‘Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,’ Says Obama’s OWN Chief Of Staff Of Obama’s Policies

Allow me to point out as a preamble that Obama appointed William Daley after the total asskicking Democrats got in November 2010 in a move to reach out to the business community he had repeatedly attacked and demonized.  And now this same guy is forced to say, “Don’t ask me to defend my moron boss’ idiotic economy-murdering policies.”

It’s time for another “we TOLD you so alert“:

Daley can’t defend Obama’s ‘indefensible’ economic policies
Published: 1:21 PM 06/17/2011 | Updated: 12:01 AM 06/18/2011

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.

Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room. The business leaders even applauded each other’s criticism of the administration. “At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government ‘throws sand into the gears of progress,’” wrote Peter Wallsten and Jia Lynn Yang in the Washington Post.

Americans for Limited Government Communications Director and former Labor Department Public Affairs Chief of Staff Rick Manning told The Daily Caller that Daley’s inability to defend Obama’s regulations is an indication that the administration’s plans aren’t working. Manning also points out that Daley’s meeting may have large political implications.

“Business community to William Daley, your Jedi tricks don’t work on us,” Manning said in an email. “The chickens are coming home to roost from the wholesale assault by Obama on the free enterprise system and the private job creators who make it run. The meeting itself is incredible in that it demonstrates just how vulnerable Obama feels in 2012.”

The Workforce Fairness Institute’s Fred Wszolek told The Daily Caller that Daley’s lackluster performance is even more questionable when comes to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and its campaign against the Boeing Company. The NLRB has gone after the Boeing Company for opening a new plant in South Carolina. Boeing’s new plant is an addition to its already-existing production lines in Washington state. The NLRB’s case hinges on whether Boeing made the decision to open the new plant as “retaliation” against machinist unions in Washington, even though no jobs were lost there. In fact, Boeing has added thousands of new jobs in Washington.

As a former Boeing board member before taking on his White House job, Daley voted in favor of opening the new South Carolina plant. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has challenged Daley to come out and defend his vote in the face of the NLRB’s case, but he hasn’t yet done so.

“Bill Daley is White House chief of staff in an administration that is accusing a company where he served on the board of violating Federal labor law,” Wszolek said in an email. “The individual who launched the complaint against the Boeing Company was appointed to the post by President Obama and is currently a nominee. Now, to top it all off, Daley states he cannot defend the ‘indefensible’ conduct of his own administration, which presumably speaks to the Boeing matter.”

Wszolek questions Daley’s ability to continue “ethically” serving the president.

“All of this leads to one question: how can Daley serve in an administration that he cannot defend and believes his actions were unethical?,” Wszolek said.

It’s not just Obama’s Chief of Staff that is out there saying Obama is a total fraud and an abject failure: LISTEN TO OBAMA HIMSELF:

Versus:

“Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” Obama said.

We spent $3.27 TRILLION that we didn’t have ON AN IDIOT FOOL’S LIE!!!  And now it’s supposed to be some kind of joke!?!?!?

This man is an abject disgrace.  He is everything I expected from God Damn America.  There is no longer any question that God has set His face against America because it elected an evil demonic fool and will not drive him out of office in disgrace.

“Government throws sand into the gears of progress.”  There’s your basic truth about reality that no Marxist Democrat will ever understand.

Just How Is Obama NOT An Abject Failure?

Under Barry Husseins’ pathetic failure of leadership, 24% of Americans believe that the recession will last 2 years.  And another 51% believe that it will last MORE than two years.  Given the fact that Obama will only be president for another two years, and given the fact that Obama was elected to fix the economy, what we basically have is a statement from 75% of Americans that Obama will be a completely failed president.

Here’s another one, and allow me to quote from below:

Only 13 percent of Americans say Mr. Obama’s economic programs, among them the stimulus package, have helped them personally. Twenty-three percent say they have hurt, while 63 percent say they have had no effect.

Now, understand: the stimulus is officially $862 billion, but it’s actual cost according to the Congressional Budget Office will be $3.27 TRILLION.  And 87% of the American people say that this beyond supermassive sum of money which will burden our children for decades either had no effect at all or actually HURT them.

Now, this $3.27 trillion will surely ultimately be ripped out of the hide of the US economy.  It’s only a matter of time.  An increase in the money supply is rather like an overdose of drugs.  And in this case the effect of the overdose will be hyperinflation.  Basically, the moment we have any kind of genuine recovery, our staggering deficit is going to begin to create an ultimately gigantic inflation rate.  Why?  Because we have massively artificially increased our money supply beyond our ability to actually produce real wealth, and that means that money will ultimately be devalued.  There’s simply no way it can’t be.  If simply printing money solved financial problems, the government could just mail everyone several million dollars, and we could all retire.  The problem is that more money chasing a limited supply of goods simply pushes up prices higher and higher without doing anything to solve the underlying economic problems.  If we have a recovery, with increased economic activity, there will be increased demand on the money supply, forcing an upward climb in interest rates as a means of controlling the currency.  And then we’ll begin to seriously pay for Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s sins.  Paradoxically, the only thing preventing hyperinflation now is the recession, because people aren’t buying anything and therefore aren’t competing for those limited goods.

That said, there is solid evidence that the stimulus actually HURT THE ECONOMY AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE RIGHT-HERE-AND-NOW by sucking money out of the private sector where it would have been put to good use and instead funneling it through the government were it was pissed away on political boondoggles and bureaucratic inefficiencies.  The evidence is clear: the governments that did not pass huge stimulus packages have fared much better than those like the US which did.

A further fact in our economic and political collapse is that Obama is creating a permanent elite class of government bureaucrats.  USA Today found that “At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn.”  Obama has massively expanded government, even as the the real pie for everyone (the economy) has been shrinking.  Since government workers don’t actually create wealth, but merely live off the taxes paid by those who create wealth, and since there are more and more government workers and fewer and fewer private sector workers, we’re heading for a real problem.  Again, “paradoxically” is a good word, as paradoxically Obama is creating a ruling class over the people who consume the peoples’ wealth in the name of helping the people.

And all of the above contributes to why Gerald Celente says America is about to experience what he calls “the Greatest Depression.”

July 13, 2010 6:30 PM
Poll: Americans Say Bad Economy Will Linger
Posted by Brian Montopoli

CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

(Credit: CBS)

A majority of Americans have a negative impression of the economy and expect the effects of the recession to linger for years, according to a new CBS News poll.

Most also say President Obama has spent too little time on the economy, which Americans cite as the country’s most important problem by a wide margin.

Three in four Americans now say the effects of the recession will last another two years or more. More than eight in 10 say the condition of the economy is bad, up five points from last month.

Just 25 percent of Americans say the economy is getting better – down from 41 percent in April. About half say it is staying the same, and the remaining quarter say it is getting worse.

More than half of Americans – 52 percent – say Mr. Obama has spent too little time dealing with the economy.

And with unemployment near 10 percent, the economy is their priority: Thirty-eight percent volunteer it as the country’s most important problem. That far outpaces the percentage that cited the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan (seven percent), health care (six percent), the deficit (five percent), and the oil spill in the Gulf (five percent).

The county’s most important economic problem, Americans say, is jobs, volunteered by 38 percent of respondents. Coming in a distant second was the national debt, the deficit and spending, cited by 10 percent in the poll, which was conducted between July 9th and 12th.

Just 27 percent of Americans say their local job market is good. Seventy-one percent call it bad. Nearly one in four expect their household finances to get worse over the next year, twice the percentage that expects their finances to improve.

Only 13 percent of Americans say Mr. Obama’s economic programs, among them the stimulus package, have helped them personally. Twenty-three percent say they have hurt, while 63 percent say they have had no effect.

Twenty-three percent say the stimulus package made the economy better – down from 32 percent in April and 36 percent last September. Eighteen percent say the stimulus package damaged the economy, while 56 percent say it had no effect.

The president’s job approval rating on the economy now stands at 40 percent – a drop of five points from last month. Fifty-four percent disapprove of his handling of the issue.

In general, Americans see Mr. Obama as spending too little time on the economy and the oil spill in the Gulf, and too much time on health care: Thirty-nine percent say he has spent too much time on the issue, while 24 percent say he spent too little time.

Americans do believe the president takes decisive action, with two and three suggesting he does. But more than half (53 percent) say he is not tough enough in his approach.

Americans are evenly split, meanwhile, on whether the president shares their priorities. Two in three believe he cares at least to some degree about people like them.

The president’s overall approval rating now stands at 44 percent, matching his disapproval rating. It stood at 47 percent last month.

The Issues: Economic Priorities

Most Americans – 53 percent – say the best way to get the economy moving is to cut taxes. Thirty-seven percent instead choose government spending on job creation.

Americans are split about how the federal government should spend its money: Forty-six percent say the priority should be spending to create jobs, and 47 percent want to put the focus on deficit reduction.

More than half want Congress to extend unemployment benefits now, a Democratic priority that has been blocked by Congressional Republicans.

Immigration:

Support for Arizona’s controversial immigration measure has increased: Fifty-seven percent say the law is “about right,” up five points from May. Just 23 percent say the law goes too far, while 17 percent say it doesn’t go far enough.

More than half say states should be allowed to pass illegal immigration laws, while 42 percent say only the federal government should have that power.

Americans are somewhat split on the impact of illegal immigrants: 42 percent say they take jobs away from Americans, while more – 50 percent – say they take jobs Americans don’t want.

Health Care:

Americans still largely disapprove more than they approve of Mr. Obama’s sweeping health care reforms. Forty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the health reform legislation, while 36 percent support the law. Support has dropped seven points since May.

The Oil Spill:

Americans are roughly evenly split on whether BP will stop the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the summer. Most (58 percent) are not confident that the company will fairly compensate those affected by the spill.

Wall Street Reform:

With Democrats poised to pass sweeping reforms of Wall Street this week, a majority (57 percent) say bank regulations should be increased.

Afghanistan and Iraq:

Sixty-two percent of Americans say things are going badly for the United States in Afghanistan, up from 49 percent in May. Just 31 percent say things are going well.

In Iraq, 55 percent say things are going well, while 28 percent say things are going badly.

Most Americans favor a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Fifty-four percent back a timetable, while 41 percent oppose one. Mr. Obama has said the United States will start removing troops from the country in July of next year, but only if conditions on the ground permit.

Elena Kagan:

Most Americans can’t say whether Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should be confirmed. Among those who have an opinion, 21 percent say yes and 19 percent say no. Less than half say they are closely following news about her nomination.

The Long Run:

Despite their concerns about the economy, Americans do not believe their country is on the decline. Fifty-nine percent expect things to get better in the long run, while 36 percent say America’s best days have passed.

Read the Complete Poll

More from the poll:

Poll: Support For Health Care Reform Drops

Poll: Most Want Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline

Poll: Support for Arizona Immigration Law Hits 57 Percent

Obama’s Approval Rating on Economy Drops

---

This poll was conducted among a random sample of 966 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone July 9-12, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

This article was written in July.  And it is amazing how far we have fallen since those days only a little over the month ago (that was back when Obama was pitching his pseudo “summer of economic recovery, donchaknow).

Now here we are, with Obama’s failures being revealed to be even MORE magnificent, as the jobless claims rise to their highest levels in 9 months (with over half a million new filings).

The Associated Press reports:

The layoffs add to growing fears that the economic recovery is slowing and the country could slip back into a recession.

There’s your double-dip recession for you.  And that recession belongs entirely to Obama and the Democrat Party, which are leading us toward complete ruination.

All Obama has going for him are false blame on Bush to explain his two-years’ worth of abject failure and outright lies, such as his recent one taking credit for a stimulus dollar success when the stimulus didn’t have anything to do with the project Obama cited.

For the record, Obama has been lying about employment all along.

With $862 billion dollars you’d think Obama could find at least one actual success.  But the porkulus was THAT bad; there weren’t any.

Some other things that the poll didn’t mention: a solid majority of Americans now believe that their president is a socialist (as people like me were saying all along).

And Americans now trust Republicans more than Democrats on ALL TEN of the most important issues facing the country, according to the lastest Rasmussen survey:

If all of this doesn’t represent a massive failure of leadership, precipitating a failure of trust which itself creates massive economic suffering, please tell me how it isn’t.

Obama Stimulus Is Reason Why Our Unemployment So Much Higher Than Others

The Obama stimulus was one of the greatest political disasters in American history.  It’s not enough to say it did nothing; it did WORSE than nothing.  And it is going to be like an anvil weighing down our economy for years and years to come as we struggle to pay back what will ultimately be $3.27 TRILLION.

Updated April 28, 2010
Why Our Unemployment Rate Is So Much Higher Than Others
By John Lott
FOXNews.com

Compared to Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Brazil, Americans have real reasons to be dissatisfied with President Obama’s policies.

As President Obama travels today to Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, he will try to convince voters that his economic policies are creating jobs. But a year after Obama claimed that the stimulus had started creating jobs, it is not just the general public that believes that the stimulus was a waste of money, so do the experts. This week a new survey from the National Association for Business Economics found that 73 percent of business economists believe that the stimulus “has had no impact on employment.”

Many will point out that the unemployment rate has soared well above what the Obama administration predicted would occur if the stimulus were enacted. On Feb. 28, 2009, Eleven days after the stimulus bill signed into law, the White House predicted that the national unemployment rate would average 8.1 percent in 2009 and then decline to an average of 7.9 percent in 2010. Clearly things got much worse than the administration predicted. While the unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent in February, 2009, by the end of last year it had risen to 10 percent. It still remains very high at 9.7 percent.

As President Obama and other Democrats have correctly pointed out many times, this has been a worldwide recession. Why not compare the changes in unemployment rates in other countries to the unemployment rate in the U.S. Figure 1 shows (click here) the percentage change in the U.S.’s unemployment rate since January 2009 when Obama became president compared to Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Brazil. While several of the countries experienced similar increases during the beginning of 2009, by October of last year the United States had clearly “won” the race to have the largest percentage increase in unemployment of any of these countries.

Looking at the unemployment changes in terms of just the level of unemployment produces a similar picture (click here). The U.S. and many of these other countries had fairly similar unemployment rates in January last year, but by March the U.S.’s unemployment rate had increased.

Take Canada, whose economy is closely tied to ours and who is our largest trading partner. The Canadian stimulus package was nowhere as extensive as ours. Their stimulus spending of $22.7 billion last year and $17.2 billion, this year, amounts to about 7.5 percent of their federal spending for their 2009 and 2010 budgets — about a third of the per-capita stimulus spending in the United States.

Has Canadian unemployment climbed higher than ours because of their relative inaction? Hardly. Figure 3 shows (click here) the percentage change in unemployment rates in the U.S. and Canada since January 2009 when Barack Obama became president. While the percent increase in unemployment was the same for the first couple of months, Canada’s unemployment rate had peaked by August last year and fallen since then. By contrast, the U.S. rate only really began to decline the beginning of this year.

But it is not just Canada where the unemployment rate is faring better. Other countries, too, decided against a massive stimulus plan. In March, 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointedly refused to spend more money to “stimulate” the German economy. Yet, Figure 4 (click here) shows that Germany never really saw the unemployment experienced by other countries.

Japan clearly had an initial percentage increase in unemployment that was at least as bad as what we saw in the United States, though the country started from a much lower unemployment rate to begin with. Its stimulus as a percentage of GDP was also relatively large — about half as large as ours. Yet, Japan’s unemployment rate peaked in July 2009 and began to decline after that (see Figure 5 here).

The unemployment data shows that compared to these major countries, Americans have real reasons to be dissatisfied with Obama’s policies. It is also understandable why the vast majority of economists feel that Obama’s stimulus policies have spent a lot of money but produced no benefit. These same economists now expect the U.S. job market to improve, but that improvement won’t be due in any part thanks to Obama’s policies. It will just be due to the normal end of the recession.

As Obama travels the country today telling us what he is doing for us, Americans might do well to remember not just the huge bill that he has left our children and grandchildren, but how poorly he has done compared to other countries.

John R. Lott, Jr. is a FoxNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of “More Guns, Less Crime” (University of Chicago Press, 2010), the book’s third edition will be published in May.

According to a New York Times/CBS poll, a whopping 94% of the American people agree with Bayh. Only 6% of Americans believe Obama’s massive porkulus has created jobs a full year after going into effect.

Only SIX PERCENT of Americans believe that Obama’s porkulus has created any jobs at all.  That means more Americans believe that space aliens have anally probed them than believe in the stimulus.  It also means that 94% think Obama and his entire administration and the entire Democrat congressional leadership are completely full of crap.

And 48% of Americans polled don’t think porkulus will EVER create jobs.

And now we find out that the people were right.

We have to hold Democrats responsible for this travesty.  We have to vote them out, before they destroy the country more than they already have.

Failed President Alert: Economists Say Stimulus Did NOT Help

You wouldn’t mind if I took $862 billion dollars of your money – actually $3.27 TRILLION if truth be told – and totally pissed it away, would you?

No, you don’t mind?  Good.  That’s a relief.  I mean, a lot of people would be a little upset that I’d bankrupted the country and ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Obama, the White House, and the Democrats told massive and outrageous lie after massive outrageous lie to sell their load of porkulus crap.  But the American people didn’t believe it: a poll by the New York Times and CBS revealed that only 6% of Americans believed that the Obama stimulus created any jobs at all.

And now the economists are figuring out what the people understood all along:

Economists: The stimulus didn’t help
By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterApril 26, 2010: 3:56 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The recovery is picking up steam as employers boost payrolls, but economists think the government’s stimulus package and jobs bill had little to do with the rebound, according to a survey released Monday.

In latest quarterly survey by the National Association for Business Economics, the index that measures employment showed job growth for the first time in two years — but a majority of respondents felt the fiscal stimulus had no impact.

NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act, which the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers says is on track to create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.

That sentiment is shared for the recently passed $17.7 billion jobs bill that calls for tax breaks for businesses that hire and additional infrastructure spending. More than two-thirds of those polled believe the measure won’t affect payrolls, while 30% expect it to boost hiring “moderately.”

But the economists see conditions improving. More than half of respondents — 57% — say industrial demand is rising, while just 6% see it declining. A growing number also said their firms are increasing spending and profit margins are widening.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed forecast that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, will grow more than 3% in 2010, and 70% of NABE’s respondents expect it to grow more than 2%.

Still, the survey suggested that tight lending conditions remain a concern. Almost half of those polled said the credit crunch hurts their business. To top of page

The Democrat argument is that the economy is doing better; ergo sum the stimulus worked.  The problem is that that’s rather like saying that the economy is doing better; ergo sum the fact that I had a good bowel movement worked.  There’s simply no reason to correlate the one thing with the other.

I would also ask this: name the recession that lasted forever.  The closest we can come is the Great Depression under FDR.  His failed policies prolonged the depression and a lot of needless suffering for seven years.

The other thing I would say is that we are by no means out of the recession that we are in.  There is still abundant evidence to believe that we may very well be headed into a double dip recession – with Obama’s failed policies being completely responsible for that second dip.

Long term, I believe that Obama has doomed this country.  If we can’t undo the damage caused by his ObamaCare boondoggle before it begins to seriously take effect, I think it will amount to the anvil that broke the camel’s back.  And even if we CAN undo ObamaCare, the massive debt this president has imposed on us due to his now demonstrably failed policies will be like a cancer that will eat away at our way of life.

It is possible that there may be a jobless recovery.  But Obama slit the hamstrings of the recovery we COULD have had when he pissed away what will ultimately cost us more than three trillion dollars.  That money – which didn’t create any jobs – is going to consume jobs by way of opportunity costs.  Businesses COULD have used that money to grow and hire; but instead Obama seized it, and poured it down the drain.  And now we get to experience the joys of the gift that keeps on giving as we pay billions of dollars in interest payments, which is money that again COULD have been used to create jobs but never will.

Whether the economy looks a little better or a lot worse than it did, we will not even possibly be able to grow under the massive debt load that Obama has forced upon us with his massively failed stimulus.

We need to hold him accountable for his failure, or he will continue to stockpile one disaster on top of another.

On The Most Pathetic ‘Economic Recovery’ In History

Barack Obama began his presidency by fundamentally misunderstanding the economy.  There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he’s understood it one iota better since.

Let’s start where Obama started, with his massive stimulus.  You know, the stimulus that everybody on the left said would cost “only” $787 billion.  It didn’t take long before it suddenly cost “only” $862 billion.  And by the time it’s all said and done, the real total cost of the stimulus which will actually be a $3.27 trillion porker before all is said an done.

Obama sold his porkulus boondoggle as something that would solve the unemployment problem.  It didn’t.  In fact, it actually CONTRIBUTED to high unemployment, when one looks at the evidence.

The following chart – which was created by the Obama administration to sell the stimulus package – proves that Obama couldn’t have got it more wrong:

In other words, by Obama’s very own measure, unemployment is HIGHER than it would have been if he’d done NOTHING.

Even the reliably liberal Time Magazine realized what a failure Obama’s stimulus was, with an article entitled, “Obama’s Stimulus Plan: Failing By It’s Own Measure.”

Democrat Senator Evan Bayh summed up Obama’s failed economic policies, saying:

“[I]f I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”

According to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, a whopping 94% of the American people agree with Bayh. Only 6% of Americans believe Obama’s massive porkulus has created jobs a full year after going into effect.

Only SIX PERCENT of Americans believe that Obama’s porkulus has created any jobs at all.  That means more Americans believe that space aliens have anally probed them than believe in the stimulus.  It also means that 94% think Obama and his entire administration and the entire Democrat congressional leadership are completely full of crap.

With all due respect to Obama’s spin and the mainstream media’s propaganda that things just keep getting better and better, we keep getting stories like this:

Jobless claims in another surprise surge
By Chavon Sutton, staff reporterApril 15, 2010: 9:35 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance for the first time jumped for the second week in a row, according to government data released Thursday.

There were 484,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended April 10, up 24,000 from an unrevised 460,000 the previous week, according to the Labor Department’s weekly report.

Well, at least they didn’t say “unexpected.”  Like pork to chicken as “the other white meat,” we can call the word “surprise” the mainstream media’s “other favorite adverb” to describe Obama’s unemployment rate.

A Washington Post writer presents the spirit of the constant stream of media excuses in the manner of a master of understatement:

Economists suggest the spike in claims could be related to the Easter holiday. Each week, it seems, there’s some sort of anomaly that affects the new jobless claims — the big February snows, the March snapback from the big February snows, the Easter holiday — so it’s hard to get a good handle on the real jobless picture in the U.S.

When excuses fail, the left resorts to demagoguery and fearmongering.

We might see a recovery.  Count how many times the U.S. had a recession we never got out of.  But even by Obama’s own analysis, any recovery will be a “jobless recovery,” with joblessness remaining shockingly high throughout his presidency.  And the grim scenario of a “W-shaped” recession looms larger and larger.

All that said, an article by Mike’s America at Flopping Aces asks the right question given all the propaganda and spin:

Does This look like an Economic Recovery to You?
by: Mike’s America

A failed $trillion stimulus and few, if any new jobs is Obama’s economic legacy!

Did you see these headlines last week?

UPI: Calif. unemployment hits record high
AP: Florida unemployment hits record high
California’s unemployment hit 12.6% and Florida’s is 12.3%.

And where was Obama when this dire news was about to hit? He was in Florida telling spaceworkers he was canceling much of the manned space program which means a loss of thousands more of the most highly skilled jobs in both Florida and California’s aerospace industries, not to mention Texas.

The past nine months Obama has talked about little else other than health care. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain out of work. If a Republican President were in the White House we’d read daily stories about the toll of human suffering wrought by the President’s economic policy. But with Obama in the White House the “news” media hardly notices unemployment or discusses the lack of any effective jobs policy coming from Democrats.

From House Ways and Means Republicans:

48 of 50 States Have Lost Jobs Since Democrats’ Stimulus
Friday, April 16, 2010

While the President recently said the economy had “turned a corner,” it’s hard to tell that from looking at the job situation across the U.S. According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor, and the chart below, through March 2010 a total of 48 out of 50 States had seen net job losses since the President signed the Democrats’ stimulus plan into law in February 2009. The data show that only Alaska, North Dakota and the District of Columbia have seen net job creation since then. And (other than the perhaps predictable exception of D.C.) those states that have seen some increases in jobs are still well short of the growth the White House originally forecast. Additionally, over 3 million jobs have been eliminated since the Democrats’ stimulus, unemployment remains stuck at 9.7 percent instead of 7.4 percent and falling as Democrats predicted, and a record 16 million Americans are out of work.

To see how the Democrats’ stimulus has failed your state, see the table below.

State	Administration Claims of Change in Jobs Through December 2010	Actual Change in Jobs Through March 2010
Alabama	+52,000	-61,200
Alaska	+8,000	+3,800
Arizona	+70,000	-100,300
Arkansas	+31,000	-17,800
California	+396,000	-558,900
Colorado	+59,000	-86,700
Connecticut	+41,000	-41,100
Delaware	+11,000	-11,500
District of Columbia	+12,000	+10,000
Florida	+206,000	-203,700
Georgia	+106,000	-139,400
Hawaii	+15,000	-12,000
Idaho	+17,000	-18,200
Illinois	+148,000	-187,900
Indiana	+75,000	-59,700
Iowa	+37,000	-25,200
Kansas	+33,000	-47,600
Kentucky	+48,000	-29,500
Louisiana	+50,000	-39,300
Maine	+15,000	-11,200
Maryland	+66,000	-31,400
Massachusetts	+79,000	-69,800
Michigan	+109,000	-121,200
Minnesota	+66,000	-62,300
Mississippi	+30,000	-26,000
Missouri	+69,000	-65,600
Montana	+11,000	-6,200
Nebraska	+23,000	-17,000
Nevada	+34,000	-68,800
New Hampshire	+16,000	-3,700
New Jersey	+100,000	-85,300
New Mexico	+22,000	-22,400
New York	+215,000	-143,300
North Carolina	+105,000	-91,800
North Dakota	+8,000	+900
Ohio	+133,000	-178,900
Oklahoma	+40,000	-50,700
Oregon	+44,000	-53,200
Pennsylvania	+143,000	-117,700
Rhode Island	+12,000	-14,100
South Carolina	+50,000	-25,600
South Dakota	+10,000	-6,600
Tennessee	+70,000	-73,100
Texas	+269,000	-211,000
Utah	+32,000	-30,500
Vermont	+8,000	-5,300
Virginia	+93,000	-75,000
Washington	+75,000	-84,000
West Virginia	+20,000	-16,600
Wisconsin	+70,000	-94,100
Wyoming	+8,000	-11,800

California’s unemployment rate is now the highest it has ever been since 1940 and the Great Depression.

The California jobless rate of 12.6 percent for March was slightly higher than the 12.5 percent level reached in February.

Still, that was the worst California unemployment level in nearly 70 years, stretching back to the Great Depression. December 1940 marked the last time California staggered to the dismal milestone of a 12.6 percent jobless rate.

It was 9.3% when Obama took office.  Which is to say, unemployment has increased by 35.5% since Obama began to “fundamentally transform” things.

California is a huge chunk of the U.S. economy.  It is the eighth largest economy on the planet all by itself.  And it represents 13% of the entire U.S. economy.  In every single other recession the U.S. has ever had, it was California that led the country out.  This time, under Obama, it is California which is lagging the farthest behind, with only two states having a higher level of joblessness.

Right now, California is poised to go the way of Greece – and Greece fell into a black hole of total economic collapse.

And Florida – the fourth most populous state with the fourth largest economy in the nation – isn’t in much better shape.  It’s unemployment rate under Obama’s “Wonder Boy” management is the highest it has ever been in history.

MIAMI — Florida’s unemployment rate reached an all-time high for the second straight month at 12.3 percent in March.

The figures released Friday by the Agency for Workforce Innovation show a marginal increase from February’s rate at 12.2 percent.

If these two giant states’ economies go boom – and it is very possible indeed that they WILL go boom – then the U.S. economy is doomed.  They are too big to fail, and too big to save.  The Louisiana Purchase?  The Cornhusker kickback?  You aint seen NOTHING yet!  Get ready for the Mother of All Bailouts, suckers.

All this to say, it’s time to ponder the previously content-free Obama campaign slogan “Hope and Change.”  “Change” would be a return to the Great Depression by the same policies that the president pursued during the LAST Great Depression.  And “Hope” is hoping that history doesn’t repeat itself.

For First Time, Plurality Of Americans Think Stimulus Hurt The Economy

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s the picture:

For what it’s worth, the $787 billion stimulus which Americans are increasingly agreeing was a dismal failure was in reality a $3.27 trillion porkulus package.  Which is to say, this was a FAR bigger and a FAR more dangerous waste of money which will do FAR more harm to our economic futures than most Americans understand.

Here’s what Rasmussen said under the title, “For First Time, Plurality Believes Stimulus Plan Hurt The Economy“:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38% believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.

The number who believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy rose from 28% in September, to 31% in October, and 34% in November before jumping to 38% this month. The week after the president signed the bill, 34% said it would help the economy, while 32% said it would hurt.

The Political Class has a much different view than the rest of the county. Ninety percent (90%) of the Political Class believes the stimulus plan helped the economy and not a single Political Class respondent says it has hurt. (See more on the Political Class).

The underlying reason for skepticism about the stimulus plan is that 50% of voters believe increasing government spending is bad for the economy. Just 28% believe that increased government spending helps the economy.

Men, by a 42% to 27% margin, believe the stimulus effort has hurt the economy. Women are evenly divided.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Democrats believe the stimulus plan has helped the economy while 47% of Republicans believe it has hurt. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 52% believe the stimulus plan has had a negative impact.

Concerns about federal budget deficits also play a role in evaluating the stimulus spending. Voters continue to think that the president’s top budget priority should be cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term in office. But they see it as the goal the president is least likely to achieve.

Health care reform is second on the list of priorities for voters, but most oppose the health care plan working its way through Congress.

Not surprisingly, most Americans are opposed to a second stimulus plan. In fact, 51% of voters say more jobs would be created if the remaining ending planned in the first stimulus plan was cancelled right away.

Only 14% of American workers say their firms are hiring and 29% say their employers are laying people off. As a result, 67% expect that unemployment will be at 10% or higher a year from now.

Please allow me to supplement the above Rasmussen article describing the fact that a solid plurality of Americans now believe the stimulus was harmful with another article detailing what a whopping load of partisan corruption the stimulus has turned out to be:

Report: Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
December 16, 2009

A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.

“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. “But we don’t find any correlation.”

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia is one of the nation’s most respected economic and regulatory think tanks and has a Nobel prize-winning economist on staff. The econometric analysis was done using data provided by Recovery.gov — the government website devoted to tracking the stimulus data — as well as a host of other government databases.

Additionally, Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans. “We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.

The Mercatus Center analysis also found that Democratic congressional districts received on average almost double the funding of Republican congressional districts. Republican congressional districts received on average $232 million in stimulus funds while Democratic districts received $439 million on average.

“We found that there is a correlation [relating to the partisanship of congressional districts],” de Rugy said. Her regression analysis found that stimulus funds are expected to decrease by 24.19 percent if a district is represented by a Republican.

“During the appropriations process, you’re not surprised to see the Democrats are getting more money, but in this case a lot of the money we’re looking at is going through HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development], or Department of Education, Department of Transportation etc. and they’re following a formula,” she said. “But the correlation exists, and not only does it exist — when you look at how much money we’re talking about, it’s a pretty big deal.”

The analysis found that neither congressional leadership positions of local members nor presidential preference in 2008 were factors in stimulus allocation by congressional district.

Finally, the Mercatus analysis shows that a majority of the funds allocated went to public rather than private entities — nearly $88 billion to $69 billion. While some of the money given to public entities may eventually filter down to the private sector, it’s much less transparent how money given to public entities is spurring economic growth and job creation.

So, to repeat, the stimulus money isn’t being given out to low-income Americans or struggling geographic regions.  It is being given out to Democrats to use as political slush funds.

The Democrat Party is the party of corruption, partisanship, socialism, and big-government-as-God-substitute ideology.

And more and more Americans are coming to realize how dangerous they are to the American way of life.

Another way to look at this is that – from the very beginning of the Obama administration – the Republican Party has demonstrated that they were completely right and Democrats were completely wrong.  Whether you look at the stimulus, cap-and-trade, garbage climate change claims, health care, or terrorism, Americans now solidly agree that Republicans were right; Democrats were wrong.

Obama Refuses To Take Any Responsibility For His Failing Presidency

There comes that moment in every great man’s life when he realizes that it’s time to put up or shut up.

Obama hasn’t reached that moment yet.  And I personally don’t believe he ever will.  Or even can.

Obama gave a speech at the Brookings Institute yesterday, December 8.  He said:

One of the central goals of this administration is restoring fiscal responsibility. Even as we have had to spend our way out of this recession in the near term, we have begun to make the hard choices necessary to get our country on a more stable fiscal footing in the long run. Despite what some have claimed, the cost of the Recovery Act is only a very small part of our current budget imbalance. In reality, the deficit had been building dramatically over the previous eight years. Folks passed tax cuts and expensive entitlement programs without paying for any of it – even as health care costs kept rising, year after year. As a result, the deficit had reached $1.3 trillion when we walked into the White House. And I’d note: these budget busting tax cuts and spending programs were approved by many of the same people who are now waxing political about fiscal responsibility while opposing our efforts to reduce deficits by getting health care costs under control. It’s a sight to see.

To begin with, sixty percent of the overall deficit from the last ten years has occurred during the last three year period that the Democrats have been in control of both the House and the Senate.  Any claim that Democrats were the fiscally responsible party is just frankly a complete lie.

And as we look to which party is accumulating debts that have never been seen in the history of the human species, take a look at this graph of reality, to the tune of Joe Wilson’s hit song, “You lie!”

Link

You don’t have to be an economist or financial expert to see that the Marxist red Obama bars utterly dwarf the gray Bush bars.

Let’s take a look at the real numbers:

The Obama Administration Budget released today contains a total $2.867 trillion in red ink, just 38 days after Obama’s inauguration on January 20.

In contrast, the Bush Administration ran up a $2.7519 trillion deficit over an 8-year period that included 7 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan; the economic downturn after 9-11; the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare; a massive increase in federal education spending under No Child Left Behind; and the current recession and 2008 Wall Street bailout.

Bush Surplus/Deficit Fiscal Years 2001-2008 (billions of dollars)
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Statistics
2001    128.2
2002    -157.8
2003    -377.6
2004    -412.7
2005    -318.3
2006    -248.2
2007    -160.7
2008    -454.8
TARP    -750.0
Total  -2751.9

Obama Budget Deficit FY 2009/10*
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Statistics
2010       -1750
2011       -1117
Total      -2867

*The Obama deficit total does NOT include the impact of the $787 billion Stimulus package approved by House Democrats in February.  It also excludes any effect of an Obama contingency request for an additional $750 billion to use for bank rescue.  If the contingency amount is included the total deficit for FY 2009/10 is $3.617 trillion

So what we basically learn is that Obama’s deficits in just two years are greater (which means worse) than Bush’s entire 8 years in office.  And if you factor in the spending that Obama racked up all by his lonesome, he accumulated greater deficits in just ONE year than did Bush in eight.

We need to realize that the $787 billion stimulus – which is not counted under Obama’s deficit that STILL outdoes the deficits racked up during Bush’s entire eight year presidency – was not a “mere” $787 billion.  It was actually $3.27 TRILLION according to the Congressional Budget Office.

As Newsmax reporter David Patton put it:

The gargantuan stimulus bill Congress has rubber-stamped with virtually no Republican support contains tens of billions of the very spending projects that made the legislation a lightning rod for criticism.

And although the bill is generally described as costing $787 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reports the actual figure is now closer to $3.27 trillion.

That stems from the $744 billion it will take to pay for the additional debt the legislation will create, and $2.527 trillion in increased spending from the new and expanded programs the bill will spawn over the next decade.

That put-us-into-the-poorhouse stimulus spending was ALL on Obama.  And while we go from fiscal year to fiscal year (i.e. October 1 to September 30) to “officially” calculate a president’s deficits, it is simply a moral crime to saddle George Bush with Obama’s $3.27 trillion porkulus that no Republicans voted for, and then blame Bush for the most massive spending program in human history that was passed by Obama and for Obama.

Nor do the numbers reflect that President Bush only used HALF of the $750 billion TARP money, and left the rest of it for Obama to spend.  That money all went on Bush’s deficit “tab,” but thanks to George Bush’s efforts, Obama got half of it for himself.  Pretty sweet deal for Obama.  And yet he still bit the hand that fed him:

(CBS/AP) Acting at Barack Obama’s behest, President George W. Bush on Monday asked Congress for the final $350 billion in the financial bailout fund, effectively ceding economic reins to the president-elect in an extraordinary display of transition teamwork.

Obama also sharply criticized Bush’s handling of the money and promised radical changes.

Bush’s move sets the stage for Obama to get swift access to the $350 billion and the opportunity to overhaul the much-criticized rescue package after taking office next Tuesday.

Bush’s classiness was outmatched by Obama’s classlessness.

In any event, no matter how you slice it, we are looking at Obama red ink that so profoundly drowns out the Bush red ink that only a fool would say anything else.

And yet that is precisely what Obama is doing.

Here we are, just today, with Democrats passing another $1.1 trillion in spending in a 1,088 page, earmark-laden pork package, with not one single Republican supporting it.

And they are determined to pass a health care that’s going to cost this country at least $2.5 trillion every ten years.

And take a moment to calculate America’s “share” of the $10 TRILLION dollar tab that Barack Obama and many in the Democrat Party are trying to commit this country to pick up in the guise of saving the planet from “global warming.”

We’re seeing more spending and more deficits and more debt under Barack Obama than any human being who has ever lived has ever seen in human history.  And he blames Bush for it?

What’s wrong with him?

Any real leader worth a dog turd in the back yard doesn’t waste time blaming the leader before him for problems.  Rather, he puts that “the buck stops here” sign on his desk, he takes responsibility for the situation he is facing, and he solves the problem.

If I had a nickle for every time Obama has said that he “inherited” the crises he is now facing, I would be very rich indeed.  As it is, the president who promised that he would put “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics” has defined himself by doing the precise opposite.  George W. Bush, by contrast, inherited a severe recession following the dot com bubble collapse beginning in December 1999 just as Clinton was leaving office that led to $10 trillion in equity being erased.  And of course he inherited the foreign policy and domestic security failures that led to the 9/11 attack – which damaged the economy even further.

But you didn’t find Bush giving speech after speech (or any speeches at all) blaming his predecessor.  Rather, Bush “manned-up” and took responsibility for the nation as it was.

That may be why Bush has made such a dramatic comeback in public opinion:

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore, which is good news generally for Republicans and especially ones like Rob Portman who are running for office and have close ties to the former President.

More and more Americans are getting furious that Obama is spending all his time and energy blaming Bush for what is going on during Obama’s presidency.

The very real question is whether Obama can do anything OTHER than blame Bush.  Thus far, he hasn’t solved much of anything.

Obama Continues Rampant Dishonesty With Stimulus ‘Jobs ‘

Want to see how Obama “created or saved” all the jobs he’s claiming?  Here’s how:

In June, the federal government spent $1,047 in stimulus money to buy a rider mower from the Toro Company to cut the grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Arkansas. Now, a report on the government’s stimulus Web site improbably claims that that single lawn mower sale helped save or create 50 jobs.

I bought a new watch the other day; that’s got to be good for at least ten jobs saved or created.

Do you seriously trust these people to run your healthcare?  Are you that idiotic?  I mean, dang.

A newspaper editorial just damns Obama’s dishonesty and deceit the way it deserves to be damned.

Note: I added the html links to the other newspaper articles.

Union-Tribune Editorial
Stimulus dishonesty
Job numbers keep proving to be exaggerated
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 12:43 a.m.

First it was The Associated Press refuting the Obama administration’s claims for jobs saved or created nationwide by February’s $787 billion economic stimulus measure. Then it was The Sacramento Bee refuting the claims that state agencies had made for California. Then it was the Chicago Tribune refuting the claims that state agencies had made for Illinois.

The errors were not of a minor or technical nature. They were egregious.

AP reported that “some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.” The Bee reported that California State University said “the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees” – more than half its statewide work force. The Tribune reported that Illinois education officials grossly inflated job-saved numbers, sometimes saying school districts had saved more jobs than their total number of employees.

This is a scandal and should be treated as such. It’s not government as usual. Instead, it appears to reflect a decision to distort government data collection to support explicitly political agendas.

With U.S. unemployment now topping 10 percent, the Obama administration is struggling more than ever to fashion credible counterarguments to the assertion made by this editorial page and many pundits and economists that the massive stimulus measure was a poorly thought-out pork fest that wouldn’t work. What’s the easiest way to defend the stimulus? Make up claims about its glorious results.

Politics also appears to be driving state agencies in their willingness to prop up this bogus narrative. It helps them make the case that they should get even more borrowed money from the federal government that they never will have to repay.

Such dishonesty should be completely unacceptable – especially at the federal level. We trust the Office of Management and Budget to provide honest figures on the size of the deficit and the national debt. We trust the Labor Department to provide honest statistics on unemployment and job gains and losses by sector. We trust the Commerce Department to provide honest numbers on monthly imports and exports and the gross domestic product. We trust the Environmental Protection Agency to provide an honest accounting of air and water pollution levels.

All of these statistics end up helping shape the public debate on the most crucial issues of the day. If these numbers can’t be trusted, we can’t have an honest debate. When it comes to the economic stimulus package, it sure looks like the Obama White House doesn’t want an honest debate. Instead, it is going to relentlessly push the very dubious claim that the stimulus was a huge success – no matter what.

We are struck yet again by the contrast between the hopeful and idealistic tone of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and the bare-knuckles Chicago-style politics of his White House. If this hardball approach goes beyond the usual arm-twisting to the routine twisting of government statistics for political purposes, that will be a grim day for America.

The first thing to do is congratulate the editorial board of the Union-Tribune for standing up for the truth.  That hasn’t happened a whole lot in the swooning, “thrill going up my leg” coverage of Obama.

Next, I’d like to begin by citing the complete paragraph that the Union-Tribune cites from AP:

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

Then I’ll provide the quote from the Sacramento Bee in its context, which makes it an even more damning indictment:

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

That total represents more than half of CSU’s statewide work force.  However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

“This is not really a real number of people,” CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. “It’s like a budget number.”

And then I’ll provide the context for the Chicago Tribune findings:

Gov. Patrick Quinn on Wednesday dispatched officials from a new accountability office to investigate errors in a state database detailing stimulus-funded school jobs promoted by the Obama administration, a day after the Tribune raised questions about the job numbers’ accuracy.

The officials have asked the Illinois State Board of Education to verify the number of jobs created and retained in school districts detailed in the report, said Ashley Cross, a spokeswoman for Quinn’s office. Any necessary adjustments will be incorporated into the next quarterly report on the federal stimulus, she said.

Matt Vanover, a spokesman for board of education, said the flawed database actually had been washed of some glaring errors before being included in the official tabulation, which claimed 14,330 school jobs in Illinois had either been saved or created thanks to $1.25 billion in federal funds.

But the Tribune found that the database claimed far more jobs had been saved in some local school districts than actually existed on district payrolls.

Which is to say that, as egregious as the errors were that the Tribune reported for this story, the school board spokesman said they had actually been much, much more egregious before the Tribune was able to get its hands on the actual data.

When the Union-Tribune editors say:

This is a scandal and should be treated as such. It’s not government as usual. Instead, it appears to reflect a decision to distort government data collection to support explicitly political agendas.

You should recognize that we are talking about historic levels of dishonesty that match this administrations’ historic levels of spending and historic levels of debt.

And when they point out that:

Politics also appears to be driving state agencies in their willingness to prop up this bogus narrative. It helps them make the case that they should get even more borrowed money from the federal government that they never will have to repay.

Such dishonesty should be completely unacceptable – especially at the federal level.

You should realize that – counter to the Obama administration’s and Democrat Party’s demagogic attacks against businesses such as our health insurance companies (which make only modest profits, contrary to the frankly evil attacks repeatedly made by the left) – there is no greater or more powerful or more dishonest “special interest” than big government.

If you’re opposed to special interest, then whatever the HELL you do, don’t let the federal government take over health care.

And this garbage of deceit and lies about jobs and the fact that Obama has done NOTHING to create more of them is going on all over the country.

The Boston Globe says, “Stimulus job boost in state exaggerated, review finds.”  And it is simply damning.

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

The Globe’s finding is based on the federal government’s just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. It lists the nearly $4 billion in stimulus awards made to an array of Massachusetts government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, and notes how many jobs each created or saved.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually – subsidies for affordable housing, for example – was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending. Some of these recipients said they did not even know the money they were getting was classified as stimulus funds until September, when federal officials told them they had to file reports.

“There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds,’’ said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham. “It’s hard to figure out if you did the paperwork right. We never asked for this.’’

The federal stimulus report for Massachusetts has so many errors, missing data, or estimates instead of actual job counts that it may be impossible to accurately tally how many people have been employed by the massive infusion of federal money. Massachusetts is expected to receive an estimated $1 billion more in stimulus contracts, grants, and loans.

When Obama was elected, unemployment was at 6.6%.  He promised that his stimulus would prevent unemployment from reaching 8%.  And now it’s 10.2%.

His plan completely failed.  His massive $3.27 trillion stimulus porkulus (according to what the CBO reported Obama’s stimulus would actually cost) did nothing more than create a bunch of pork projects and create a Democrat war chest of slush funds to buy the votes it needs.

Don’t believe me about the slush fund?

To get as far as the bill did so far, it appears the administration might have spread some money around. California Rep. Jim Costa was wavering but told a local newspaper last week that his vote could be contingent on getting some federal money for a new medical school in his district along with help for local hospitals.

When a constituent named Bob Smittcamp e-mailed him to complain about his vote for the House bill, the congressman explained he’d been offered the dollars he was looking for — $128 million in federal money.

“He responded to me by basically saying that he did not like many of the elements there were in the legislation. However, he was able to procure $128m for the University of California medical school in Merced,” Smittcamp told Fox News.

Democrats now have in excess of a trillion dollars in federal money to buy itself the votes it needs to impose the liberal agenda.Rather than actually fix the economy, all Obama has done is a) focus entirely on putting even more of the economy under government control through Obamacare rather than focus on creating jobs; b) make up a bunch of patent lies to make believe his policies are doing anything other than dismally failing; and c) keep blaming Bush for everything.It’s not working out, Obama.  YOU’RE not working out.

Interview With Tim Geithner, Poster Boy For An Administration That Has No Clue

From NBC’s “Meet the Press,” with David Gregory interviewing Treasury Secretary ‘Turbo Tax’ Timothy Geithner.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  You know, what the government did was to step in and make sure we’re providing the tax cuts and investments necessary to arrest the crisis, get credit markets starting to open up again.  And we did that, that plan worked.  But we’ve got a ways to go before…

GREGORY:  But that’s a big question, whether or not–yes, you have growth for the first time in four quarters.  But is any of this growth sustainable without government intervention?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  It will be, it will be.  But what the government has to do in a crisis is to provide a bridge until the economy can repair itself and businesses are confident enough to start to invest again.  And again, you’re starting to see it again.  Businesses now, I think they’ll say–you talk to people across the country, they’ll say that they feel that things are more stable now and for the first time they see orders starting to pick up.  And what’ll happen is they’ll start to invest again, they’ll start to bring people back onto their payroll and this will get more momentum.

GREGORY:  But that happened hasn’t yet–hasn’t happened yet.  We’ll get into that a little bit more in just a minute.

The question about consumer spending that really drove the market down on Friday, it’s off, biggest level that it’s been off in nine months.  Again, people are not consuming.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  There’s nothing new in those numbers on Friday.  They were in the GDP report.  No incremental news in those numbers.  So again, the overall picture for the economy is that consumers are a little more confident now, confident enough to start to spend again, investments starting to spend again. You know, there was another number on Friday that showed business confidence, in the Chicago survey, showing a little more optimism about the future, too. And–but, you know, again, this is a tough economy still, it’s going to take some time.  But we’re committed to making sure we’re reinforcing this progress we’ve seen.

But that is just a load of baloney, as Gregory pointed out.  Here’s a link to an AP article bearing the title, “Consumer Spending At Lowest In 9 Months.”  And the opening paragraph of that article begins with the words, “Consumer spending plunged in September by the largest amount in nine months.” [I used a different article because I know how articles that don’t pitch the Obama line tend to get deleted].

Seriously, exactly which part of that does Mr. Boy Genius Tim Geithner – who was so brilliant that we desperately needed him even though he was too incompetent or dishonest (or both!) to know how to pay his own taxes – fail to understand?  Consumers AREN’T “a little more confident,” Turbo Tax; they’re a LOT LESS confident!

The “growth” in GDP was almost entirely fueled by government spending.  That is a trend toward utter catastrophe and Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation, rather than anything positive.  It is absolutely unsustainable.  It is a terrible sign of artificially-generated growth by debt-fueled spending, rather than a sign for any kind of hope.

When our Treasury Secretary has his head so buried up Obama’s butt that he can’t understand simple realities, we are in a giant load of trouble.  And the anvil is being cued to drop as we speak.

Let’s go on.  Maybe Geithner and the Obama administration have some kind of solution, some kind of plan to help get us out of the problem they don’t even understand exists in the first place:

GREGORY:  Do we need another cash for clunkers program to stimulate the economy?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  I don’t think at the moment–well, let me start this way, David.  About half of the money in the Recovery Act, tax cuts and investments, are still ahead of us.  So there’s a lot of force still moving its way through the system now, and you’re going to see that continue to provide support for the economy going forward.

I interrupt at this point to point out that the Obama administration is literally refuting itself here  Geithner says the stimulus is going to creating beneficial impact.  But Obama’s chair for his Council for Economic Advisers claimed the exact opposite, saying:

“By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to further growth.”

So which is it?

And pardon me while I mockingly laugh at an administration that is publicly literally talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.

In any event, when Geithner confidently declares that the stimulus that never really did squat in the first place is going to continue to continue to produce wonderful changes in the first place, you don’t have to go any farther than another key Obama official to see that that just isn’t true.

I’ve also got to point out that it is increasingly obvious that the cash for clunkers program was an unmitigated disaster.  First of all, it is now a documented fact that all the cash for clunkers program did was spur people to buy cars they were already going to buy within a matter of a few months anyway.  All the government did was move 4th quarter car sales into the 3rd quarter.  Second, we now know that the best and most impartial evidence demonstrates that the taxpayers forked out a whopping $20,000 for every car sold under the program.

In other words, it was an even bigger disaster than Republicans predicted it would be when they overwhelmingly opposed the program.

But we continue with Gregory and Geithner:

GREGORY:  Could you have had more impact if more of that money were paid out? You still have about $500 billion of the stimulus that has not been paid out yet.  How long will it take to get paid out?

SEC’Y GEITHER: Actually, I–again, it was designed to pay out over two years, because we knew it was going to take a long time to repair the damage we started with earlier this year.  So it was designed to pay out over this period of time.  And I think it’s actually delivering better results sooner than we would expect.  I think we’re seeing better outcomes in the financial sector, in the economy than many of us would’ve thought when we sat there with the president in Chicago at the end of last year.

GREGORY:  Right.  Well, but that’s not exactly true, because the president’s team said you’d keep unemployment to 8 percent if you didn’t have the stimulus, so.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  No.  No, you’re right, the unemployment is worse than almost everybody expected.  But growth is back a little more quickly, a little stronger than people thought, and growth is a necessary condition.  With growth jobs will come, but growth has to come first.  But just look at the financial sector.  You know, you’ve had banks repaying money with interest. Taxpayers are getting substantial earnings on this big investment in the financial system, and that’s delivering good, good returns for the American taxpayer.

Again, Geithner is utterly filled with fecal matter.

“Unemployment is worse than almost anybody thought”?  That was basically Vice President Biden’s line back in July.  And it was utterly idiotic when Biden said it back then.  Apparently, the Obama administration only has ears that hear liberals’ prognostications.  Republicans widely predicted the stimulus would utterly fail to create jobs.  That was why virtually every single one of them voted against it.  All kinds of economists said it would fail.  But they suffered from the flaw of not being liberals.

When high-level officials like Biden and Geithner say things like, “almost everybody was just shocked,” it shows how utterly insulated and ignorant these clowns who are running our government truly are.

Basically, 47% of the country didn’t vote for Obama.  And the 47% were the ones who turned out to be right.

The Obama administration consists on a bunch of weasels who are trying to dodge their central economic claim.  They said their massive stimulus (which actually cost taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION, by the way) would prevent unemployment from reaching 8%.  They were wrong.  Everything they thought was wrong.  And now “everybody” but them should be held responsible for their failure.

GREGORY:  Let’s talk about claims of success about jobs.  The White House says 640,000 jobs have been created or saved by the $800 billion stimulus.  There are Republicans who say the number is bogus, that it’s just PR.  John Boehner, leader of the Republicans in the House, as you well know, circulated a quote from an economist at Carnegie, Carnegie Mellon University, and I’ll put it up on the screen and you can look at it:  “One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called `jobs saved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason:  how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?” You’ve got a lot of experience in the economy.  Is this PR or fact?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  This is fact.  Again, at–when the president took office, this economy was falling at the rate of 6.5 percent at an annual rate per year, fastest rate in decades.  We were losing three-quarters of a million jobs a month.  Now, the pace of job loss has slowed dramatically, the economy’s now growing again.  It’s growing not just because the effects of the Recovery Act.  Many people opposed the Recovery Act, said it wasn’t going to work.  It’s working, it’s delivering what it should result–what it should, it should produce.  Value of Americans’ savings are up almost 35 percent since the beginning of the year.  Interest rates down.  These are substantially powerful returns on the Recovery Act, and they are delivering what they were designed to deliver.

GREGORY:  OK.  What is a saved job?  How do you measure that?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  A, a saved–well…

GREGORY:  It’s not something an economist recognizes as an actual fact.

Thank you, David Gregory.  You must work for Fox News, given the fact that the White House has been demonizing Fox News as a propaganda outlet due to the fact that it presents the facts rather than Obama’s propaganda.

The Associated Press joined Fox News in Barry Obama’s doghouse by pointing out the fact that the administration was playing all kinds of ridiculous shenanigans with their job claims.

And we can go back months into the past and see that the Obama administration has stubbornly insisted as stating as fact what was months ago revealed to be blathering nonsense:

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): “The administration, including the vice president, has claimed that stimulus policies have added 150,000 new jobs to the level of employment. We see this cited almost daily by the administration. Can you substantiate that claim?”

Mr. Keith Hall, Commissioner Of Bureau Of Labor Statistics: “No. That would be a very difficult thing for anybody to substantiate.”

“Created or saved” is a meaningless superficial category created by meaningless superficial people to advance a meaningless superficial agenda.

It doesn’t matter how deceitful the Obama’s bogus claims are, because they are liars without shame and they don’t give a damn about reality.  And they can’t solve the unemployment problem because they can’t get past their own propaganda.

Gregory goes on a little later and points out:

GREGORY:  Right.  But my, but my point is that this should not be overstated, the impact of the stimulus should not be overstated.  Here’s the facts about how many jobs have been lost since the stimulus:  2.7 million.  And you’ve got 14 states who have double-digit unemployment.  You can look at the top five, with Michigan at the top with 15.3 percent unemployment.  So you say it could’ve been a lot of worse.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  David…

GREGORY:  A, it’s still very bad, and B, the stimulus has had only a minimal effect.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Actually–no, no, I wouldn’t say that.  I said actually, even those numbers understate it, because there’s lots of people who are underemployed, working less they would like.  So again, this is a very tough economy.  It’s only been three initial months of positive growth.  It’s going to take some time for unemployment to come down and for jobs to get created again.  And that’s why it’s important to–for people to recognize that we have a responsibility to keep working at this so we’re reinforcing the recovery.

GREGORY:  How high will unemployment go, do you think?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Don’t know for sure, but it’s likely still rising and it, it probably going to rise further before it starts to come down again.

GREGORY:  Double digits?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Most economists think we’ll probably get there, and–but again, the economists think–and, you know, there’s a lot of uncertainty in this.  Economists don’t know that, don’t know that much about the future, David.  But they say that they think we’ll start to see net jobs created at the beginning of the year, sometime around the beginning of the year, in the first quarter sometime.

I have to begin by correcting David Gregory.  He said that Obama had lost 2.7 million jobs since he passed his stimulus.  ABC News, reporting facts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had a very different number:

Approximately 3.3 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus act passed, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But what are 600,000 jobs between friends?

And when Geither says that “most economists think we’ll get [to double digit unemployment], realize that we are going to get there VERY SOON.  Geithner is talking about the wonderful effect the stimulus has had on employment even as the unemployment rate is expected to climb to at least 10% when the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for October come out.

And respected economic analysts such as Meredith Whitney – who accurately predicted the 2008 economic crash when most of her fellows were whistling a very different tune – has gone on the record predicting unemployment rates of 13% or higher in our future.

Okay.  Things are bad and they’re going to get a lot worse.  But the Obama adminstration has some kind of plan, right?  I mean, RIGHT?

Nope.  Beyond “Blame Bush,” they’ve got NOTHING.

GREGORY:  What should the administration be going specifically to reduce unemployment at this point?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  The most important thing is to get growth growing again at a strong pace.

GREGORY:  Right.  But what can the government…

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  That’s the most…

GREGORY:  …what should the government be doing?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  The government’s doing exactly what it should be doing. It’s, it’s making sure that there are tax cuts to business and families, investments in improving infrastructure, creating incentives for businesses to spend again, relief for state and local governments and getting this financial system back on its feet.

Gregory could have pointed out that the government ISN’T actually doing ANY of these things.  Tax cuts?  They plan tax increases.  What the Obama administration calls “tax cuts” have been “redistribution of wealth” as the government takes money away from producers and hands it to non-producers.  And to small businesses?  Are you joking? Geithner claims that stimulus investments have imporoved infrastructure.  The problem is and always has been that not enough of the stimulus program ever went to infrastructure in the first place.  And what exactly what incentives has Obama provided for businesses to spend again?  The fact is, Obama is trying to force businesses to spend more on healthcare, more on job-killing minimum wages, more on electricity, all of which will result in them having a lot LESS to spend on anything else.

That’s okay though, I suppose.  Geithner would have spent the rest of his time quibbling over details and pumping sunshine if Gregory had stopped him at his last paragraph.

What Gregory did was continued to push Geithner for SOMETHING that Obama could offer as an economic solution.  Something.  Anything.  And Geithner had nothing.

GREGORY:  But do you need more stimulus?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  I don’t think we need to make that judgment yet, David. Again, there’s–about half of the money committed by the Congress is still working its way through the system by design.  It was designed to work over two years.  So we’re not in a position yet where we need to make a choice about whether it’s going to take more than that…

GREGORY:  Right.

[Please go back to what I demonstrated earlier, i.e., that Obama’s own chair for the Council of Economic Advisers actually said the precise opposite.]

We now continue the documentary about the fact that Tim Geithner and Barry Obama have absolutely no clue whatsoever how to fix the economy.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  …to bring growth back.  And again, that’s only a bridge. You’re not going to get real recovery until it’s led by the private sector, by businesses.

GREGORY:  So I want to be clear, additional stimulus you don’t think is needed right now.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Not, not yet.  Now, Congress is looking at extending unemployment insurance, some other targeted programs that would expire without additional action.  You’ve heard Congress today–you heard–saw Congress this week start to talk about extending the first-time homebuyer tax credit, some other measures.  We think those will be helpful things for the economy as a whole, and they’ll also provide some added support.

GREGORY:  Let me talk about the deficit and the debt.  These are alarming numbers, you said they are.  Let’s look at the deficit since Inauguration Day: $1.2 trillion, now $1.4 trillion; it’s up 17 percent.  The overall debt, Inauguration Day:  $10.6 trillion, now $11.9 trillion.  What’s it going to be a year from now?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well, it’s going to have to come down.  Now it’s too high, and I think everybody understands this.  You know, we’ve got these two central imperatives:  restore growth, create jobs.  But make sure people understand we’re going to have to bring those fiscal deficits down as growth recovers. First growth, though.  Without growth, you can’t fix those long-term fiscal problems.  But you’re not going to have a recovery that’s going to be strong enough unless people are confident we’re going to have the will to go back to live within our means.

GREGORY:  How do you bring it down, though?  Do taxes have to go up?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well, we’re going to have to do–we’re going to have to make some hard choices.  The–but we’re not really at the point yet, David, we’re going to know what’s going to be the best path forward.  The president’s very committed to bring down these deficits, and he’s very committed to doing so in a way that’s not going to add to the burden on people, people making less than $250,000 a year.

GREGORY:  But wait a minute, though, what are hard–I mean, I think a lot of people, it’s fair to say, what are hard choices?  I mean, what hard choices have been made so far?  Are you going to raise taxes?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  We’re going to have to bring our resources and our expenditures more into balance.

GREGORY:  So it’s possible.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well, again, the president’s committed to make sure we get this economy back on track.  We’re bringing down this deficit over time.  And to do so…

GREGORY:  Mr. Secretary, you talked about hard choices, so why can’t you give a straight answer to whether taxes have to come up…

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Because…

GREGORY:  …when you have a deficit this big?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Because, David, right now we’re focused on getting growth back on track, OK, and we’re not at the point yet we have to decide exactly what it’s going to take.  And I just want to say this very clearly.  He was committed in the campaign to make–he said in the campaign and he is committed to make sure we do this in a way that is not going to add to the burden on people making less than $250,000 a year.  Now, it’s going to be hard to do that, but he’s committed to doing that and we can do that.

GREGORY:  You can do it, but it’s still a chance that you’d have to raise taxes and go back on that if you’ve got a debt this big.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  We’re going to have to do it in a way that’s going to help to meet that test, meet that commitment, the commitment he made, to do it in a way that’s fair to Americans and make sure we do it in a way that’s going to allow–provide for growth and recovery going forward.  But we can do this. You know, this is not beyond our capacity as a country to do.

GREGORY:  But…

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  But first things first.

GREGORY:  Right.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  And unless we have a recovery, our long-term debts are going to be worse.  Now, you didn’t raise health care yet, but what’s happening on health care now is very encouraging.  Because if you look at what independent analysts say now, if you look at these bills moving their way through the Congress, they will make a substantial difference in reducing the rate of growth in healthcare costs over the long term and they will help bring down those long-term deficits.

GREGORY:  But there is going to be a heavy burden on the middle-class through, through health care by taxes going up, by premiums going up.  It will affect the middle-class.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  You know, I, I, I don’t think that’s the way to look at it. The–our tax–our healthcare system today imposes enormous burdens not just on businesses, but on families.  There are very high hidden costs to our current system.  And the best way to add to our long-term deficits, and the best way to add to those burdens is not reform health care today.

GREGORY:  But it doesn’t answer the question about premiums going up with an individual mandate and taxes going up on so-called Cadillac plans and other parts of this bill as they’re moving their way through the process that would increase taxes.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Right.  Again, I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it.  I think you have to look at the entire system today and the cost that presents.  And if you look at those…

GREGORY:  Well, why isn’t that the right way to look at it if that’s the reality of what the legislation would do?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  No.

GREGORY:  How else should it be looked at?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well…

GREGORY:  Yes, there are, there are ballooning costs with the existing system, but the remedy still includes tax cuts–tax hikes, does it not?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  No.  What the, what the bills moving through Congress do, and these are very important, they expand coverage, they will make care more affordable and they will reduce the rate of growth in healthcare costs.  And in that sense they’re going to provide a more fair system, so families are not going to live with the fear that if they lose their job they’re going to lose health care, they’re going to be denied healthcare coverage and they’re going to be able to afford a basic package of care that’s going to make sure they can provide for their families.

GREGORY:  Just a couple of minutes left…

Gregory turned the discussion to bonuses to AIG executives.

I’m not even going to begin to get into the terrible calamity that Obamacare will be if it passes.  Costs will go up massively.  People will pay more and get less.  There will be rationing.  A lot of people will unnecessarily die early deaths of medical neglect.

In what may be the most frightening thing of all to those who value liberty, the phrase “shall” granting the government sweeping powers and responsibilities appears a whopping 3,425 times.  That’s three thousand, four hundred and twenty-five times the government forces you to do something.  This is legislation that will give the government an all-encompassing mandate to dominate our lives.

And about the taxes Gregory mentioned?  Here’s a fun little trivia fact you can know about the 1,990 page health care bill:

According to that group, along with the word “shall” being used 3,425 times in the legislation, the word “tax” was used 87 times, “taxable” used 62 times, “excise tax” used ten times, “taxes” used 15 times, “fee” used 59 times, and “penalty” used 113 times. They also provided a list of 13 specific tax hikes contained within the bill, and even were so kind to include page numbers.

You want taxes?  Then you’ll LOVE H.R. 3692:

October 29th, 2009 by Legislative Staff

1. SMALL BUSINESS SURTAX (Sec. 551, p. 336) – $460.5 BILLION
   
2. EMPLOYER MANDATE TAX* (Secs. 511-512, p. 308) – $135.0 BILLION
   
3. INDIVIDUAL MANDATE TAX* (Sec. 501, p. 296) – $33 BILLION
   
4. MEDICAL DEVICE TAX* (Sec. 552, p. 339) – $20 BILLION
   
5. $2,500 ANNUAL CAP ON FSAs* (Sec. 532, p. 325) – $13.3 BILLION
   
6. PROHIBITION ON PRE-TAX PURCHASES OF OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUGS THROUGH HSAs, FSAs, and HRSs* – (Sec. 1802, p. 1162) – $2.0 BILLION
   
7. TAX ON HEALTH INSURANCE POLICIES TO FUND COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH TRUST FUND* (Sec. 1802, p. 1162) – $2.0 BILLION
   
8. 20% PENALTY ON CERTAIN HAS DISTRIBUTIONS* (Sec. 533, p. 326) – $1.3 BILLION
   
9. OTHER TAX HIKES AND INCREASED COMPLIANCE COSTS ON U.S. JOB CREATORS – $56.4 BILLION
   • IRS reporting on payments to certain businesses (Sec. 553, p. 344) – $17.1 BILLION
     
   • Delay implementation of worldwide interest allocation rules (Sec. 554, p. 345) – $26.1 BILLION
     
   • Override U.S. Treaties on certain payments by “insourcing” businesses (Sec. 561, p. 346) – $7.5 BILLION
     
   • Codify economic substance doctrine and impose penalties (Sec. 562, p. 349) – $5.7 BILLION
10. OTHER REVENUE-RAISING PROVISIONS – $3.0 BILLION

TOTAL TAX INCREASES: $729.5 BILLION

*Violates President Obama’s pledge to avoid tax increases on Americans earning less than $250,000

My point in bringing this to you was simply to point out that if you have ever seen a circus that featured a bunch of clowns wildly driving around and crashing into each other in little clown cars or tricycles, you pretty much understand what it looks like inside the White House.

These people have no clue.

And the new United States of America under Obama, launched with such great fanfare, is – like the Titanic – on a collision course with a giant iceberg.

Democrats’ Effort To Fearmonger Path To Socialized Medicine Has Been Tried Before

In the mainstream media narrative, Sarah Palin is demonized as “about half a whack job” and her statement about “death panels” is literally interpreted in a way I’d love to see them apply JUST ONCE to the Constitution.  Conservatives were denounced as an “angry mob,” as “un-American,” and as exhibiting Nazi characteristics by the Democrat Speaker of the House.

The media loves to talk about rightwing fearmongering.

I’d like to say a little more about leftwing fearmongering.

How about the one that we need to pass health care reform in order to get our economy out of the toilet?

A smattering of various Obama “warnings” fearmongering health care:

– “We must lay a new foundation for future growth and prosperity, and a key pillar of a new foundation is health insurance reform.”

– Obama cast retooling the U.S. health-care system as crucial to the nation’s economic success. Reform would help rein in the national deficit and rebuild the economy, he argued, in a way that would help middle-class workers, whose wages have stagnated in recent years largely because of spiraling health-care costs.

– WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that the United States would not rebuild its economy unless political leaders joined him immediately on a perilous political drive for healthcare reform.

– President Obama warned Wednesday night that health-care reform is central to rebuilding the economy “stronger than before,” and without congressional action on health-care reform, “We’re guaranteed to see Medicare and Medicaid basically break the federal budget.”

And our last Obama “warning”:

“The country has to reform its health care system or else not only are you going to continue to have people really going through a hard time, we’re also going see a continuing escalation of our budget problems that can’t get under control,” Obama told Moran. “I think America has to win it here.”

In the dialogue surrounding health care, Obama warned against “scare tactics,” which he said are fostering anxiety and serving to distract Americans from the plan’s principles.

What’s nice about the last one is that it includes fearmongering on the one hand with warning against “scare tactics” on the other.  Obama tells us one the one hand that our economy will plummet unless we implement ObamaCare, and then demonizes everyone who has a different fearmongering message.

It doesn’t matter that Obama’s urgings that we pass health care “reform” will lower our costs and boost are economy are entirely false:

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose “the sort of fundamental changes” necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare. On the contrary, Elmendorf said, the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured.

Though President Obama and Democratic leaders have repeatedly pledged to alter the soaring trajectory — or cost curve — of federal health spending, the proposals so far would not meet that goal, Elmendorf said, noting, “The curve is being raised.” His remarks suggested that rather than averting a looming fiscal crisis, the measures could make the nation’s bleak budget outlook even worse.

It also doesn’t seem to matter that, given that the “reforms” Obama is seeking wouldn’t take effect until at least 2013, there is little reason to rush headlong into anything other than opportunistic partisan demagoguery.  And yet Barack Obama was out there rushing “reform” and calling August 1st “the people’s deadline” even as polls showed “the people” overwhelmingly wanting Congress to take time crafting health care legislation.

Interestingly, these tricks of fearmongering health care “reform” in the name of averting economic calamity and trying to rush the process through have been tried before.  Think Bill Clinton, First Inaugural Address, 1993:

But all of our efforts to strengthen the economy will fail—let me say this again; I feel so strongly about this—all of our efforts to strengthen the economy will fail unless we also take this year, not next year, not 5 years from now but this year, bold steps to reform our health care system.

In 1992, we spent 14 percent of our income on health care, more than 30 percent more than any other country in the world, and yet we were the only advanced nation that did not provide a basic package of health care benefits to all of its citizens. Unless we change the present pattern, 50 percent of the growth in the deficit between now and the year 2000 will be in health care costs. By the year 2000 almost 20 percent of our income will be in health care. Our families will never be secure, our businesses will never be strong, and our Government will never again be fully solvent until we tackle the health care crisis. We must do it this year.

The combination of the rising cost of care and the lack of care and the fear of losing care are endangering the security and the very lives of millions of our people. And they are weakening our economy every day. Reducing health care costs can liberate literally hundreds of billions of dollars for new investment in growth and jobs. Bringing health costs in line with inflation would do more for the private sector in this country than any tax cut we could give and any spending program we could promote. Reforming health care over the long run is critically essential to reducing not only our deficit but to expanding investment in America.

What’s interesting about this is that liberals depict the Clinton years as the time when the streets were lined with gold and every child went to bed in a warm house with a full tummy.

So the point would obviously be, either Clinton was fearmongering health care in a way that did not turn out to be true at all, or the “glorious Clinton economy” is itself a fabrication.  Because somehow Bill Clinton had to flounder along with no health care reform.

We need to put some things into historic perspective: 1) Bill Clinton so mismanaged the country his first two years in office that it led to the largest political tsunami ever experienced in American history as Republicans took over in an unprecedented landslide 1994 election.  2) Many of the benefits that Bill Clinton has received credit for were actually enacted by the Republican Congress (example: welfare reform).  3) Bill Clinton benefited from an economy that was just recovering from a severe recession at the end of the Bush I administration as Clinton took over.  By contrast, George Bush II – like Barack Obama now – had a significant recession handed to him that will count against his average performance.  In President Bush’s case, that recession was compounded by the worst attack on American soil in nearly 200 years  in the 9/11 terror attack.  4) Bill Clinton changed the way unemployment figures were calculated back in 1994 – making comparisons to previous eras appear far more rosy than they really were.  5) The “Clinton Budget Surplus” is in reality a myth.  In actuality, Clinton created a smoke and mirror illusion by transferring “public debt” costs which are calculated as part of the budget over to “intergovernmental holdings” (eg., by borrowing from Social Security) which are not counted as part of the public debt.

I might also point out that Bill Clinton’s famous statement from his State of the Union Speech in January 1996 – “THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS OVER” – tacitly recognized the new Republican era, and which in reality was the ultimate reason why the Clinton economy became ultimately successful.

Democrats were wiped out in 1994 as Republicans swept into power when Americans became fed up with Democrat incompetence and massive spending.  And Bill Clinton was wise enough to recognize the handwriting on the wall.  As a result, he transitioned into a fiscal moderate and avoided the fate of his party.

But now the man who recognized that “The era of big government is over” is back to his pre-1994 ways.  Bill Clinton has joined Barack Obama with the very same big spending, big government socialistic mindset that brought the Democrats to such historic disaster in 1994.

There are many things we can do to improve our health care system.  That goes without saying.  But the Democrat’s presentation that opposing their system is opposing “change” or “reform” is simply asinine.  If any change is better than our present course, than we should just nuke ourselves and be done with it: that would be “change,” after all.  We need to recognize that there is good reform and there is bad reform – and government-run health care is simply “bad” reform.

ObamaCare suffers from massive policy problems that go right to the heart of the greater debate surrounding the size of government, the size of Obama’s unprecedented deficits, and the unsustainable size of our debt.  Democrats have a real problem explaining how they are going to spend $1.6 trillion and yet bring down costs – especially given the CBO’s damning analysis.  They have a problem explaining how they’re going to take hundreds of millions out of Medicare and yet not affect the quality of care to Medicare beneficiaries.  And they have a problem explaining how they’re not going to end up transferring over a hundred million Americans out of their employee-based health care and into the “public option” when good analysis sees exactly that happening (and see also here).

The American people listened to Obama fearmonger his way to the gigantic stimulus package that will ultimately cost Americans $3.27 trillion.  The stimulus has been deemed by the American people as being so unsuccessful that fully 72% of Americans now say “returning the unused portion of the $787 billion dollar stimulus to taxpayers would do more to boost the economy than having the government spend it.”  People are turning against what they increasingly recognize as big government socialism.

We need to STOP health care “reform” until it includes tort reform such as loser pays, until it includes an end to state and federal mandates, until it includes allowing our 1300 private insurance companies to compete across state lines.  And we need to STOP health care “reform” until it EXCLUDES giving full medical coverage to more than 12 million illegal immigrants, until it excludes “public options,” excludes “Co-Ops,” and excludes any other device that becomes a backdoor guarantee to government health care.