cost of the food stamp program is up by 114.4%


Not to mention this:


Paul Krugman said he would be concerned if government spending hit 50% of GDP. The trend does not look good, but by Krugman's measure there is a ways to go.

Nonetheless, I think we should be concerned now. The numbers ignore exploding national debt and interest on national debt. Interest on national debt will skyrocket if rates go up or growth estimates penciled in do not occur. Both of those are likely...

The figures also ignore ever-escalating costs of Medicare, Social Security, and pension promises, all of which are guaranteed to soar in the not so distant future. Romney says Unfunded liabilities amount to $520,000 per household.

And -- it goes without saying -- this:


That last graph is the single most damning indictment of the Obama philosophy of class warfare, Keynesian spending, and wealth redistribution.

Remember, the president described his catastrophic record as follows:

"We tried our plan — and it worked"

If his plan "worked", I'd hate to see failure. And if we don't defeat this man in November, it's absolutely certain we'll get to experience it -- firsthand.


Hat tip: DShort.com.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Sigh: GM idles Volt production -- again

The hits just keep on coming for GM, what with advertisements so misleading they've been banned, lawsuits for channel-stuffing, 500,000 recalls for, uhm, vehicles that catch fire, the fact that it still owes taxpayers more than $35 billion, its thousands of excess workers around the world, its need for a bigger credit line to pay off pension obligations, rapid-fire management turnover or a hemorrhaging stock price.

As Tyler Durden observes, "color us surprised:"

GM is set to idle the plant where it assembles the Chevy Volt for four weeks - starting next month. GM will close its Detroit-Hamtramck plant from Sept 17 to Oct 15 with its 1500 staff being made aware by union reps at the end of last week. The knock-on effect is relatively obvious as the illustrious government-owned auto manufacturer notified suppliers last week and while a GM spokesperson would not confirm the planned shutdown, we couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the comment that "we continue to match supply and demand" as we note this is the second time this year that GM has throttled back on Volt production.


The Detroit-Hamtramck plant was idled from March 19 until April 16 amid swollen Volt inventories.

And don't even get me started about the Dealergate Scandal (during which the Obama administration closed dealerships based upon political motivations), a scandal later confirmed by "Auto Czar" and Obama crony Steve Rattner.


Chart: Yahoo! Finance.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

More than 400 San Francisco city workers made over $200,000 last year, including a city mechanic who pulled down a tidy $300,000

A series of California cities have declared bankruptcy this year, due primarily to out of control wage and benefits packages negotiated by public sector unions and their Democrat cronies. While San Francisco has thus far avoided insolvency, it's well on the way there as evidenced by its embarrassingly rich pay packages for city workers:

S.F. police chief highest-paid U.S. cop

...With a total pay of $321,577, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr won top honors last year among the nation's police bosses. He also happened to be the highest-paid department head in San Francisco city government...

...Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White came in second in the city salary sweepstakes at $310,458 - including $17,573 in similar pay premiums for education and training.
Jennifer Johnston, spokeswoman for the Human Resources agency, said the city has considered eliminating premium pay for higher-ups, but that without it, the bosses wouldn't be making much more than the rank-and-file.

In all, a record 401 San Francisco city workers made more than $200,000 in the past fiscal year, with overtime included.

The top earner was Assistant Fire Chief David Franklin, one of six deputies assigned to work 24-hour shifts in firehouses. He pulled down $333,490, including more than $140,000 in overtime and other pay.

...One of the real eye-catchers is the Muni electronics mechanic who ranked fifth in city government in overall pay... The mechanic, Khoa Trinh, who works on buses, light-rail vehicles and trolley cars, was paid a base salary of $106,036 - but he pulled down $163,856 in overtime and $23,478 in other extras, to boost his total earnings to $293,370.

Plenty of Muni brethren joined Trinh atop the money pile. Ten street supervisors and three mechanics earned more than $200,000 apiece last year, and all of them more than doubled their base salaries with overtime.

"It's frustrating as hell," said one Muni higher-up, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. "It's a big black box, and I don't know how to untangle it - and I'm on the inside."

Untangling it will require the heroism of someone like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Someone brave enough to take on the public sector unions and the Democrat government apparatus, who have formed an unholy alliance against their employers, the taxpayers themselves.


Photos: the Handsome Results of Democrat Leadership

London's Daily Mail publishes 100 photographs of abandoned houses in Detroit, a city which has enjoyed half a century of unchallenged Democrat rule.


There are rumored to be 12,000 abandoned houses in the city. A quick check of Zillow reveals that you can buy many of these homes for the bargain price of... one dollar.

The results of Barack Obama's years of community organizing are eerily similar, especially when viewed from above.


Hat tip: Riehl World View.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

THIS: "Obama is losing"

Those inside the twin echo chambers of the Beltway and Manhattan have no freaking clue how pissed off the American people are. But they're going to find out in November, as John Nolte explains.

It's 8:21 on a Saturday morning and according to this photo snapped by Sharon Broadie, this is the size of the crowd that showed up in Powell, Ohio, (just outside of Columbus) to see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan:


Here's a look at the line to get in...


...and another look at the crowd from another source...


And a real jaw-dropper.


Meanwhile, President FailureTeleprompter is relegated to rationalizing his lack of turnout into a "deliberate" desire for smaller, more intimate crowds. Yeah, that sounds like the Mr. Greek Column we've all come to know and grow tired of.

Meanwhile, the media refuses to report on the size of either side's crowds.

Meanwhile, across the country, the documentary film "2016" has just opened wide on over 1,000 screens and in the heart of Hollywood's biggest season hit #3 at the box office.

Meanwhile, though their Media Palace Guards assure us this is not the case, the Obama campaign's increasingly desperate and shrill campaign is acting more and more like a campaign so far behind and so in fear of losing, they feel they have nothing to lose. From "felon" to "chains" to "Mitt killed my wife" to one bald-faced lie after another, President Obama has forsaken the dignity of the office and -- should he win a second term -- all hope of bringing the country together after the kind of scorched-earth campaign only the terrified wage.

Meanwhile, the media is behaving in a manner no less shrill and desperate than their Presidential Master. When the unemployment rate increases, the media tells us that's a good thing. When the economy shrinks from 4.1 to 1.5%, the media still call it "the recovery." When an idiot in Missouri says something stupid about rape and abortion, the media launches into a week-long narrative accusing Republicans of being soft on rape.

Meanwhile, Obama supports infanticide. Romney opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest and when the mother's life is at risk. Yesterday CNN released a poll showing 62% of the American people agree with Romney and only 32% with Obama... This morning the media was still painting Romney-Ryan as the out-of-touch extremists on this issue.

Meanwhile, yesterday, Mitt Romney made a birth certificate quip and within thirty-minutes those few words received more media attention (and phony outrage) than the record number of American casualties currently mounting in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, as the clock runs down and campaign days grow more and more precious, three days ago, the Obama campaign felt it was a good use of the Vice President to send him to the supposedly safe state of Minnesota...

There's more.

And even some in vintage media appear to be sick of the lies coming from an administration orchestrating a de facto suicide of the U.S. economy


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

CBO: Economic outlook brightening thanks to President Obama's stellar leadership. Just kidding: deep recession and 9 percent unemployment on the way.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned yesterday that a recession is "imminent" given the fact that the do-nothing Senate and the President have refused to pass a budget for over 1,200 days; have failed to address imminent tax hikes on America's greatest job creation engine (small businesses); and continue to blitzkrieg the balance sheet of the federal government with unprecedented deficit spending.

We are facing the largest tax increase in history—Taxmageddon, scheduled to take effect January 1—and what experts are calling a “fiscal cliff” of sharp and unforgiving budget changes that will send the country spiraling downward. Congress and the President have the power to prevent this, and when the August congressional recess is over, that is exactly what they should do.

In its new report, the CBO said that if Congress does not act, it’s not economic growth we should be worried about, because the economy will actually shrink next year. It will shrink by 0.5 percent, and the unemployment rate will spike to 9.1 percent.


Heritage’s Patrick Louis Knudsen points out several other sobering projections from the CBO report:

  • For the fourth year in a row, the federal government in 2012 will run a budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion.
  • The deficit is already $49 billion higher than CBO’s January estimate.
  • Debt held by the public this year will reach $11.3 trillion by October, roughly three-fourths of the entire economy.
In the middle of this fiscal disaster, the government has no budget. That’s right—Congress has abdicated its responsibility for producing a budget for the country. The Senate failed to produce a budget for the third year in a row. Congressional leaders keep passing temporary stopgap bills to continue funding government operations, but this is unacceptable. They have to take this seriously. Perhaps the CBO’s dire warnings will give them the sense of urgency they are missing.

I wouldn't bet five cents on the Democrats passing a budget this year. Never happen, not just before an election when their bloated Stimulus spending and failed crony green jobs programs have failed miserably and left the country on the edge of a fiscal abyss.

The only real quibble I have with the CBO report is the assertion we would "return" to a recession when we've never really left the original Obama repression of 2009.



Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Which is more important: a jamoke from Missouri saying something stupid or skyrocketing food prices?

Tyler Durden challenges us to "spot the similarity":


Why is this so troubling? As Monty Guild explains:

Drought, bad crop data, and rising grain prices around the globe have put food inflation on the front pages, raising alarm in many circles. Consumers are concerned, food producers are concerned, businesses are concerned, and governments are concerned. While food may not be a huge percentage of the daily budget for those in the developed world, it is in the lesser developed countries. Food inflation can erode the standard of living in the emerging economics rapidly and when food prices go up too much, governments fall.

Of course, the completely un-politicized (*cough* *wheeze*) Bureau of Labor Statistics insists that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) remains unchanged.

It should come as no surprise. They're also gaming the unemployment rate.

Shhh... no one tell vintage media. They've got water to carry.


Monday, August 20, 2012

Kryptonite to Democrats

You and I know it as math. Monty Pelerin, writing at American Thinker, offers some sobering factoids that highlight how desperate a fiscal situation the United States is in.

• "The official federal debt is $16 trillion. This debt represents 100% of current GDP."

• "The U.S. has passed [the Rogoff and Reinhart*] danger point, and recent U.S. GDP experience conforms to their findings."


• "In addition to the debt of $16 trillion, the Treasury has explicitly guaranteed the debts of certain government agencies [including] Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, ...[the] Postal Service, Amtrak, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation... [and] These shortfalls are likely to be funded by the federal government, although none of these exposures is recognized as federal government debt or obligations."

• "The unfunded liabilities of the federal government are enormous, dwarfing everything else. They arise from promises made to citizens, primarily with respect to Social Security and Medicare. Government maintains that it has no legal liability to honor these promises and hence does not recognize them as debt... Estimates of the present value of these obligations range from $50 trillion to over $200 trillion... This estimate is [as high as] 14 times what government reports as debt ($16 trillion)."

And, most importantly, the "U.S. government has promised its citizens almost four times the entire net worth of the nation."

This is why America's Tea Party movement is so important. If this country can be saved -- and that's a big if -- it is fiscal, Constitutional conservatism that will save it.

Democrats (and RINOs, to a lesser extent) have spent this country into oblivion. The New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Square Deal, the Great Society, Obamacare: all Utopian, Statist plans that could never work and have never worked in all of human history.

We have a choice to make in November: try to save this Republic, or let it collapse in the manner the Cloward-Piven Democrats seek.


* Authors of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

The Ultimate Visual Guide to the Obamacare Tax Cliff

From the indefatigable Heritage Foundation, a graphic timetable of Obamcare's tax hikes:


Well, along with the fiscal cliff, this should help the economy immeasurably. At least, by Cloward-Piven standards.



Sunday, August 19, 2012

Photo o' the Day: Union Members March Against the Environmental Radicals and their Democrat Sycophants

Somehow I don't think you'll be seeing this particular photo on the front page of The New York Times.

Seventy-plus men walked out of the ground, overalls and hardhats covered in coal dust, and onto the risers of a stage built for a Mitt Romney speech.

To onlookers, mostly press and staffers, the image was stunning.

To the 2,600 family members gathered in the gravel parking lot or under tents, eating hot dogs and drinking pop, it was a moment of immense pride.

This is what we do, said Tim Wiles: “We make things. We provide energy for the state, food for our families, and businesses are sustained around the county because they make money from us.”

The 54-year-old miner added, after listening to Romney: “This election is his and Paul Ryan’s for the taking. They need to be bold and remind people of what we stand for, that we are the backbone of this country.”

The members of the United Mine Workers -- and just about every other private sector union in America -- are being sold down the river by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. So beholden are Democrats to the environmental Statists that they would rather entire counties in California go without water, that America's electric grid struggle to survive without clean coal, and that all of the U.S. can go without oil from the Keystone XL pipeline.

This costs the union members a very important -- as Joe Biden might say -- three letter word: J-O-B-S. And methinks the results in November will be stunning.


Touré logic: Obama campaign events marred by no-show racists, aka the disappearing, dispirited Democrat base

The actual level of support for the Divider-in-Chief is best reflected by his choice of speaking venues and the size of the crowds he's able to attract. As for the former, it appears the only places President Obama is welcomed with open arms are high schools and community colleges, both beneficiaries of wild amounts of stimulus spending (read: public sector union and other payoffs).

The the latter case, the claim is that sparse attendance of Obama speaking engagements is the result of "intentionally limiting crowd size".

“We have plenty of time for big rallies,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. “Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd.

”Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator. And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.

Typical reactions include this from Jammie Wearing Fool: "To better connect with people, by telling them they didn’t build that, or that they’re racist. Easier with a tiny crowd, we suppose. Four years ago a football stadium could hardly contain the awesome crows, Greek columns and his massive ego. Now he’s discovered frugality and intimacy."

Ace of Spades calls it the Spinal-Tapization of the Obama Campaign: "I fully expect @davidaxelrod to tweet tomorrow that Obama isn't shedding voters, the President's appeal "is simply becoming more selective." ... I will give Obama 2012 credit for one thing tho: small crowds or not, they are funnier than Saturday Night Live."

Da Tech Guy notes that even The New York Times has expressed a bit of dismay at lackluster attendance, with one reporter tweeting: "Just to clarify, tix *started* at $51. Obama campaign sez event was sold out, but room is about half full. Hmmm."

And Battleground Watch snorts, "Oh really? You could have big crowds if you want them but they cost so much you don’t want them? Right. And I could date Kate Upton but then I would have to deal with all those guys ogling her and that would get annoying."

Using Touré logic, it's probable that the president's ex-supporters -- those who have abandoned ship after suffering through the worst "recovery" in history -- are now officially racists.


Friday, August 17, 2012

City Watch Los Angeles: California is on the way to becoming an enormous version of Detroit

I love California -- and the Palo Alto area in particular -- but the state is destined for a fall that will be hard, sudden, and very painful.

California has a $16 billion deficit that no one seems to notice. Brown’s budget “assumes” that California voters will pass massive tax increases on themselves. If they do not, the 2013 deficit becomes a mind-numbing $20 billion. The budget, mandated to balance by the Calfornia Constitution, has been billions in the red for 10 straight years. How could Californians re-elect the same politicians year after year that produce budgets with multi-billion dollar deficits?

To protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a fish known better as bait, water has been diverted from the Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean. Orchards in the Central Valley have been allowed to wither and die, resulting in unemployment in the Central Valley as high as 40 percent. Imagine Californians living in what was the breadbasket of American now living on food stamps. California voters rejected Republican Carly Fiorina for US Senator in 2010. She ran Hewlett Packard. Instead, they re-elected Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who vowed to protect the Delta Smelt at the expense of the Central Valley.


California has 519 state agencies, like the state Blueberry Commission, that pay each of their commissioners more than $100,000 per year. State politicians, when asked to make cuts, fire teachers and fire fighters to inflict maximum pain on its citizens, while leaving these patronage commissions intact.

State politicians have elevator operators in the state capital to push the buttons for them. Their solution for the overcrowding of the state’s prisons is to release inmates or transfer them to local facilities in already bankrupt cities. Yet, they are re-elected by California voters in numbers consistently higher than the old Soviet Politburo.

California’s public education system, once the envy of the world, now ranks 49th in the nation. Its business climate, according to 650 CEOs measured by Chief Executive Magazine, ranked dead last.

Apple will take 3,600 new jobs to Austin, Tex. at its $280,000,000 new facility. Texas ranked first in the same survey.

California unemployment is consistently higher than 10 percent of its workforce, but it’s under-employed, according to a Gallup poll, is 20 percent. There are few jobs for college students who graduate with as much as $100,000 in student loans. Despite the overwhelming evidence that bad public policy is chasing away jobs, the same state politicians are sent back to Sacramento every two years.

In the last two months, three California cities have declared bankruptcy. Compton is next. More will follow. Some cities will simply cease to exist due to $500 million in unfunded pension obligations they simply cannot meet.

The reason Democrat politicians and their supporters are completely insane is this: we can see the results of their policies in failed states like California.

Collective bargaining for public sector employees... unchecked environmental radicalism... crony capitalism... incredibly dense layers of regulation... demonization of business and industry... all the primary planks of the Democrat Party at the federal level.

The alarm claxons are going off not only in Cali, but also in Washington.

November is coming.


Ponzi Government QOTD: "Transfer one more conspiracy theory into the conspiracy fact bin"

The indefatigable Tyler Durden notes a curious admission that I can guaran-damn-tee you won't be reading about in the weekend funny papers:

While one may wonder about the implications of the just announced "accelerated wind-down" of the GSEs, predicated in no small part by the surge in animosity between Tim Geithner and the FHFA's Ed DeMarco, there is one aspect of the announcement that is completely and utterly unambigious: as part of its justification to demand faster liquidation of Fannie and Freddie's "investment portfolio" Tim Geithner gave the following argument:

This will help achieve several important objectives, including... Ending the circular practice of the Treasury advancing funds to the GSEs simply to pay dividends back to Treasury

In other words not some fringe blog, not some "partisan" media outlet, not some morally conflicted whistleblowing former employee seeking immunity, but the US Trasury itself just admitted it had been engaged in circular check kiting scheme, which essentially has all the components of a Ponzi scheme in it, ever since the nationalization (about which there is no now doubt and which means the GSE's $6 trillion in debt is now fully on the Treasury's balance sheet) of Fannie and Freddie in 2008.

Transfer one more conspiracy theory into the conspiracy fact bin.

The ludicrous hacks Jim Johnson, Jamie Gorelick and Franklin Raines -- all Democrats, all Clinton sycophants, and all of whom raped Fannie Mae like a Doberman let loose in a Toy Poodle pet shop -- should be serving time in federal lockup. Between them and a couple of other execs, they were somehow able to pull $200 million in compensation out of FNM just before the entire system imploded.

The history books, if they are written with a modicum of the truth, will remember these Democrat henchmen as the linchpins of the housing meltdown.