Why The Reagan Recovery Was Much More Impressive Than Obama's

James Pethokoukis, The American Enterprise Institute Blog

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-reagan-recovery-was-much-more-impressive-than-obamas-2012-1#ixzz2jOpJoXeiMy pal Joe Weisenthal over at Business Insider just wrote a piece – in response to a post I wrote earlier today — with the delightfully provocative and contrarian headline, “Why The Obama Recovery Has Been Much More Impressive Than Reagan’s.”
Nope, I’m not making this up. See for yourself.
Let’s be perfectly clear, the Reagan Recovery (RR) has been far stronger than the Obama Recovery (OR). I think that is beyond dispute, really.
– In the first ten quarters of the OR, GDP is up a total of 6 percent. During the first ten quarters of the RR, GDP rose 15 percent.  Point for Reagan.
– In the first ten quarters of the OR, the economy created 790,00 jobs. During the first ten quarters of the RR, the economy created 7.5 million jobs  Point for Reagan, especially given the U.S. workforce is a third bigger today than it was in the early 1980s.
– In the first ten quarters of the OR, real disposable personal income rose at an annual average pace of 0.8 percent. During the first ten quarters of the RR, real disposable personal income rose at annual average pace of 5.4 percent. Point for Reagan. Game. Set. Match.
But Brother Weisenthal is making a subtler, more subjective point. He is arguing that, for a number of reasons, the Obama Recovery is more impressive than the Reagan Recovery. Not stronger, more impressive because Obama was dealt a worse hand. Among Weisenthal’s points:
1. “There are at least some economists who argue that post-financial crisis economies experience unusually slow growth for years and years.”
Me: Indeed, there are. But there are also some who disagree.  A Federal Reserve study released last November found the following:

Whether a recession is associated with a banking or financial crisis does not have a statistically significant effect on the pace of growth following recession troughs. … Banking and financial crises are associated with more severe recessions – deeper in the case of emerging market economies and longer in the case of the advanced economies – but do not appear to impose additional restraint to recoveries beyond the depth and duration.

2. “The problem is that Pethokoukis is … defining housing bust purely in terms of housing construction, while ignoring the real elephant in the room: The collapse in home prices, and the knock-on effects it has had on the economy.”
Me: I don’t disagree that the “knock on effect” such as loss of wealth may well be a drag on growth. That Fed study makes the same point:  … “recoveries from recessions associated with severe housing downturns are found to be slower.” Well, there is a difference between slow and virtually non-existent, right? Again, the Reagan  Recovery 10-quarter growth rate was 6 percent vs. 4.6 percent for the average post-WWII recovery vs. 2.4 percent for the Obama Recovery. And
And the impact of a deleveraging and a reverse wealth effect are not as clear as Weisenthal contends. Note that personal consumption as increased for 10 straight quarters and the savings rate remains extraordinarily low. But I think this chart, from the NY Times, raises big questions about the deleveraging argument:

Where is the deleveraging? It looks like debt has shifted from private to public. Let me quote a Michael Pento piece from BI, of all places: “Although it is certainly true that after decades of overly speculative borrowing, individuals and corporations are paying down debt, rebuilding their savings, and generally repairing their respective balance sheets. But these activities cannot be faulted for our economic malaise. In fact, as a country, we haven’t deleveraged at ALL. All the moves made by the private sector have been vastly outpaced by the federal government’s efforts to add leverage to the economy.”

3. If you really want an apples-to-apples comparison, it’s hard to fathom why Reagan doesn’t have to answer for a recession happening so soon on his watch, and why he only gets measured on those two years. What’s mor …  the 1984-1988 period was pretty average, so we’re really just talking about two years of really impressive morning-in-America growth.
Me: I think Paul Volcker cranking interest rates through the roof might have had a role in the recession as he attempted to squeeze out the inflation of the 1970s. The 1981-82 recession was the culmination of really 16 years of economic mismanagement. One sign of this: The Dow industrials fell by two-thirds when adjusted for inflation from 1966-1982. (From 1983-1988, the S&P composite notched a real return of 13 percent a year.) The entire previous decade marked by tremendous economic volatility, high unemployment,high inflation. Reagan inherited a mess.
As for GDP growth, it averaged 4.4 percent from 1983-1988 vs. roughly 3.3 percent since WWII. So I am pretty sure growth was markedly above average.  A recent IMF forecast, by the way, predicts sub-3 percent US GDP growth through 2016.

4. “We could of course go on, and point to several other factors in Obama’s favor, such as the fact that tax rates had already been lowered quite a bit heading into his presidency, taking away one easy form of stimulus, or the fact that a major trading partner, Europe, has been in crisis virtually the whole time of Obama’s Presidency, or the fact that Obama faced a Congress who threatened to cause the U.S. to default, or the fact that interest rates were ultra-low already, again taking away one form of stimulus from Obama.”
Me: Gosh, I wonder what U.S. GDP growth would have been in the 1980s had China been the second largest economy in the world growing at 10 percent a year, boosting global growth. Instead, it was the stagnating Soviet Union in the number two spot.  In the 1980s, one-third of the planet lived under communism sapping all that human vitality and creativity (and trade) out of the world economy. And I am not sure about JW’s point about taxes and interest rates. Is he saying that Obama has a much more constructive tax and rate environment and still couldn’t get the economy cooking?
 Bottom line: People were amazingly pessimistic heading into the 1980s after the economically tumultuous 1970s. America seemed to be in decline both economically and militarily. And corporate America was desperately in need of restructuring. (Thanks, Bain!) Obama inherited a much healthier non-financial private sector.
This is what the American people had just gone through, by the way (via MeasuringWorth):

Imagine going back in time and showing these economic statistics from the next 25 years:

Growth up, stocks up, inflation down. Oh, and the Soviet Union gone. Safer, Stronger. Better. Instead of the Soylent Green future of diminished expectations people were predicting in the 1970s, we got something more like the shiny, growthy one shown in Back to the Future II.
Obama has some big shoes to fill.

This post originally appeared at The American Enterprise Institute Blog. Copyright 2013.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-reagan-recovery-was-much-more-impressive-than-obamas-2012-1#ixzz2jOp2ldK2

No Deal Pending on Sequestration, Because of the Opportunity it Presents

Joe Scarborough got it got it right, when he said that America won't remember the Sequester of 2013 "as some cataclysmic fiscal event", but when he goes on to say about the Republicans that "you would think its leadership would have taken to heart Mr. Obama’s warnings and struck a deal before their abysmal approval ratings sank even lower", he fails to see the point.  Obama had absolutely no intention of striking a deal.  These cuts after all, amount to a paltry 2% of PROJECTED spending (which is always a MINIMUM of 3% higher than the previous year).  As the former White House Chief of Staff to the President, Rahm Emanuel used to always say, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste".  This issue literally presents the President with yet another opportunity to slam the Republicans and get more public support for his programs, his methods, his tax increases and so on.  So what was Obama's end game?  Blow this up to an issue, even though he knew it's a non issue, then blame the Republicans!

 

Think about it, Joe himself reported on how the Republicans wanted to give the President control over exactly what would be cut, yet he refused?  Not only did he refuse, he actually threatened to VETO any bill that gave him that kind of authority and responsibility!  Why would he do this?  Simple, the President doesn't want ANY cuts whatsoever, no matter how small and no matter how much waste is pointed out, but more importantly he wants to have another issue to beat up the Republicans over.  The plan is to hype up the damage to the economy over the next year so the Republicans lose in the Midterm elections.  Obama ends up with Nancy Pelosi in charge of Congress again and he can go back to pushing things like his Climate Change agenda and other tax increases.

Boyfriend, You Know When It's Over

For 600,000 Germans - Green Energy Is Just Too Expensive

Hundreds of thousands of households in Germany can not pay their electricity bills anymore and are therefore suspended from the grid. The rising prices of the energy transition have exacerbated the situation and while some get their Electricity restored, after saving their pennies, on any given day about 600,000 Germans are living without electricity.

Just to give you a comparison of how high German rates are, consider this.  At the end of this article it says that they're looking to keep rates at around 3.6 cents per KW.  This translates to roughly 4.5 cents per KWh.  Here in South Florida we pay 0.08527 per KWh for the 1st 1000KW, then it JUMPS to 0.105234 once you go over.  Now, there's also an additional $5.90 Billing fee, but either way the German rates are at least FOUR TIMES what we're paying here in the U.S.  Kind of like how Obama PROMISED that our Electricity rates would sky rocket under his policies.  Let's all thank GOD he hasn't had a chance to implement most of those policies!

Many people in Germany can not pay their electricity bills. And energy prices continue to rise unabated. The President of the Association of Social VdK, Ulrike Mascher, accuses the federal government of not properly thinking through the social dimension of it's energy policy.

"For low income households, the rising electricity costs is more than they can handle," said the head of Germany's largest social group. The board of the Consumer Rhine-Westphalia, Klaus Mueller estimates: "Ten to 15 percent of the population struggling to finance the ever-rising energy costs."

Each year, hundreds of thousands of households are disconnected from the grid, because they can't afford it any longer, and while many get their power restored, many endure weeks and even months with no power.

Renewable Energy Leaves Many Poor Germans with No Power

Here are low-income earners and pensioners even more than the recipients of Government low cost heating programs. "Previously, energy poverty was a marginal phenomenon, but now it has become for many an everyday issue," said Mueller.

According to the survey of consumer protection at the utility is locked at around 600,000 households per year due to unpaid bills of electricity.Mainly due to the strong expansion of renewable energy sources, electricity prices had increased in 2011 by around ten percent.

400 energy suppliers have raised prices

According to a survey of the price comparison portal Verivox.  The figures show that already some 400 utilities in the first half of 2012 their prices by an average of 3.5 percent, have raised or announced plans to do so. In the coming year is likely to be Verivox specification, inflation accelerated again. "For the foreseeable increase in network charges and the EEG surcharge, you can expect price increases of about 4.6 percent," said a spokesman Verivox.

According to the newspaper "Welt am Sonntag" from the federal policy would be if only the so-called EEG surcharge to subsidize the consumers with the supply of green electricity in the coming year once again clearly today 3.6 to up to 5.2 per cent kilowatt-hour increase.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) was announced but not in the past year, the cost burden on consumers by the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) should "not exceed permanently" 3.6 cents per kilowatt hour.

Künast makes the government responsible

The President of the Greens, Renate Künast gives the federal government to blame for the increase in energy poverty. "Black and Yellow has energy-intensive firms in the network charges a massive relief - this loss of revenue drives up costs for consumers and SMEs in the air," said Künast. "This social imbalances are consciously organized."

The FDP's top candidate for the upcoming state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Christian Lindner, accuses the CDU to belittle the problem of rising energy prices. This power remains affordable, it need new coal-and gas-fired power plants and a permanent monitoring of the impact of the Renewable Energy Act.

"If necessary, must be adjusted again here," says Lindner. "In fact, rising energy prices, the economy take the pliers because they increase the one hand, the production cost and limit the other hand, the massive purchasing power of consumers." This is a vicious circle.

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I've tried to clean up the Google Translation, but didn't know where to go with it so I left some part of this article a bit murky.  You can see the original German article here.

http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article106236425/Strom-ist-fuer-viele-Deutsche-unbezahlbar-geworden.html

Obama nearly loses to an inmate?

No, this is NOT a joke.  The President was on the Ballot in West Virginia for the DEMOCRAT Ticket, and an INMATE was able to garner 40% of the vote!  An INMATE.

I just have to repeat this part, because this is the most shocking part about this.  There were no Republicans involved in this.  This was the DEMOCRAT ticket.  It just goes to show you how badly things must be in West Virginia, with the President's war on Coal, for the people over there to nearly choose an incarcerated inmate over the POTUS.

Obama nearly loses to Inmate #11593-051

Obama Still Has No Real Budget Plan

Mr. West was speaking to Laura Ingraham today about how Obama keeps giving speech after speech, yet still provides no leadership when it comes to the Budget.

Today is the one year anniversary of the so called "Summer of Recovery" and yet job growth is still anemic, there's barely any economic growth and unemployment keeps rising.

Unfortunately the President is the victim of believing in the biggest economic fallacy of all time, that you can get something for nothing.  That you can spend money without it taking away from the economy.  It's like believing you can take water out of one side of the pool and increase the level of water at the other side of the pool.  Not only does it not work, but the transfer process itself will cause "water" to be spilled along the way, becoming extremely wasteful.  In the end the water will only be lowered in the pool.  Just as in the end, all this Keynesian spending on the Economy has produced no real gains.

The worst part of the President's demagoguery is the fact that certain things he's raling against, like the Tax Breaks for Private Jets, is something that he himself signed into law!

There's something bigger here though that many feel is completely lost in all this.  While Obama complains about the Bush Tax Cuts (which he supported), and the fact that he inherited a "Mess".  Instead of reversing the direction that Bush was going on, which was the out of control spending, he instead accelerated it!  Obama increased spending by more than any president before in history.  He has the Biggest deficits in history, he's increased spending by well over 1 Trillion dollars per year, yet now, he's talking about 1 trillion in cuts over a ten year period.  Now that's Audacity!

Here's the Audio of the show.

Obama Administration Dismisses Charges against Racists and Bigots

Child's Pay 2 - The Ten Trillion Dollar Sequel

Move On featured an ad a while back where they asked the question. Who will pay for Bush's One Trillion Dollar Deficit. The answer, according to their video was the Children.



Now it seems that RedState has Hijacked the Ad to ask who's going to pay for Obama's Ten Trillion Dollar Deficit!

And here's the Original Ad by Move On....

Our "Road To (Financial) Hell" Is Paved With Gold For The Likes Of George Soros

Commentary
Published: Apr 1, 2009	Share This Article | Most Popular Stories | Site Search

Our "Road To (Financial) Hell" Is Paved With Gold For The Likes Of George Soros
by Vincent Gioia

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the man who President Obama said the United States could not do without despite his record of tax cheating, has come up with the "Big Sham;" a plan to reward fat cat investors who are Democrat supporters (or who will be) at tax payer expense. Geithner's so-called Public-Private Partnership Program is a sham. It's a lie. It supposedly "pairs" government money with private investors' money to buy toxic mortgages from banks but there is no pairing and there's no partnership. Private investors favored by Democrats put up a fraction of the money and get almost all the profits while taxpayers get stuck with almost all the risk.
Here is an example of how this works.
Goldman Sachs (home of many Obama appointees) wants to buy a million dollars of mortgages from a bank for $420,000; Goldman puts up $30,000 and Treasury puts up $30,000 but then the FDIC guarantees a loan for $360,000. Goldman gets 93% of the profits while taxpayers (suckers like us) are on the hook for 93% of the risk.
Tens of thousands of defaulted mortgages on tens of thousands of homes are bought giving favored bankers like Goldman Sachs ownership of them by putting up just 7 cents on the dollar. The sub-prime mortgages total more than $2 trillion so this amounts to another huge give-away to politically well-connected bankers.
Looking at the scheme all together: $80 billion goes to make JPMorgan Chase whole on its bad trades; $319 billion goes to Citibank; $300 billion goes to bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; $185 billion to bonus-giving AIG; $29 billion to Bear Stearns; $25 billion to General Motors Finance; $700 billion in currency swaps to other governments and trillions for the TARP, TALF; and other programs that will make bankers who have shown their greed and incompetence wealthy while Obama and Geithner make the rest of poorer.
Although Geithner and Obama are able to fool Americans with the aid of the Democrat news media house organs, the rest of the world is not so gullible.
Recently China's central bank governor joined three other economic giants (Russia, Brazil and India) in calling for the world to abandon the dollar as the world's reserve currency; then the International Monetary Fund said the same thing. As the G-20 meet the US dollar as the international reserve currency is on the agenda there.
As the dollar trends lower against other countries' currencies, people like George Soros make billions. Soros has already said "This has been a good crisis for me," and why not? Soros was able to get 158% profits in just 24 days by buying options that stood to gain when the Euro rose against the dollar. The Euro rose less than a dime but Soros and others like him wound up with huge gains. Add another 74% profits in two weeks with options on the British pound and more profit on just a change of 9 cents – a 77% profit when the pound increased 10.3 cents against the dollar. Now with the size the bailouts and the huge multi-trillion dollar deficits, the US dollar will likely fall even more. The profit potential for the likes of George Soros who gains and adds to his fortune by currency speculation will now, from currency options on stronger currencies, be enormous.
Those with 401 Ks who lost large sums in the market meltdown can attest that no matter how well diversified you are, there are times when the whole stock market goes pretty much straight down, and the same for bonds

and real estate. But that doesn't happen with currency investments because it's mathematically impossible for the US dollar to go down without other currencies like the Euro, Chinese Yuan, or the Canadian dollar going up in equal measure.
Soros knows that in any kind of financial climate, including today's recession/depression currencies can always be found that go up in value. That's not true with almost any other kind of investment.
Geithner is perpetrating a huge lie that will wreck the dollar and is the biggest scam in our history - all for the benefit of wealthy bankers who will be beholden to Obama and the Democrat Party. Even the president of the European Union called these bailouts and other lunatic American policies "the road to Hell." But in this case the road to hell is paved with gold for the fortunate few.
Vincent Gioia is a retired patent attorney living in Palm Desert, California

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Darth Matrix Obama Smith

I came across this video, very entertaining:

Obama Fails the 'Katrina' Test

If you remember the criticisms of the Federal response to Katrina, one of the biggest things was the claims that the Federal Government (President Bush) was "Slow" to respond to the disaster, as thousands of people were living without power and proper living conditions. It seems that there must be a double standard in the main stream media when it comes to the coverage of this kind of news. When it's poor blacks who are the victims, it's national headlines. When it's just plain old regular white Americans, well I guess no one cares. President Bush signed a $10.5 billion relief package within four days of the hurricane. Within 1-2 days of the hurricane, National Guard Troops arrived with relief of food, water, and medicine, and participated in security and rescue operations.

Let's see now that Obama is in charge? A week (Feb 2nd) after the Ice Storm hit the Midwest, particularly Kentucky, is barely getting any federal help. 55 people dead, where was the federal response? As of Friday (Feb. 6th), FEMA says that they are "Coordinating efforts".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not really critisizing Obama, I am however, critisizing the mainstream Media. It seems that when the subject is something that they want to make a big deal of, like the Nations Poor, they will find a way to do it and in a way "generate" their own story. I remember down here in Florida, when Hurricane Andrew hit, it was 5 days before we saw the National Guard, vs in Luisianna it was only 3 days. Weeks had passed before the feds came in with any real help, whereas in Luisiana Bush signed a bill within just 4 days. Jack Kelly wrote a great article about the Federal response to Katrina, where he highlights:

... "The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world histor." ....

He goes on to point out:

Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.

A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?

Truth is, the local mostly Democrat government was much more to blame than Bush was, yet this was never really pointed out by the Agenda driven media.

If Obama had been measured by the same yardstick used to measure Bush, he would have definitely have failed the "Katrina Test".

Obama's Failed Economic Policies

This video that I found probably explains what's going on in the Housing Market better than practically any other one that I've found and it highlights the type of thinking that Obama has when it comes to economic policies. He wants to use Government as a tool to advance the Middle class, when let's face it. Government has NEVER been able to do anything other than get out of the way to help people get ahead. Sure government is useful to keep people from starving and barely provide a living, but when it comes to really improving our lives all of that is squarely in our hands and there's nothing that government can do to make it better. They CAN however make it worse, by taxing and regulating us to death.
What amazes me is that there are actually polls showing that Obama is benefiting from the Housing implosion, even though most of the evidence points to the Democrats mostly being at fault here. As far back as 2004 the Bush Administration tried and failed to regulate these institutions and the Democrats did everything they could to keep those companies from any regulation. McCain picked up on this and has tried again and again in 2005, 2006 and 2007 to regulate these entities but was stopped by the Democrats every time.

One of the primary points of the video is that the CRA is what caused this whole mess, but in truth probably 80 to 90% of the loans didn't fall under the CRA. However, with that said, it was the lowering of the Standards to Accommodate the CRA that allowed the abuses in the system. People used the whole "No Money Down" mentality to buy homes as investments, especially here in Florida where you could basically buy a home "Pre-Construction" for a lower price, and once it's built turn around and sell it for a higher price. Problem was there were too many investors and in the end not enough homeowners to sell to.
Where was Obama in this? Obama actually sued Citibank for not providing enough of these CRA Loans. In addition during the years when McCain was trying to get regulations passed on these institutions, Obama was silent while raking in the cash.
Want more proof of Obama's failed economic policies utilizing Government as a tool of change? Obama's plan to revitalize Chicago's inner cities with Rezko met with utter failure. Most of the homes they built together are today either boarded up or demolished.
What all of this shows is that the supposed "change" that Obama is talking about is nothing but more of the same. More of the same MASSIVE government institutions, more of the same Socialization of the U.S.A. More of the same Washington Potitics controlling markets. More of the same Tax and spend and then when that runs out you go and tax and spend some more. That's not change, it's more of the same failed economic policies!

Smoking Gun - Freddie Mac Spared by Democrats

Here it is, the smoking gun we've been looking for. The proof that everyone needs to see the real cause of the Housing Crisis. How Democrats let bad loans spread like a cancer throughout the financial system bringing it to utter ruin. I've already written about how this all started, back in the Clinton Era, but here's just to show you that it wasn't something where no one knew what was going on, and people were clueless. There were willing and able accomplices to keep the scam on America going. Where's the coverage. Where's the spotlights. Where's CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and their Coverage?
I've seen some of the reviews on this video on YouTube and I was pretty shocked, there are some saying that Obama knew nothing of this and was clueless. First of all, the video shows his own economic adviser defending Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Second, who do you think was first put in charge of finding his VP? Third, Obama was the largest recipient of Political Contributions from these Organizations.

The Proof is clear. Democrats defended these guys so they could rake in their bonuses, then turn around and kick some cold hard cash back to them. Will anything be done about this? With Democrats in charge of congress I doubt it.
McCain knew about this 3 years ago, he led efforts to try to stop it, but with Democrats in charge of Congress, it was practically impossible. Fox News is the only network doing stories on this. Where is everyone else?

Barrack Obama - The Media Love Fest Continues

I was poking around the Internet when I stumbled across this video by 60 Min. and my jaw nearly dropped to the ground. In an interview with Barrack Obama, 60 min. highlighted the fact that Joe Biden hammered on his lack of experience, Hillary Clinton hammered on his lack of experience and now John McCain is hammering on his lack of experience. 60 min. then went on to say "does the fact that he chose someone as his vice president someone who has less experience than you take that weapon out of his arsenal?"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing!! I had to rewind that several times to make sure I heard it correctly! The interviewer is talking to a man who has done absolutely nothing with his life. Well, other than spend about a Million a day of your money on Pork and his trying to get money for his wife's Hospital (where she received a hefty raise thank you very much). He hasn't run any companies, hasn't run a town a city a state, absolutely zero executive experience and the man is actually suggesting that a sitting governor somehow has less experience than he has!?!

Not only is Sarah Palin a sitting Governor, but in the short time she's been running Alaska, (a state with a population fairly equal to Joe Biden's State) she's cut wasteful spending in Alaska even though the state's awash in Petro Dollars. The type of fiscal conservative needed in Washington. In addition, Palin has eliminated fraud, busted up scams and hasn't been afraid to take anyone on, including members of her own party. What has Obama done? Nothing, absolutely nothing, other than his ethics bill of course. However, let's examine Mr. Obama on Ethics. Did his ethics bill stop him from taking massive amounts of Cash from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Is that why he didn't want to go along with John McCain when McCain called for their reform 2 years ago? Apparently Obama talks about ethics reform, while McCain actually tries to make it happen. McCain's bill was defeated, but apparently he was right.

The Competing Plans to Destroy America

I was reading the Huffington Post today when I saw this article about how McCain's list of 300 Economists are filled with Skeptics. They were talking about how most of these guys didn't even like McCain, but the truth is, and what they didn't say was that they probably liked Obama even less.

In an era where Congress gets an approval rating of just 9%, the lowest ever recorded people are realizing more and more that Congress, our Candidates and everyone in between in Washington is just in it for themselves.

While the Presidential Candidates might not be in this for themselves, both of them have clearly forgotten that Capitalism has made this country great. Both of them clearly need to read "How Capitalism Saved America" by Thomas Dilorenzo, and "The Myth of Robber Baron" by Burton W. Folsom. Maybe then, they can gain a clear understanding of why America is greater than Europe, and more economically and militarily powerful than any other nation on this planet.

In the mean time, let's take a look at just how each one of these guys is competing to destroy America shall we.

McCain:
John McCain's Cap & Trade system is like a Millstone around the neck of a drowning man. This is a system that would absolutely devastate the U.S. economy by imposing a 3.2 Trillion dollar taxing aparatus that would reduce GDP by anywhere from 1 to 2.8 Trillion by 2050. What that means is if you divide the median figure by our population, you're looking at over $6000.00 for every man woman and child in this country in lost wages and, or extra fees paid to energy producers. The worst part of this is that the whole Global Warming theory is based upon faulty data that is only now seeing the light of day. Most won't bother to tell you that the current warming cycle actually started back in the 1600's at the end of the "Little Ice Age". There are even those saying that Global Warming has ended. Think gas and electric bills are high now? Just wait for Cap & Trade!

But wait, there's MORE:
McCain's immigration policy is something that leaves much to be desired. While I agree that we should do something about the Millions who live here illegally, the very first thing we need to do is to secure our borders and then, only then will we be able to go ahead and provide some sort of integration program for the people living here illegally, otherwise, you're just encouraging this problem to continue. The truth is, we can't solve problems with Health Care, Education and other issues without first addressing one of the biggest drains on those resources.

Just ONE other thing that bothers me:
I wonder what McCain would say if someone told his Wife, that her Beer company had to come up with a non-alcoholic Wine alternative to beer? He would probably say, "It's her company, she's in the business of producing Beer, not Wine. In that same vein, why is he chastising Oil companies for not producing alternatives to hydrocarbons? Also, why is he chastising them for earning a mere 8% return on investments, when Banks are earning 18%, Software 25% and many other industries earning much more? Government taxes actually take up much higher percentages of what we pay for Gas than anything else, and I'm sure Regulations add quite a bit to that figure as well. What bothers me is that again, he shows that he doesn't have a clue as to how this country runs and what makes it great. Comments like these don't show leadership, they show pandering to the left and pandering to those who don't understand the issues.
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Barrack Obama:

Where do I even start. When it comes to everything I've just said, his plans are equally as devastating to the economy as McCain's, and even worse. To top it off, his repeal of the Bush Tax cuts will raise the average tax paying families taxes by at least 10%. To many people, they don't quite understand this because they have the Government withhold say $5,000.00 from their income, owe $4500.00 in taxes, and get back $500.00 at the end of the year, so they think they're ahead. Those guys don't realize that they can now forget about that $500.00, it now belongs to Obama and company.

To top it off, most people don't realize that the Bottom 50% in America only pay just over 3% of all income taxes collected, the top 50% pay almost 97%, so this claim on his website that he will "completely eliminate Income Taxes for 10 Million Americans" is a farce, they already pay either nothing or next to nothing. In addition, why should Senior citizens making $49,000.00 a year not have to pay any taxes, when a single Mom with children to feed and cloth, she does have to pay taxes under the Obama plan. I'll tell you why, because since Seniors vote in much larger groups then younger people, this is an outright attempt by Obama to buy their vote. Back to the same old Class Warfare that Democrats are so good at.
It only gets worse, the top 2% that Obama is talking about already pay about half of all income taxes collected. While you may not wish to cry a tear for them, since hell, they are the top 2% right? Well, most of those same top 2% own the small businesses that provide 65% of all the jobs in the U.S. It only stands to reason that the more cash you take away from these guys, the less cash they will have to provide new jobs, and small business is the engine that drives the U.S. Economy, thanks for throwing a wrench in there Obama.

Oh and here's the Good part:
In addition to higher taxes on the top 2%, Obama's also promoting the elimination of the caps on Social Security. This means that a small employer will have to substantially increase what he's now paying to Social Security, especially if that small business has some professionals on his staff who earn more than the Social Security cap, which again means less incentives to hire more.

Stance on Energy & Trade:
Up until 2005, the U.S. was the worlds largest exporter, and the only reason we've fallen behind to 3rd place, was because of the fall in the value of the U.S. dollar in 2005, that continued through 2006, 2007 and 2008. The biggest reason for the fall in the Dollar started with the Dollar sell off in Europe because of the new Euro Currency displacing dollars, but more recently, the dollar has been more and more affected by our imports of Oil, which are projected to be at over a HALF TRILLION a year at current prices or just under half of all our exports. We are literally giving away America's wealth to the Oil producers of the world. What's Obama's stance on more Oil production? Dr. No! Relying on the fantasy of Solar Power and Wind is not a viable solution, these technologies currently cost up to ten times more than hydrocarbons (Oil & Gas), and while yes, they will become less expensive in the future, the goal seems to be to make hydrocarbons cost more, instead of getting alternatives to cost less. Which means we can expect even higher electric bills and gas prices.

What's Obama's stance on trade, more protectionists policies, even though we've had a net gain in Jobs from NAFTA and our other trade agreements, Obama instead chooses to pander to fears instead of facts, that somehow we're getting the short end of the stick. Yes, some people do lose jobs with some of these agreements, but for the most part, more new jobs are created than the ones that are lost. Free trade is one of the reasons the U.S. has some of the lowest levels of unemployment in the world. In the EU, they celebrate that their unemployment is "only 7.1%, here that would be a disaster!

Big Government Spender
Obama is all about investments, and his website is chock full of "We will invest in this and invest in that" so of course, where the heck is all this cash going to come from? The government budget is already almost 2.8 Trillion Dollars, a 13 fold increase since 1970, so how much more do we have to pay in taxes? There's only so much you can take away from the private sector before all the cash starts to disappear. Just like in the 70's when the top rate was 75%, people just won't bother to make the money, if they know they just have to hand it all over to Uncle Sam. That will leave me and you with the bill.

Bob Barr:
Sure Bob Barr the Libertarian candidate is running for president, but they've got the whole thing ass backwards. When the Republicans wanted to take on the Democrats and the Wigs back in the 1800's, they didn't say "Hey, we're going to run Abe Lincoln here for prez. No, they built up a solid grassroots support network, got support from others who wanted to end slavery and give non-landowners the right to vote, along with support for land for the Poor programs. One they had their platform in place, they got congressmen elected, took over a good deal of seats in the house, and then, only then did they field their presidential candidate. The rest is history, the Wigs ended up joining the Republicans and ceased to be a party. However, the Libertarians seem to want change from the top down, instead of from the bottom up.

It doesn't matter that I support almost every issue that the Libertarians have, even if Bob Barr were to win the election, no one in congress or the senate will work with him, so what's the point. He'll have zero political capital to spend and won't get anything done.

So that's it folks, that's our choices:
Which candidate will do his best to destroy America and ruin the foundations on which she was built upon? Do we take:
Dumb or Dumber?

Michelle Obama's Not for Profit Hospitals' "Windfall Profits"

I was browsing around the Internet when I came across this Website, ObamaTruth.org. I always felt that Obama was disingenuous, but WOW, I was completely unaware of this:
The big problem I have with this is that Obama is talking about having the Government take over the Oil business because of Price Gouging, while Oil companies are making less than an 8% markup. In the mean time, Obama's Wife's Hospital:

1. Marks up their services to the Uninsured by over 350%
2. Is supposed to be Non Profit, but instead earned over 100 Million Dollars!
   
3. DOESN'T provide the uninsured a discount (despite windfall profits).
4. Spends 10 Million dollars a year on collection agents, despite windfall profits and non-profit status!
   
5. Former CEO walked away with 4.58 million in compensation.
6. Did nothing when the hospital refused to give more Charity Care, in light of Windfall Profits.
7. Michelle Obama received a MASSIVE 200K raise, to over 300K a year!
   
8. Finally, Obama has accepted over 100 Thousand Dollars in Campaign contributions over the past several years.

I decided to start digging for more though, and here's what I found:

1. Michelle Obama's raise actually propelled her salary past other VP's who had been there FAR Longer then she had.
2. Of the 98 Million in Earmarks that Obama has spent of your tax payer dollars, 1 Million went to the Hospital for a proposed pavilion. (This is a Hospital who had over 100 Million in profits, while it's a Non Profit Hospital!)
3. Obama's wife's hospital is also involved in a nasty lawsuit where the uninsured are claiming that they were not only incredibly overcharged for their stays there, but that they relentlessly hounded them for the money, while their supposed to be a Non Profit!

I've expressed my views on Health care, but for someone who claims to be for the Poor and the Middle class, Obama seems to have absolutely no regard for them, at least when it comes to his and his wife's profits!