ObamaCare Amnesia......remember the claims?

Hard to believe that just 6 short months the country was furiously embroilled in the ObamaCare debate. Public opinion polls showed that over 60% of Americans wanted nothing to do with it. Nonetheless, key members of the house extolled the list of fictional list of benefits, the Pharma industry joined the Whitehouse in selling the benefits, and finally the President called in House members one by one to offer the carrots and sticks necessary to bring votes into line. And at the last moment the plan was deemed to pass in its final form. Read it all here.

'They're betting that between now and November, you're going to come down with amnesia," President Obama told a Milwaukee crowd on Monday, vilifying the Republicans who "helped devastate our middle class." But it seems as if the real case of amnesia—or maybe post-traumatic stress disorder—has struck the Democrats, who are now doing everything they can to help voters forget ObamaCare.

This is a remarkable turn of events for Mr. Obama's major domestic achievement that was also supposed to be a political winner. Facing a grim November, Democrats are now running on another quarter-baked stimulus plan and the specter of John Boehner's perpetual tan, instead of the bill they spent more than a year debating and hailed as the liberal triumph of the century. Democrats now barely mention ObamaCare on the trail—unless they're trashing it.

Which goes to show, Americans didn't like having ObamaCare shoved down their throats, and the taste isn't any better today.

And here it starts! Open the cookie jar!!!!!!

Here come the cookies for everyone!! Now $110B for all those nasty business people, evil profiteers, to heat up the economy.

What happens when all those businesses start to hire people and then make big profits from all the new business. Will Prez Obama them demonize them for being profit driven? Will he then propose new taxes on those profits? The Govt giveth and the Govt taketh away!

Read it all here.

And here it starts! Stimulus II

"If we don't pass my stimulus plan right now, unemployment could go above 8%"

Well Mr. President, we passed that threshold a year ago. And it's still going up.

And now, you just happen to have the magic Elixer for the economy!!!!!

Wow!! Why didn't you bring it out and hawk it earlier???? Oh yeah, had to work on ObamaCare. Oh yeah, had to work on financial reform so no more downturns?

So this is the silver bullet, right? Read it all here.

Just one little question Mr. President? What democrat in congress up for re-election is going to vote for all this new deficit spending?

This is not going to pass, so why all this campaigning????

Is this just an attempt to fire up the languid looney left base? Must be, because this is going nowhere.

"Hail Mary Pass Time": get your bullshit filter out!

In case you have not noticed, today is September 6, Labor Day. For many of us that is the last day of a nice, long 3 day weekend.

For the political ruling class it is the first day of the race toward the November elections. And despite all the deniles, the Democrats are in deep, deep do-do.

So, get ready, the Dem's in general and Lord Obama in particular are going to start rolling out a blizzard of proposals to both dazzle and confuse the electorate. Why confuse?

Well, they can't run on their miserable record, they can't debate real ideas because their ideology is both flawed and rejected by the electorate, so they have to use the oldest political trick in the playbook: go buy the votes.

Read some of it here.

Veep Biden: "We're Headed in the Right Direction!"

In case you don't remember the Veep's message, here is a reminder.

Let's take a look at the direction we have been headed in: see the following graphic display.

Yep, can't wait for November!!!!!

From the NYT: Economy options dwindle

According to the NYT; "THE American economy is once again tilting toward danger. Despite an aggressive regimen of treatments from the conventional to the exotic — more than $800 billion in federal spending, and trillions of dollars worth of credit from the Federal Reserve — fears of a second recession are growing, along with worries that the country may face several more years of lean prospects."

Read it all here.

And they are right: the current Obama administration has tried everything THEY know how to do!!!!!!!

But folks we have been here before: it was called Jimmy Carter!

In 1979 we had high inflation, no growth, no jobs, high interest rates, and a demoralized country that was being told from the White House that "this may be as good as it gets".

Ronald Reagen came to office, let a wrenching economic correction take its course to wring out the inflation monster and then slashed marginal tax rates which unleashed the largest economic expansion in modern history. Oh, and by the way, he defeated the Soviet empire in his spare time!

But do not dispare......the current crowd is not out of ideas yet! They are going to let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. They still want ObamaCare to go forward, they still want Cap & Trade, and don't forget their debt commission that will no doubt call for a National VAT tax. Won't all those things do such great good for our economy??????

If we do not start major surgery this November, a couple years down the road we may look back at 2010 as a time of unparalleled prosperity!

Wouldn't that be a pathetic thing!

Jobs: Saved, Created, and DESTROYED!

While the Obama administration is busily crunching the fictional numbers of jobs saved or created, Americans will probably be more interested in this compilation of jobs destroyed as chronicled by Michelle Malkin here.

For example;

They’re employees of companies like Assurant Health, which announced last week that it would slash 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., to prepare for costly Obamacare mandates.

They’re employees of medical-device firms in Massachusetts, where officials say they’ll be forced to cut back on operational costs and jobs thanks to a little-noticed Obamacare tax on their products that goes into effect in 2013.

They’re employees of such restaurants as White Castle and International House of Pancakes, whose executives say they will be forced into layoffs and premium hikes to cope with the federal law’s $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

They’re mom-and-pop enterprises across the country that must now deal with Obamacare’s onerous Section 9006 tax-filing mandate. It requires them to file 1099 forms with the IRS for every vendor from whom they purchase $600 or more in goods. Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) calls it one of many “job-crushing provisions” that will bury small business in paperwork and legal costs.

They’re the estimated 23,000 workers in the deepwater-drilling industry whom the White House deliberately wrote off in pursuit of its junk-science-based drilling moratorium.

They’re the estimated tens of thousands of workers employed by car dealers shut down by Obama’s auto czars at a time, as the TARP inspector general pointed out last month, “when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs . . . all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact.”

They’re employees of Utah oil and gas companies whose leases have been pulled without cause by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Interior Department’s own inspector general rejected Salazar’s explanation that the Bush administration had rushed the leases through. The Deseret News reports that “rescinding these leases has likely cost the state millions already. Officials in Uintah county estimate the county lost 3,000 jobs in 2009, and Duchesne lost 1,000 jobs.”

They’re employees of commercial and recreational fishing businesses in New England, who have organized a flotilla on Martha’s Vineyard on Thursday to protest the Obama administration’s restrictive environmental policies and stealth regulatory ocean grab.

"It's Fiscal Child Abuse!!!"

Turn up the speakers and watch this video!!

Hat Tip: Wilma R

Don't forget the Oldies to catch up on Today

According to a Library of Congress survey, Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in America. It is required reading in management training at BB&T, the 12th-largest bank in the U.S. and one that resisted taking TARP bailout funds. Since the Obama administration took office, Atlas Shrugged has been making a renaissance with rising sales and library waiting lists, partly because it explains our current economic woes more straightforwardly than most of what we hear from today's experts.
What happened in Ayn Rand's narrative is coming to pass today, with an anti-business administration reviling private industry, capitalizing on crisis to expand and redirect investment within and between sectors of the economy — setting quotas, prices and compensation. Businesses responded by retrenching — ceasing to invest, innovate and expand. Whole industries contracted, closed down, or moved offshore; much like the U.S. gas and oil drilling industry is doing today. Then, just as now, management became frustrated and discouraged, reluctant to create jobs in an environment of excessive government meddling.

While the private sector shed nearly 8 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, the federal government increased its payroll by 240,000 jobs. So the private sector that is the primary source of national wealth has been shrinking while supporting a growing public sector that generally produces nothing. That burden is made greater by the fact that government workers have incomes 30% higher and benefits 50% more costly on average than those received by equivalent private-sector workers.

Read it all here and maybe in the book too!

Deja Vu

Remember way back in 2008 and The Housing Crisis? Well, who can forget! Here it is 2010 and we STILL have a housing crisis......a housing crisis built on bad loans, bad loan policies, and bad political policy that in essence said it is a fundamental right to own a home.

So we put a lot, a whole lot, of people into homes who could not afford them. And we let a lot, a whole lot, of people speculate in real estate who had no business doing so. And who greased the wheels for this? Freddi and Fannie.

So did we learn our lesson from this disastor? Apparantly not, because we are at it again, read it all here.

Faced with the utter failure of its TARP funded mortgage bailout, the Obama administration is now turning to the left’s old stand-in for housing market interference: the government-sponsored entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae is now working with the National Council of State Housing Agencies to let people buy houses with little or no down payment just like the GSEs did at the height of the housing bubble. And last week, Freddie Mac was also promoting no-down payment loans, this time through an array of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs. All this despite the fact that last week Fannie Mae announced it lost $1.2 billion in the second quarter of this year, and this week Freddie Mac announced a $4.71 billion loss. Both companies were also forced to ask for more Obama bailout cash, including $1.5 billion of your tax dollars for Fannie and another $1.8 billion for Freddie.

No wonder the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill did nothing about Fannie and Freddie; the Obama administration had every intention of continuing to use them to prop up the housing market. These programs will do nothing but delay the inevitable housing market correction. Instead of letting the market sort out what these homes are really worth, the Obama administration is only prolonging economic hardship by making it harder for new home buyers to afford a moderately priced home and making it harder for those who need to move for work to sell their current homes.

Two Wrong/Bad Policies do not make the Economy Right.

What will it take to make the States Adopt Secession?

Not only is Washington DC suing Arizona over immigration. They are pushing the stimulus programs and hijacking state budgets in the process. Read it all here.

Standing with teachers yesterday in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Obama said, "We can't stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe." Maintaining the salaries and generous benefit plans for members of teachers unions is indeed a top Democratic priority. That's why $10 billion of the bill's funding is allocated to education, and the money comes with strings that will multiply the benefits for this core Obama constituency.

Specifically, the bill stipulates that federal funds must supplement, not replace, state spending on education. Also, in each state, next year's spending on elementary and secondary education as a percentage of total state revenues must be equal to or greater than the previous year's level.

Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi did the math and figured out his state will be worse off. Mr. Barbour says the bill will force his state "to rewrite its current year [fiscal 2011] budget. Preliminary estimates of the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration show that we will now have to spend between $50-100 million of state funds—funds that must be taken away from public safety, human services, mental health and other state priorities and given to education—in order for an additional $98 million of federal funds to be granted to education. There is no justification for the federal government hijacking state budgets, but that is exactly what Congress has done."

So guess who gets to clean up the state's budget books when things go south? The state's taxpayers of course.

This Federal Government is out of control. It needs to be stopped.

Local Govt's cut services to deal with budget pinches

Local Governments do not have the lavish streams of revenue they had just a few years ago, read it all here. Property tax revenues are stagnant or falling. Citizens will not approve new taxes, and depopulation or foreclosures have hit hard.

Cities by and large still seem to be resorting to old tricks to punish voters who won't fork over more money to finance bloated city budgets.

The typical response from City Hall is to declare "the budget has been cut to the bone" and start laying off teachers, police, firemen, or cutting back on libraries, street lights, or sanitation workers. Note that administrations never get cut, pensions don't get cut, benefits don't get cut as those are "obligations".

The voters need to send clear signals to their local governments on what they think are "obligations" or not. I bet the voters have a different take on that.

The Wizards of Central Planning

Question: it's campaign time. How do you make your anti-business appear to be pro-business for campaign purposes?

Well, you fly all over the country touting your new Small Business Loan Program. People clap, cheer and go home.

The small business folks you supposedly are trying to help (actually you are trying only to help yourself) take a look at your program and say "no way!". Why is that?

Read it all here.

And if you've been paying attention over the last 18 months, you're probably asking, what's the catch?

Glad you asked: most of the tax cuts are so narrowly targeted as to be economically trivial. The list includes bonus depreciation, small business expensing and a temporary zero capital gains tax rate for small business start-ups. These would be in place for a year or two and then vanish, which means they'll do little to change business behavior.

The bill authorizes Treasury to purchase up to $30 billion of stock in small, community banks across the country. The banks in turn would agree to issue as much as $300 billion in loans to small businesses that they wouldn't otherwise lend to.

Here's the best part: The whiz kids at the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that this program will raise $1.1 billion for the federal government. So there really is a free lunch.

The false assumption here is that banks are reluctant to lend because they lack the capital. This ignores that small business lending is also down because the business demand for loans is weak. Businesses don't typically expand when Washington is raising dividend, capital gains and personal income tax rates while piling on the new costs of ObamaCare and other regulations.

So what is the bottom line for all t his bureaucratic sleight of hand?

The tax cut in this bill will provide $12 billion in relief over 10 years. The tax increase that Mr. Obama favors for 2011 would raise what the Joint Committee on Taxation figures will be $600 billion of revenues, about half of which comes from the coffers of small business. So the tax hikes, which are permanent, are about 50 times larger than the tax cuts, which are temporary. And the Obama Administration wonders why some people think this President is antibusiness.

More Hope than Change.............

Lies, Lies, and Damnable Lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obama's so-called Debt Commission is providing a perfect illustration how the politics of Washington are toxic to the survival of this nation. It does not matter whether we are talking about Democrats or Republicans, when the game is pure politics, the good of the Nation is certain to suffer. Read it all here, but here are some of the tidbits;

The co-chairmen of President Obama's debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation's fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer "that will destroy the country from within" unless checked by tough action in Washington. We need a commission to know this?

There are many who hope we fail," Simpson said at the closing session of the National Governors Association annual meeting. He called the 18-member commission "good people with deep, deep differences" who know the odds of success "are rather harrowing Actually we don't know why you exist except to provide Obama with political cover after the November elections to ram through a VAT tax

And my favorite,

Bowles said that unlike the current economic crisis, which was largely unforeseen before it hit in fall 2008, the coming fiscal calamity is staring the country in the face. "This one is as clear as a bell," he said. "This debt is like a cancer Who are you kidding, lots folks were horrified at the Fannie and Freddie mortgage lending practices which created the housing bubble and enriched their executives by fraudulent bookkeeping.

And then the coup de grace;

Bowles and Simpson said the commission would have had a stronger hand politically had it been created by Congress, rather than through an executive order. Simpson was pointed in his criticism of seven Republicans who once co-sponsored such a measure but who helped block it in the Senate.

"As far as I can discern, it was to stick it to the president," Simpson said

Ahhhhhh, you see, poor President Obama, he was just a victim!

This is nothing more than a soap opera of epic proportions, get the tissues out, it is bitter tears time........

The Constitution of the United States is our roadmap out of this mess. For these clowns to insult a gathering of the governors of the United States with this tripe is ego at the highest level.

Economic growth anemic at best..........

Economic growth in the first quarter was finally revised to a tepid 2.7% reports the AP.

The real disappoint comes here, "Economists anticipate even slower growth ahead as companies bring their stockpiles more in line with sales. Factory output has climbed this year. But it was driven more by businesses replenishing their warehouses after the recession and less by consumer demand.

"The economy is growing, but still at a disappointingly slow pace," said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities. Take away businesses restocking their inventories and "you still have a lukewarm recovery," he said."

Now add this to a previous story about massive tax increases coming out way next year and it is hard to believe that we will not see a crushing double-dip recession.

Strap in and get prepared

Do we need a Balanced Budget Amendment? No!

There has been a lot of talk over the years about a Balanced Budget Amendment, for example, this article from the Heritage Foundation.

But as others point out, current Amendment proposals do not have the power or teeth to really solve the problems, see here for example.

Specifically, any budget resolution, Paygo, or Amendment that seeks to control spending bill, by bill, by department, whatever, probably will not work for two reasons;

1. Politicians will find a way around the limitations: heck, many lawmakers openly admit "we don't care about the Constitution".

2. You are trying to limit the spending of an organism whose nature is to grow. And it is already so big that snipping bits and pieces of spending here and there make no real progress against the whole.

What I believe we need is a truly radical solution: The Constitutional Federal Government Amendment.

The Constitutional Federal Government Amendment would simply say two things:

1. The Federal Government cannot spend money on those things not delegated to it by the original Constitution of the United States and Amendments thereto.

2. The Federal Government cannot raise taxes from the people of the country beyond those needed to fund its Constitutionally delegated responsibilities.

The point is, we need radical surgery to stop the hemorrhaging of spending that is sucking the vitality out of this country.

And we have the instructions on how to do that: it's called the Constitution of the United States of America.

Take Heed: 2011 will be a Rough Patch

Economic performance which to some folks shows a glimmer of hope right now (despite the horrible May jobs report), is likely to fall off the tracks into a double dip recession for 2011.

How do we know this? Simple, behavorial response to tax policy. Here is what is coming in your future. Read it all here.

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there's always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

This will change people's behavior. For example, According to a 2004 U.S. Treasury report, "high income taxpayers accelerated the receipt of wages and year-end bonuses from 1993 to 1992—over $15 billion—in order to avoid the effects of the anticipated increase in the top rate from 31% to 39.6%. At the end of 1993, taxpayers shifted wages and bonuses yet again to avoid the increase in Medicare taxes that went into effect beginning 1994."

So, what is happening in 2010 and what will happen in 2011?

..... if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.

Translation: the feeble gains for 2010 are due to income shifting into this year in anticipation of the tax laws of next year (and sham Census worker hiring).

Watch and prepare for an awful 2011!

Where are the Jobs?

We received the May jobs report as some sort of a shock.......where are the jobs? Only about 10% of the reported created jobs in May came from the private sector. The rest were Census taker jobs. This apparantly is the "Obama Recovery".

As reporte here in the Wall Street Journal, the underlying problems for job creation are well known and have been espoused over and over again:

Almost everything Congress has done in recent months has made private businesses less inclined to hire new workers. ObamaCare imposes new taxes and mandates on private employers. Even with record unemployment, Congress raised the minimum wage to $7.25, pricing more workers out of jobs. The teen unemployment rate rose to 26.4% in May, and for those between the ages of 25 and 34 it rose to 10.5%. These should be some of the first to be hired in an expansion because they are relatively cheap and have the potential for large productivity gains as they add skills.

The "jobs" bill that the House passed last week expands jobless insurance to 99 weeks, while raising taxes by $80 billion on small employers and U.S-based corporations. On January 1, Congress is set to let taxes rise on capital gains, dividends and small businesses. None of these are incentives to hire more Americans.

More bad news: Worst of all, nearly half of all unemployed workers in America today (a record 46%) have been out of work for six months or more.

Remember the promise of Stimulus I: "Employment will not go above 8%"

Imagine if [the Administration] had instead promised in 2009 that Congress could spend nearly $1 trillion, and 16 months later the unemployment rate would be nearly 10% and that more than 2.5 million additional Americans would be without jobs. Would Congress have still spent the cash? Well, sure, Congress will always spend what it can get away with, but the American public would have turned against the stimulus even faster than it has.

The multiplier is an illusion because that Keynesian $1 has to come from somewhere in the private economy, either in higher taxes or borrowing. Its net economic impact was probably negative because so much of the stimulus was handed out in transfer payments (jobless benefits, Medicaid expansions, welfare) that did nothing to change incentives to invest or take risks. Meanwhile, that $862 billion was taken out of the more productive private economy.

This is gross mismanagement of the Economy in the worst way possible. In the private sector such people would be fired immediately!!!! Take note America.

Jobs, Jobs; aren't we in a recovery?????

Nothing like a chart like this to put some perspective into the term "jobless recovery"!

This Week's Stupidest Idea: Gov't takeover of BP

As reported here, Bill Clinton's former labor Secretary said, "We have a national emergency on our hands," Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton's labor secretary, wrote on his website Monday. "No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent."

Reich said a federal takeover of BP is the only way to provide transparency, guarantee competency and ensure Obama is in charge.

Oh Really?????????

1. BP is working night and day to stop the flow and is the only one with the technology to do so.

2. What does Obama bring to the table to improve on BP's effort?

3. Does Obama want to directly grab the reigns of such a disaster? That is not his typical "M.O."

Oh, but the prospect of this is so tantalizing to the left because it would be the realization of another dream: Gov't control of the Oil Industry, another enemy of the State and downtrodden workers everywhere.

More leftist liberal tripe.