Headline of the day, “AP’s media bias” edition
Yes, this is the actual AP headline:
Is GOP trying to sabotage economy to hurt Obama?
Read the intro:
By CHARLES BABINGTON | Associated Press – Sat, May 19, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — Are Republican lawmakers deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama’s re-election chances? Some top Democrats say yes, pointing to GOP stances on the debt limit and other issues that they claim are causing unnecessary economic anxiety and retarding growth.
ObaMao’s big government borrow-and-spend policies have been crap, with no positive results and a plethora of negative results. So Americans elect the GOP to control the House, as their way of expressing displeasure with (among other things) B.O.’s and the Dems’ way of dealing with the economy. So when the Republican House - again, elected by the people to stop Obamanomics - decides to stop the runaway borrow-and-spend Greece-like policies…they’re trying to sabotage the economy?
Um, yeah. They’re trying to sabotage something that hasn’t friggin’ worked in nearly four years, and the AP treats it as though it’s a given that Obamanomics works and those mean ol’ Republicans are trying to “sabotage the economy” just to hurt Obama. Because Obama’s economic policies couldn’t possibly harm Obama…nope, it’s those economy-sabotaging Republicans!
Nope…no liberal media bias!
California named the worst state to do business, for 8th year in a row
Why, it’s almost as if businesses are averse to burdensome regulations and oppressive taxes or something! Almost, that is. Excerpt:
So much for the idea of West is best. In an annual survey, executives ranked California as the worst place to do business for the eighth year in a row.
Chief Executive magazine has only been conducting its survey for eight years. Texas has been top-ranked every year.
The survey considered responses from 650 business leaders, who graded states on factors such as taxes, regulations, living environment and more.
Texas and second-ranked Florida have the highest migration rates in the nation for 2001 through 2009. California has lost 1.5 million people over the same period.
…
Its 10.9% unemployment rate is only lower than Nevada’s and Rhode Island’s. A third of U.S. welfare recipients live in California, the report noted. High state taxes and bundles of red tape make operating a business in the state unaffordable to many companies, critics say.Last year, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs elsewhere — 26% more than 2010. Most chief executives in Silicon Valley said they won’t expand in the state, according to the survey.
Interesting observations here. Note the performance of the red/reddish states…
Also in the top 10: North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Utah.
… and blue states.
California narrowly edged out New York in what the survey called “the ninth circle of business hell,” sharing the bottom five spots with Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan.
I’m sure the crushing regulations and taxes of the blue states have nothing to do with their rankings whatsoever. Right?
“If I wanted America to fail…”
…then I’d vote for Chairman Zero and other members of the Jackass Party.
Axelrod makes the case for voting AGAINST Obama and FOR Romney
Romney’s team is already all over this. Check out this 0:29 video clip:
Wait…what? OMGosh! 
Tweeted Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul: “@davidaxelrod’s right: choice IS btwn growing economy vs continuing down down [sic] road we’re on.”
Dude…I agree with Axelrod on something. I need a shower.
Oh my! Did Obama pay a lower tax rate than his secretary?
President Obama paid a total federal tax rate of 20.5 percent on a gross adjusted income $789,674, a rate that may come in below that of his secretary.
Obama has spent the past week touting the Buffett Rule, which calls on those who make $1 million – just a little more than Obama made – to pay at federal tax rate of at least 30 percent. The rule was inspired by Buffett’s comment that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.
The most recent information about salary regarding Obama’s secretary is for his former secretary, Katie Johnson, who is listed by the White House as having made $90,000 in 2010.
According to Wikipedia, Johnson is 31 years old and now attends Harvard Law School. I don’t know about her personal life or what her deductions would be, so I can’t assume any children or deductions.
On a $90,000 salary, she would pay $16,578 in federal taxes, $3,780 to Social Security, and $1,305 in Medicare taxes.
That adds up to a total federal tax burden of $21,663 on $90,000 in adjusted gross income, or a tax rate of 24 percent, well above Obama’s rate of 20.5 percent, even though Obama’s 2011 salary was nearly nine times the 2010 salary of his secretary.
That blasted 1%-er! LOL!
Obama and the UK want to release oil from their strategic oil reserves
What, the algae isn’t coming along as swimmingly as The One thought it would? Anywho, details:
President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed the possibility of releasing emergency oil reserves during a meeting on Wednesday, two sources familiar with the talks said, the first sign that Obama is starting to test global support for an effort to knock back near-record fuel prices. Obama raised the issue during a broad bilateral meeting at the White House, according to a UK official with knowledge of the discussion.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is intended to buffer against supply problems in the case of a national emergency. In this case, we’ve identified what the “national emergency” really is, via NRO:
The “emergency” would seem to be Obama’s poll numbers. Then again, this seems to be a Democratic candidate tradition; Al Gore called for the same move while running for president in 2000.
Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been sold five times in its history: Most recently in 2011 during the conflict in Libya; in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina; a sale of $227 million worth of oil during fiscal year 1996 to reduce the federal budget deficit; in 1990-1991 during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and a small “test sale” in 1985.
I’m confused, though. Chairman Zero has been telling us that there’s nothing a president can do to affect oil prices. Then why bother doing this, if that’s true? Unless, of course, it’s not policy-based, but #ss-saving-based.
Exit question: If drilling is, as B.O. and his minions absurdly insist, a “faulty short-term solution”, then just what the h3ll is releasing drops from the oil reserve?
Obama’s Energy secretary: Nope, I have no desire to lower gas prices
I don’t want to ever hear a liberal lament gas prices. When Uhhhhh-bama was running in 2008, he said he’d be totally cool with higher gas prices. So when a liberal complains about the cost of fuel, I’d simply remind them that B.O. is only sad that gas is at $4 and not higher.
Anywho, his environut Energy Secretary said he didn’t care about high gas prices. Of course, considering this is the same tool who said he wanted Europe’s ludicrous gas prices here, this should come as no surprise:
High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.
“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.
“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”
There you go. Just keep them tires inflated and get tune-ups, people.
Newt blasted Chu and had some career advice:
“President Obama must announce today in his Nashua address that he is firing Secretary Chu and replacing him with a pro-American-energy appointment,” said a statement from Gingrich, who cited a POLITICO story about Chu’s appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee.
“If he doesn’t, then the American people will know the president is still committed to his radical ideology, which wants to artificially raise the cost of energy,” Gingrich added.
“Yesterday [Obama’s] secretary of anti-energy Dr. Chu literally testified in Congress that he did not favor lowering the price of gasoline, that they had no alternative policy to lower the price of gasoline and that his goal was to get us on to other things,” Gingrich said.
“Dr. Chu is apparently a brilliant scientist,” the Republican presidential hopeful said. “I’m for allowing him to go back to science as rapidly as possible. In fact I suspect the American people would chip in to buy the airplane ticket later on today.”
Oh, here’s a kneeslapper: Chu said he’s been a pretty awesome steward of our money, giving himself a good solid A-. Yeah…an A-minus:
CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.
Throw in the Keystone Pipeline decision, and it’s clear that this administration is lethally hostile to American energy production.
Here’s the thing: These morons think that if gas gets too expensive, people will demand alternative energy. But here’s the thing: we HAVE been demanding alternative energy, since the Carter years (which seem to have apparently returned). But until alternative energy is mass available, fills our energy needs in the same or better ways as fossil fuels, and doesn’t cost us an arm and a leg, it is NOT going to happen! Driving up the cost of energy by refusing to increase domestic oil production is like refusing to get a job (boy, liberals can relate to that, huh?) because you’re waiting to win the lottery: stop wasting your time, because it isn’t going to friggin’ happen!
Please. For the love of God and all that is holy. Get his economic illiterate Marxist ideologue the hell out of our House come November.
UK raises taxes on rich, revenue drops half a billion
When the left gets these fool-brained ideas, the results are always predictable. From Eurotrashland:
The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.
Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.
The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.
And naturally, since B.O. likes to emulate the Euros, he wants to copy their model of economic ignorance and implement it here. Because hey, we just know it will be different here, right?
So the Brits raise the tax rate on the “better-off” to 50%, and wouldn’t you know it, they take their money to more tax-friendly climes? Not only did the UK government NOT get the amount of extra revenue they thought they would…they got less than last year! That’s not even mentioning the fact that the money that was “manoeuvred” is now parked or working elsewhere instead of working in the UK economy.
Atlas shrugging just a little?
Government dependency spikes under Obama
Or, as Pelosi would say, big time economic “bang for the buck”! Details:
The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.
The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.”
The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show.
The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system, along with a sharp rise in food stamps, the study found. …
For those of you on the left, government dependence is a bad thing!
Numbers are racist. Or something.
Obama spokestool: People leaving the workforce is good for the economy
Just so you can understand Liberalese: “unemployment” is bad, but “not working” is good. Got it?
Just when I thought there couldn’t be a bigger fool than Gibbsy, Carney proves me wrong. Observe:
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explained that the number of people dropping out of the work force, which artificially depresses the unemployment rate, can be regarded as an “economic positive.”
“A large percentage of that is due to younger people getting more education, which in the end is an economic positive,” Carney said. “This increase in the number of people leaving the work force has been a trend and a fact since 2000, because of an aging population, which is not to say this is wholly — that’s not to say that I would wholly disregard as an issue.” Carney had been asked about the 19 million underemployed or unemployed Americans, and about people who had left the work force.
Ah, I see. People going to college and racking up massive amounts of student loan debt (which they later march, drum, and push old ladies down steps over having to repay) while earning degrees in such incredibly useful and productive subjects like Women’s Studies or Sanskrit is a net positive for the economy. Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
Anywho, continuing:
“I think some of those who, I suppose, don’t wish us well politically have tried to make a point about this,” he also said. “The facts are that in these most recent numbers, this is not an issue of people leaving the work force; the numbers are positive across the board.”
“This is not an issue of people leaving the work force”? Um, yeah…it is.
So how is the labor force participation rate looking today?
At 64 percent, it is well below the peak of 67 percent during the dotcom bubble, and significantly below the steady state of 66 percent we saw during the 2000s. Given the Baby Boom retirement and other demographic shifts, CBO projections expected it to be declining – 65.3 percent at the beginning of 2012. We are now 1.3 percentage points below that demographic estimate, the equivalent of 3.2 million “missing” workers. If the “missing” people were in the labor force, the unemployment rate today would be 10.4 percent, not the current 8.5 percent.
Look at it this way: if a hospital loses a number of sick people because they died, they could claim the drop in sick patients as a “net positive” for their hospital, right?
NY Times loses $40 million last year
Heh.
It couldn’t be the quality of their newspaper, or lack thereof, now could it? Nah.
Of course, since B.O. is good about doling out money to his constituents, and since Democrats have floated the idea of bailing out friendly fishwraps before, it seems like the Old Gray Hag should go kneel before Chairman Zero and ask for their own bailout. No sense parroting his talking points and polishing his knob for free, right? There’s bills to be paid.
Reuters sees great news in new unemployment numbers; realists, not so much
al-Reuters goes to bat for their boy:
Job growth surges, jobless rate near 3-year low
The economy created jobs at the fastest pace in nine months in January and the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to a near three-year low, giving a boost to President Barack Obama as campaigning heats up ahead of November elections.
Hey, that’s awesome news! Except for the fact that it isn’t:
A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. …
Again, when people stop looking for work because the economy sucks way too bad to be producing jobs at the levels needed to perpetuate a recovery, those people simply aren’t counted against the unemployed. A hospital has a certain number of sick people, but when some of those sick people die, you don’t exactly see the hospital celebrating the drop in the number of sick people there, now do you?
Expect more stories like this: Chairman fiddles while the USA smolders, and the MSM is dutifully doing its part in this election year to get ObaMao re-elected.
California about to run out of cash
But hey, these mouthbreathers want to keep putting Democrats in charge, so with all due apologies to my conservative friends trapped on the Left Coast, my sympathy fuel tank is on fumes right now. Details:
California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today.
The announcement is surprising since lawmakers previously believed the state had enough cash to last through the fiscal year that ends in June.
New state motto: Sure, we’re bankrupt, businesses are fleeing like crazy, our taxes are oppressive, we have rolling blackouts, and no one here speaks English anymore…but hey, at least Republicans aren’t running the show, right?
Obama in SOTU: We partnered with private sector for electric car batteries. “Partner”: We’re filing for bankruptcy.
And ObaMao’s Reverse Midas touch continues:
An Indiana-based energy storage company that received a $118.5 million stimulus-law grant from the Energy Department filed for bankruptcy Thursday.
Ener1 is asking a federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in equity funding. …
The Energy Department, in 2009, approved a $118.5 million stimulus-law grant for EnerDel, a subsidiary of the company that develops lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. The grant was part of a broader program aimed at promoting the development of electric-vehicle battery technology.
President Obama touted the program in his State of the Union address this year.
“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” he said.
The company is now trading for $0.02 per share. That’s our money, going down the crapper for more “green energy” boondoggles.
Please get this jack#ss out in November…we can’t afford four more years of this idiocy.
Warren Buffett and his secretary still misleading America
That poor woman! She has to pay a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss! Yeah, about that…
Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama’s State of the Union speech. She was the President’s chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss.
Bosanek’s prominent role in Obama’s “fairness” campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman? So far, no one has volunteered this information.
…
Insofar as Buffet (like Mitt Romney) earns income primarily from capital gains, which are taxed at 15 percent (and according to Obama need to be raised for reasons of fairness), we need to determine how much income a taxpayer like Bosanek must earn in order to pay an average tax rate above fifteen percent. This is easy to do.
The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an adjusted gross income between $100,000 and $200,000 pay an average rate of twelve percent. This is below Buffet’s rate; so she must earn more than that. Taxpayers earning adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, pay an average tax rate of nineteen percent. Therefore Buffet must pay Debbie Bosanke a salary above two hundred thousand.
We must wait for further details to learn how much more than $200,000 she earns. The tax tables tell us about average ranges. For all we know she earns closer to a half million each year, but that is pure speculation.
Look, that meme has been tackled a billion times. Buffett paid taxes on income, then used that after-tax income to invest…then had to pay taxes again, this time on money generated from his after-tax investments. When your primary source of revenue is from profits resulting from investments made with after-tax income, your tax rate isn’t going to be the same.
Capital gains tax rates are lower, and when they were cut during the 1990′s (reluctantly by Bubba), the stock market ROARED to life as investors flocked to it. As a result of the new influx of investors and investor activity, revenues to the government increased after the capital gains tax rate cut. Wait…you mean cutting taxes increased revenue to the federal government? Yeah, go figure. Turns out that decreasing certain tax rates promotes economic activity and increasing certain tax rates discourages economic activity. Who knew, right?
So, Warren Buffett pays his secretary between $200-$500k a year in salary. Good work if you can get it, I suppose. So I’m thinking that maybe this “my billionaire boss pays a lower tax rate than I do” schtick is just a tad old…and disingenuous. Besides, Warren Buffett is more than welcome to send more money to D.C., but he hires accountants and tax planners to avoid doing just that…all while complaining that he doesn’t pay enough. My turbocharged Hypocrisy Tolerance fuel tank is on fumes, I’m afraid.
Obama promotes tourism by disrupting it
Hey, Mr. President! You’ve just destroyed the Keystone XL pipeline project and thousands of new union jobs. What are you gonna do now?
“I’m going to Disney World.”
No, it’s not another Obama vacation. He’s flying Air Force One down to Orlando this morning on business.
His people say the Democrat has some new ideas on how to increase tourism to Florida and probably the entire 57 states (Heh! – CL) . Naturally, this requires another Obama speech.
And what better place for a campaigning president to go lecture needlessly on improving tourism than the iconic institution that figured it all out decades ago, Walt Disney Resorts?
But here’s the problem with Obama going to Disney’s Main Street: They have to halt all tourism there for him to be seen encouraging more tourism, close the whole place down to tourists for much of the day while he’s there and before. Even Disney employees are being barred.
Seems appropriate that he’s giving us his recipe for economic success in Fantasyland, no?
Bain Capital contributed more money in last six years to Democrats
I look forward to the spin from the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) over this.
Democrats have accepted more political donations than Republicans from executives at Bain Capital, complicating the left’s plan to attack Mitt Romney for his record at the private equity firm.
…
The sums collected by Democrats from managing partners and other senior executives at Bain could hamper the Democratic message that Romney is a corporate raider who does not care about workers, charges based on his record as CEO of Bain.Democrats could be forced to justify attacking Bain — which specializes in buying companies and boosting profitability, often by laying off workers — while accepting campaign funds from the same executives who made the cost-cutting decisions.
“They’re going to have a difficult time explaining why they’re padding their war chest with contributions from the same executives that they’re accusing of hurting jobs,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Right. Because Democrats are loathe to be shameless hypocrites, right?
Where Newt and Perry are really screwing up the “Bain Capital” attacks on Romney
Rush does a better job explaining this than I would, slamming Newt Gingrich over this. He hits Perry, too.
In short: any “conservative” citing a NYT article that blasts a capitalist and in a factually dishonest way sounds more like a liberal (and Rush has the audio of Obama proving the point) can forget my support.
Hopenchange: 2011 closes with debt-to-GDP ratio OVER 100%
Boy, Obamanomics sure is working, huh? Details:
While not news to Zero Hedge readers who knew about the final debt settlement of US debt about 10 days ahead of schedule, it is now official: according to the US Treasury, America has closed the books on 2011 with debt at an all time record $15,222,940,045,451.09. And, as was observed here first in all of the press, US debt to GDP is now officially over 100%, or 100.3% to be specific, a fact which the US government decided to delay exposing until the very end of the calendar year. We wonder, rhetorically, just how prominent of a talking point this historic event will be in any upcoming GOP primary debates. And yes, technically this number is greater than the debt ceiling but it excludes various accounting gimmicks. When accounting for those, the US has a debt ceiling buffer of… $14 billion, or one third the size of a typical bond auction.
Everything this economic ignoramus touches turns to crap. But hey, he is sure is smoov talkin’ wit da Telebinky, so let’s allow him to “finish the job” (his words) of destroying the America he loathes.
Pelosi, basing her lunacy on “economic experts”, claims extending unemployment bennies would “save or create” 600,000 jobs
I tell you, folks, when this wench doubles down on stupid, she really doubles down on stupid.
So, who are these “experts” that get their 600k figure? Well, we know of at least one of these “experts”:
In May 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to a podium in the Capitol to introduce a half-dozen economic experts she had convened for a meeting on how to jump-start the economy. The group had met for several hours with top Democratic leaders, and Pelosi invited them to speak publicly on their perspectives on economic growth.
What Pelosi did not mention is that one of the men in the group was her son’s boss and a partner with her husband in more than a half-dozen investments, including one that generated more than $100,000 in income for the Speaker’s family last year.
It was the fourth time since 2007 that Pelosi had invited San Francisco investment banker William Hambrecht to be part of an economic policy forum on the Hill and the third time she appeared at a podium with him to speak to reporters. At none of those events did the then-Speaker reveal her financial ties to Hambrecht, and House rules did not require her to do so.
Her son’s boss and business partner. Well, hell, why don’t we base all economic decisions on Peloco’s connections, considering their wildly successful track record? Or not.
The best-known Hambrecht/Pelosi partnership is the struggling United Football League.
An October 2009 Washington Post story reported that Paul Pelosi had purchased a team in Hambrecht’s nascent league for $12 million. The article was published four days before Hambrecht participated in another of Pelosi’s economic forums. After that four-hour meeting, Pelosi introduced Hambrecht and several other “leading economists” at a news conference, saying, “They’re going to tell you some of their forecasts that they told us about — some of the options that we may have in investments, in tax policy, in budgetary overview, on how we create jobs in the most fiscally sound way,” according to a CQ transcript.
Again, Pelosi did not mention her family’s investments with Hambrecht.
According to Pelosi’s disclosure form, most of the Hambrecht-linked investments produced losses or very little income last year except for one — an investment worth $5 million to $25 million in an investment firm called Matthews International Capital Management. The firm, partly owned by Hambrecht, specializes in Asian investments and earned Paul Pelosi somewhere from $100,000 to $1 million in income last year. Paul Pelosi also maintained a brokerage account with Hambrecht’s firm last year worth $500,000 to $1 million.
The Pelosis’ son, Paul Pelosi Jr., worked at Hambrecht’s company as an investment banker from July 2009 to September 2011, but a source familiar with his employment said, “He did not work on any investments that his family had through the company.”
The two families have been friends for many years, and the Hambrechts have donated more than $2 million to Democratic campaigns and causes, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Because the best and brightest economists just so happen to be mega donors to Democrats…which I’m sure is totally coinkidinkal, right?
ObamaCare was supposed to produce 400k jobs instantly. Preditcably enough, it didn’t. Paying people not to work is predicted to produce 600k jobs instantly. Ed notes how that is, um, unlikely:
This is a fairly testable hypothesis. The last time Congress extended the jobless benefits was a year ago, in another crunch-time compromise between Republicans and Democrats on Pennsylvania Avenue. Since then, the economy has added about 1.5 million jobs — an average of 125,000 a month, which is only enough to keep up with population growth. Assuming that Pelosi’s correct and we subtract 600,000 from the 2011 numbers, the Obama adminstration’s economic policies would account for growth that falls well below that of population maintenance — at only 75,000 per month.
At some point, Democrats who actually want to work (both of them) will have to accept that liberals are economic illiterates of the highest order.
DNC Chair Debbie lies, insists unemployment has NOT gone up under Obama
Video clip must be seen to be believed:
Ed runs the numbers:
- Jobless rate in January 2009: 7.8%. Jobless rate in November 2011: 8.6%.
- Number of employed in January 2009, in thousands: 133,563. In November 2011: 131,708
- Civilian participation rate in January 2009: 65.7%. In November 2011: 64.0%
- Unemployment level in January 2009, in thousands: 11,984. In November 2011: 13,303
- Number of people not in labor force, January 2009, in thousands: 80,554. In November 2011: 86,558
Whatshername-Schmuck is trying to argue that last month’s drop in unemployment means that unemployment has not gone up under Uhhhh-bama. That’s like running your credit card up from a balance of $0 to a balance of $10,000, then you pay the balance down to $9,000. “See? The debt didn’t go UP…it went DOWN a thousand bucks!” Um, no…it went DOWN a grand after you ran it UP nine grand. And you’re proud of that measley one grand?
Additionally, she sure is proud that unemployment fell from 9.0% to 8.6%. Impressive…except that while 112,000 people found jobs, over 300,000 people gave up looking for work. The unemployment numbers no longer count people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and stop looking for work.
I do feel a tad sorry for her (yeah, I know, but it’s only a tad). She’s been assigned the impossible task of polishing a turd. She’s polishing as hard as she can, but in the end, her boss’ record is still a turd, and there ain’t no amount of polish in America to get that turd shiny.
Why the Obama stimulus was a massive failure
Observe:
Sums Tina Korbe:
Theoretically, for the stimulus to have worked, the government would have had to target idle resources. Instead, the government funneled money into already-existing government contracts. Similarly, for the stimulus to have worked, state leaders would have had to spend stimulus money on top of what they were already spending. All too often, they used stimulus dollars to cover general expenses rather than to increase overall spending.
Takeaway line from video: “The main lesson of the stimulus is creating jobs is a very complex process and, certainly, it can’t be directed by a top-down institution that pretty much fails at everything it does”.
Obama: You know what creates more jobs that jobs do? Jobless benefits, that’s what!
ObaMao addresses the bitter clingers in PA:
President Obama said that he will delay his vacation and keep Congress in session until the passage of his desired payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits extension — two proposals that Obama said would create more jobs than the Keystone XL pipeline that his administration recently delayed.
“I would not ask anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself,” Obama said when asked if he would go on vacation while keeping Congress in Washington D.C. “We are going to stay here as long as it takes [to get unemployment extended and pass the payroll tax cut].”
As Obama called for passage of those bills, he also responded to a recent Republican push to require him to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. “However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline,” he said, “they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”
Uh…whiskey tango foxtrot?
You’ve got a project that will actually create jobs, and this economic ‘tard is claiming that giving people money NOT to work, and extending tax cuts to people who are ALREADY at work, is going to create more than the zero jobs we know that it will?
Wow…just friggin’ “Wow!”
Obama lets his communist leanings show loudly and clearly
One of the things I’ve detested about the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) since BHO decided to run for president was their insistence that their boy was a “centrist” or “center-left” guy. He was raised by an anti-American Muslim father (for a while) and an anti-American socialist mother, indoctrinated with anti-American propaganda at his madrassas and in college by Marxist professors, associated with the New Party (communist, Google it), bombarded with anti-American socialist vitriol in Jeremiah Wright’s church for over two decades, palling around with anti-American left-wing terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and best buds with his most frequent White House visitor Andy Stern (former SEIU chief).
Yet the left would have us believe that despite incubating in such an anti-American leftist cesspool, BHO was immune to all of the effects one would expect from someone with such a background. If you lie with dogs, you get fleas…unless you’re Obama, in which case you’re immune from fleas.
Last week, Stern wrote a column telling Americans that our capitalist model was a failure and needed to be shaped to match the Chicom model. Stern was one of many union bosses who have openly espoused communist…er, “pro-worker”…sentiments. When you listen to their rhetoric, it sounds exactly like something you would have heard from Lenin, Chavez, Castro, et al. It’s official: unions are nothing more than commie front groups. Period. The science is settled.
Oh, but I forgot: Just because ObaMao is best buds with Stern, Hoffa, et al, does NOT mean he shares their communist sensibilities. To think otherwise is crazy. I mean, aside from a rare moment of honesty with Joe the Plumber, when has BHO ever advocated anything other than a capitalist model?
Now. The answer to the prior question is now. In Kansas, no less. Here’s what he had to say about capitalism:
“It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work,” Obama said of supply-side economics, drawing extended applause. “It’s never worked.”
Oh, sure, some would argue that he wasn’t talking about capitalism per se, but of supply-side economics. Folks, that is a distinction without a difference. As Ace rightly notes:
He says “trickle-down economics” rather than capitalism, but “trickle-down economics” is merely an argument in favor of capitalism. There is no such thing as “trickle-down economics.” There is capitalism, and the argued advantage of it, which is the trickling down of created wealth.
…
…But Europe is probably going to plunge into something in between a recession or a depression, and may erupt in violence and political disorder.And Europe is Obama’s lodestar. That’s where he wants to take us. To the extent we haven’t gotten there yet, it’s because Americans are soft, lazy bitter clingers who hate other sorts of people (and their politico-economic systems).
So Europe’s 60 or 70 year history with socialism is about to end in violent upheavals and misery… and here’s this ignoramus saying that it’s capitalism which is the proven failure.
As an intemperate interjection, might I note that if, by “never worked”, the organizer-in-chief means “increased government revenues every time”, then yeah, “never worked.” If, by “never worked”, he means the creation of 16 million new jobs, then he’s right…”never worked”.
But that’s not what he means. Those aren’t benefits…not to the people he seeks to please. No, by “never worked”, he means “it has never taken more money from the producers and funded the non-producers’ chosen lifestyles of lethargy and dependence in perpetuity.” That’s what he means. See, when 16 million new jobs were created, you had to be handicapped or lazy to not get a job, because they were everywhere. Every time supply side economics has been tried, the economy has picked back up, jobs have been created, and revenues to the government have increased as a result of more people working and paying income taxes (and not on public dependence). But to ObaMao, public dependence is a feature, NOT a bug!
The son of a motherless goat is a commie. He’s had it pounded into his head since he was a fetus (that, luckily for him, escaped medical procedures that he endorses, to the point of infanticide). No amount of results will shake his belief that it is communism, and not capitalism, that has failed every time. He just knows it will be different this time…it’s got to be! (Sidebar: I know that communism and socialism aren’t exactly the same thing. But the differences are not great, so as far as I’m concerned, for the sake of B.O.’s leftist leanings, they’re the same thing.)
For the sake of the republic, this #sshat must be removed from office in next year’s election. This country cannot survive eight years of Obamunism.
Obama: Al Gore’s invention responsible for job losses
Well, at least he didn’t double down on his “ATMs are costing us jobs” nonsense. Oh, wait…
“Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn’t just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet,” President Obama said at a campaign event in Kansas.
Video at link.
I’ve been accessing money via ATMs for over 20 years, and for most of that time, unemployment was pretty low. We’ve been using the Internet on a widespread basis for about the last 15+ years, and for most of that time, unemployment was pretty low. You know, it’s almost as if he’s got not friggin’ clue what he’s doing and what he’s talking about…almost, that is.
Obama indicts himself and his policies by invoking Hoover
From the Historian In Chief:
So this competition for new jobs and businesses and middle-class security, that’s the race I know we can win. But you don’t win it by saying every American is on their own. We’re not going to win it if we just hand out more tax cuts to people who don’t need them, let companies play by their own rules without any restriction, and we just hope somehow that the success of the wealthiest few translates in the prosperity for everybody else.
We have tried that, by the way. We tried it for 10 years. It’s part of what got into the mess that we’re in. It doesn’t work. It didn’t work for Herbert Hoover, when it was called trickle-down economics during the Depression. It didn’t work between 2000 and 2008, and it won’t work today.
There’s just one problem with that…it’s not even remotely true.
Obama is dead wrong. Data from the White House’s own website shows that Hoover increased, rather than cut, spending in the Great Depression, and ran up deficits that were huge by historical standards.
As Ed points out, “Hoover’s spending policies look a lot like Obama’s.” Hoovermania: Catch the fee-vuh!
Quote of the day, “sad pathetic California loser” edition
I do pray that leeches like this don’t get near a ballot box, ever again. Money quote from an article about the failure of the so-called “Super Committee”:
“I think the whole situation is nutty,” said Jan O’Connell, a 47-year-old artist from Los Angeles. “Somebody’s got to save us, and if the government can’t, who can?”
Ho. Ly. Shiite.
I’ve got a radical idea. How about you fend for yourself and stop depending on the government to “save” you?
Biden: When the economy was smoldering, I needed to contact Jon Corzine!
Presumably before Corzine went on to be investigated for embezzling $600+ million of customers’ money from a hedge fund.
Yep, this is who the Vice Plagiarist says “was right” about economics and world markets.
Yet another “Solyndra” for Obama
This is what happens when government picks winners and losers from the private sector. Actually, with B.O.’s track record, has he even picked any actual winners?
Beacon Power, a Massachusetts-based company that won praise from renewable power activists and loan guarantees from the federal government, has filed for bankruptcy, potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook for $43 million.
The company, which promised to build storage devices for intermittent power produced by wind and solar power facilities, was never able to attract investors. Coming on the heels of the Solyndra bankruptcy and ensuing scandal, the Beacon Power bankruptcy has a growing number of people calling for an end to federal loan guarantees for risky alternative energy start-ups.
No word yet on whether or not there were any political connections involved in this one, or if this was just another in a long list of stunning and expensive failures of the administration.
Occupiers, who see banks as sworn enemies, deposit their handout money at Wells Fargo bank
Hypocrisy: the other white meat. Details:
Last week, one or more Occupy Oakland protesters smashed the windows of a Wells Fargo branch.
This week, the group’s general assembly agreed — in a near-unanimous vote Monday — to temporarily place $20,000 of the group’s money in an account at the country’s fourth-largest bank holding company, Wells Fargo Bank.
Whether the decision was an abandonment of the movement’s opposition to big banks or an ominous affirmation of the hold that big banks have on Americans, Twitter was ablaze with outrage last night, as news spread about the 162-8 vote, from which 16 people abstained.
This dovetails nicely with the story about how these leeches are angry at the homeless leeching off of “their” food. See, these mental midgets are angry at…well, they don’t know. Not really. See, they rail against corporations, all while using products and services of corporations. They rail against “the gap between rich and poor” and demand seizure and redistribution of wealth and assets, yet they deplore the thieves and leeches in their midst. They rail against banks, yet they deposit the money people have given them into a bank.
In short, it’s exactly as I’ve maintained all along. The Occupiers are nothing more than a bunch of idiotic young people who have no idea how society works, no concept of the marketplace, no appreciation for private property, and no real purpose. They are a gaggle of unemployable, vile, filthy miscreants (many of whom are engaging in criminal activity) who lack the skills and/or drive needed to succeed in America. Their anger is chaotic, misdirected, and baseless. In short, they are worthless wastes of oxygen who will wind up as ticks on the public teat for the foreseeable future.
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