Realize That Obama Has ‘Fundamentally Transformed’ America Into A Failed Marxist State. Just Ask Poor People And Liberals

Quick test.  Who said this:

“The economy is doing poorly. Everything is expensive. With high taxes, we’re not going to be able to pay rent.”

Wrong, Democrat.  It was NOT Karl Rove or some über right wing nutjob who only said this because he hates Obama (and that because he’s “racist”).  Nope.  It was a 34-year-old Hispanic father named Francisco Zuniga at an SEIU-sponsored protest event.  Who would have thought that out of the mouths of leftist whiners could drool wisdom???

This is the fifth year of the Age of Obama.  It is the fifth freaking year of a failed president whose only talent is blaming others for his massive failures.

Let’s break those words from Zuniga down:

“The economy is doing poorly.”

That is something that literally every single person who is not a demon-possessed liar and hypocrite without shame (i.e. a Democrat) knows as a fact.  Obama promised the world; he has delivered economic manure.

What else does Zuniga say?

“Everything is expensive.”

Well, thanks for noticing that little factoid, Francisco.  I’ve written ad nauseum about the Obama Federal Reserve policies that were necessary to “fund” Obama’s reckless and morally and fiscally insane federal spending.  We’ve had Quantitative Easing, we’ve had QE2, we’ve had Operation Twist, we’ve had QE3, and now we’re at “QE Forever.”  And these policies have basically arbitrarily added zeroes to the money supply computers.  As of March of this year, Obama’s chief Fedthug had added over $2 trillion to the money supply – a beyond insane 240 percent increase.

It’s actually probably a lot more than that “mere” 240 percent increase.  CNN Money says that rather than $2 trillion, it’s actually been at least $2.5 trillion.  And as Democrat Bernie Saunders notes, it’s actually an awful lot more than that, given the AT LEAST $16 trillion in “secret loans” that had taken place under Obama’s Federal Reserve.  I mean, holy hell, where did all this cash come from?  From Never-Never Land, that’s where.

Let me put it this way: when Obama took office from George W. Bush, the Federal Reserve balance sheet was $800 billion; it is now $3,601,523 BILLION under Barack Obama.

In an article I wrote three full years ago:

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 is why we haven’t yet experienced truly catastrophic hyperinflation YET.  But the moment we ever actually start to get out of the economic hellhole Obama has dug us into, we will see inflation at levels that will shock and dismay you.  You mark my words.  And what we’ve now learned is that having become hooked on the hardcore narcotic known as QE crack, we can’t get off of it – because if we try the stock market will crash and people will start to panic.

Who is actually going to pay for all that money Obama invented?  I pointed out the sad reality a year ago:

Nobody’s talking about what that massive devaluation of our currency is going to ultimately cost us.  Nobody is talking about the fact that the people who are going to pay the highest tax as a result of this action – and it IS a regressive tax – will be retirees who will see the value of their savings drop even as they look at interest rates and pension funds that pay them nothing.  Retirees are not in a position to snort the crack of quantitative easing; they depend mostly on bonds.  And the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have decided to stab the bond market  that older investors necessarily depend upon in the heart to artificially inflate the stock market.  Until they have to do it again.  And again.  And of course pretty soon again and again after that.

Commodities like oil and food – which conveniently are being ignored as proof positive that we are already seeing MASSIVE inflation – will continue to go up and up and up (see here and here and here for examples).   The fact of the matter is that prices are rising dramatically and HAVE BEEN rising dramatically, and what just happened today will sure that they CONTINUE to rise dramatically.  And everybody but Obama and the Federal Reserve know it.

And everything I predicted in that article and one I wrote back in 2011 turned out to be right.  Except I used the term “QE 4” and Obama’s economic wizards called it “QE Forever” instead.  And all the way back in 2010 I said it would fail, as it HAS failed.  You need to understand: as I pointed out in May 2011, quantitative easing is the economic equivalent of feeding a diabetic lots of sugar.  It is incredibly unhealthy and will ultimately kill the patient, but once you start feeding that sugar you can’t stop or the patient will crash and die for sure, just as Wall Street will crash and die if Obama stops giving them free sugar candy money.

Let me add another group of people to retirees I described above, Francisco: THE POOR.  Because most of the poor are on fixed incomes every bit as much as retirees are.  And their low wages, their welfare and their food stamps just aint going to keep up with the inflation that has resulted from printing money.  When you print money out of thin air, and you’ve got trillions more dollars chasing the same amount of finite resources, the value of those dollars goes down, down, DOWN.

It turns out that “free money” isn’t really so damn free, after all.

Commodities such as food and fuel are skyrocketing – especially gas as Obama’s failed Middle East policy rears its ugly head in Syria (although, mind you, Obama’s gas prices have been shockingly high all along) – and so, yeah, Francisco, “everything is getting more expensive.”

We’re to the point where we will soon be spending more money in interest to service our psychotic debt than we will on anything else.  By the next decade – and keep in mind we’re nearly half way there NOW – we will be spending the equivalent of the 2009 $862 billion Obama stimulus EVERY SINGLE YEAR.  Only those payments will be going to China while they mockingly laugh at our stupidity that made us their debt slaves.

You aint seen nothing yet, Francisco.  Thanks to Obama, your hell is going to get a lot more hellish.

What else did Francisco tell us?  He told us that Obama’s economy was crappy and thanks to Obama’s moral and fiscal idiocy, everything was more expensive now due to inflation.  What else did he say?

“With high taxes, we’re not going to be able to pay rent.”

I don’t need to point out which party and which failed president of which damn party is behind all those taxes, of course.

Let’s try to put this in terms that Francisco will understand if he doesn’t already: who owns your house you’re paying that rent on?  And what do you think happens when liberal demagogues “tax the rich”???  Here’s what will happen: when Obama and Democrats viciously tax “the rich” who own that house you rent, what’s that high-taxed owner going to do?  He’s going to raise your damn rent, THAT’S what he’s going to do.  And if you don’t like paying more in rent, you’d better show up with a huge mob of likeminded enraged sufferers with pitchforks and torches to drive Obama out of Washington before he creates another monster and kills again.

But you won’t, will you?

I want you to consider something about Obama’s “housing recovery” within Obama’s “economic recovery.”  They’re both radically and wildly FAILED.  I want you to consider, Mr. Zuniga, the ramifications of the fact that SIXTY PERCENT OF HOMES SOLD IN 2013 WENT TO CASH BUYERS.  Before I point out what that means, let me first point out how connected it is with the radically failed Obama Fed policies that have kept the money printing presses going night and day and day and night:

USA: 60 percent of homes sold in 2013 went to all cash buyers
Posted on August 16, 2013 by Stacy Herbert

Stacy Summary: This is what interest rate apartheid looks like.

USA:  60 percent of homes sold in 2013 went to all cash buyers

There was an odd sort of myth floating around the market that the cash buyer  crowd was somehow a tiny portion of the market, like a drop of water in the vast  ocean of home buying.  This delusional dream played into the fantasy that this  housing market was naturally rising because of overall household demand when in  reality, it is being driven by investors leveraging the artificial low rates  created by the Fed.  The flood of money from Wall Street has been large.  Even  anecdotally, it was apparent that cash buyers were driving the market given that  housing is a margin driven market.  That is, at any given time only a small  portion of all homes are on the market for sale.  However, an analysis by  non-other than Goldman Sachs shows that 60 percent of all 2013 home sales are  being driven by cash buyers.  That is, the middle class is largely being pushed  out of this game and has become the minority in this real estate market.

You see, Mr. Zuniga, these rich people are taking advantage of the crony capitalism (fascism) of Obama that has helped the elite investor class at the expense of the poor.  They’re snapping up the homes that YOU’RE going to rent.  And then they’re socking you with higher and higher rents.  Meanwhile, you’ve got virtually no change to ever own a home thanks to Obama.  The American dream is dead meat.  And did I mention this is the FIFTH year of the Age of Obama???  But it’s all Bush’s fault, much the way in the Big Brother society of 1984 it was all “Emmanuel Goldstein’s” fault.

Meanwhile, Mr. Zuniga, it’s getting harder and harder for you to even GET a job in Obama’s wildly failed economy.  The jobless rate just went down to 7.4%.  Hip-hip-hooray.  Only it did so as still MORE of the decimated American working class were destroyed into hopelessness at EVER finding a job.

There is an incredibly significant labor measure called the “labor participation rate.”  It is the percentage of working-age Americans who actually have a damn JOB.

There’s an article I wrote a little over a year ago that you ought to consider.  I detailed then the catastrophic plunge in the rate of Americans who actually have a job in the miserably failed Obama economy during and throughout the Obama regime.  At that time, it was the worst it had been in thirty years.  And I noted how each year under Obama’s failed Marxist State, it had just gotten worse and worse.  As an example, I recorded that in November 2010 – and note this AFTER the so-called “recovery” – the labor participation rate was the worst it had been in 25 years.  Which is to say far, FAR worse than anything Bush had ever done, you Democrat ideologues.  The next year, by August 2011, it was the worst in 27 years.  And by May of 2012, it was the worst due to Obama in 31 years.

Here we are, a year or so later, and how have things gone?  Just as I told you they would go under this failed president’s failed leadership and failed ideology: the labor participation rate is now the worst in 35 years.

And the reliably überliberal Los Angeles Times was forced to acknowledge it in these terms:

Although the unemployment rate ticked down to 7.3% last month — the lowest level since December 2008 — it fell largely for the wrong reason. More discouraged Americans gave up looking for work as the percentage of the population in the labor force dropped for the third consecutive month to its worst point in 35 years.

The unemployment rate has been dropping – which has been as good for Obama politically as it has been catastrophic for the rest of America economically.  I predicted a year and a half ago:

At the rate we’re going in Obama’s God damn America, we will have zero percent unemployment and nobody will actually have a damn job.

And, yep, that’s the way we’re headed.

Democrats are demon-possessed bureaucrats.  That’s where they get their name from.  They claim that the labor participation rate is falling as older baby boomers retire.  But that is a LIE FROM HELL.  As an example, it is YOUNG ADULTS who are suffering the most due to Obamanomics.  People cannot find a job who need to work.

And because of ObamaCare, full-time jobs have been “fundamentally transformed” by Obama into part-time jobs with no health benefits.

And if you don’t believe me, again, just ask liberals.  A letter signed by the heads of the Teamsters, the UFCW and UNITE-HERE have this to say about Obama’s impact on workers and the hours they get to work:

When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them.  Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.

The letter from these liberal unions points out the obvious fact that Democrats refuse to acknowledge about their demonic ObamaCare takeover of healthcare:

First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.


Second, millions of Americans are covered by non-profit health insurance plans like the ones in which most of our members participate. These non-profit plans are governed jointly by unions and companies under
the Taft-Hartley Act. Our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the Administration, our employees will treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens. As such, many employees will be relegated to second-class status and shut out of the help the law offers to for-profit insurance plans.

And finally, even though non-profit plans like ours won’t receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they’ll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours
unsustainable, and will undermine the health-care market of viable alternatives to the big health insurance companies.

You want to know who is killing your dreams, Mr. Zuniga?  Democrats.

But you keep voting for them anyway, because you prefer lies and more socialism and more welfare and then more lies and still more socialism and still more welfare, to the truth that would set you free if you were willing to finally act like a man and be determined to stand up on your own two feet and demand an economic system that enables you to do that.

You’re siding with the wrong people, the wrong party, the wrong political philosophy.  You’re siding with the people who keep HURTING you.  As you’d understand if you stopped and thought about your own words.

You’re one of those people who still idiotically believes that when Obama “gives” you “free stuff,” it’s actually FREE.  Let me pop your bubble, Francisco: when ObamaCare taxes insurance companies, taxes drugs, taxes medical devices, and mandates (that means forces) the health industry to pay for all of these “free” benefits such as free birth control and 26-year-olds staying on mom and dad’s health plan, the cost of medical care rises FOR EVERYBODY.  And at the same time the quality of health care goes up for EVERYBODY.

And that has had the result that people are getting kicked off health plans rather than all the lies Obama promised.

You don’t understand that everything you and your Democrats want to do – such as force businesses to raise the minimum wage whether they can afford to do so or not, whether they will cut their work forces or not, whether they will be forced to raise prices (which will reduce demand and thus reduce jobs) on poor people who buy from them or not – undermines the economy and hurts the very poor people Democrats dishonestly claim to be trying to help.  Back in 2009, I predicted that Obamanomics with its totalitarian dictate on employers to pay higher wages would be a holocaust for minimum wage workers.  And I was right.  And I just keep being more and more right as Obama’s devastating and disastrous impact on the economy spreads like the cancer that it is.

In order for the economy to create jobs, and create enough jobs to get America out of the hellhole Obama put it in, the government needs to step off employers’ throats.  Quit forcing them to do stuff they can’t afford to do and cover stuff they can’t afford to cover.  Cut their taxes so they have an actual INCENTIVE to create jobs.  And for that matter cut the damn welfare incentive so that working-age adults who ought to be ashamed of themselves if they were capable of that virtue have an actual incentive to start working.

With QE3 Federal Reserve And Obama Administration Fully Qualify For Definition Of Insanity (Doing SAME Thing Over And Over And Expecting Different Results)

Things aren’t getting better.  Obama told you a lie.  Democrats have been telling you lies.  I (and other conservatives) have accurately and reliably told AND PREDICTED the truth from the get-go.  As I will document in this article.

First of all, the QE3 that was launched today is an open recognition of the failure of the Obama administration by the Federal Reserve.

The initial title of this article – as you can see by examining the link itself – was “GOLDMAN: Bad Jobs Report Puts Odds Of QE Next Week Above 50%.”

GOLDMAN: It Looks Like QE Is Coming Next Week
Joe Weisenthal|Sep. 7, 2012, 8:47 AM

Quick blast outta Goldman.

BOTTOM LINE: With today’s August employment report showing a nonfarm payroll gain of 96,000 and an unemployment rate of 8.1% because of a drop in the participation rate, we expect a return to unsterilized and probably open-ended asset purchases at the September 12-13 FOMC meeting.

MAIN POINTS:

1. We now anticipate that the FOMC will announce a return to unsterilized asset purchases (QE3), mainly agency mortgage-backed securities but potentially including Treasury securities, at its September 12-13 FOMC meeting. We previously forecasted QE3 in December or early 2013. We continue to expect a lengthening of the FOMC’s forward guidance for the first hike in the funds rate from “late 2014” to mid-2015 or beyond.

So this isn’t a “good thing.”  This is a bad thing.  The 200 point increase in the stock market is a temporary blip and ultimately only the institutional investors who can move money around in microseconds will be able to benefit from it.

Here’s another article I wrote back in August that cites proof that the QE3 that we just saw Friday is the result of the Obamanomics disaster.  The Fed simply didn’t launch QE3 because Obama’s economic policies are working; they did it because Obamanomics has utterly failed.

Second, let’s look at the “success” of quantitative easing:

Here’s more on that from an article I wrote back in August 2011.  Notice that I predicted with complete accuracy that QE2 would fail and that we would be at precisely the point where we are now trying a THIRD round of quantitative easing.

And this isn’t really even “QE3”; it’s really “QE4.”  Because Operation Twist basically WAS QE3.  It was certainly at the very least a “primer” for QE3.  I’m hardly the only one to say that, as it’s rather easy to show.  Just how many times do we have to keep trying this???

As long as Wall Street keeps getting its massive doses of sugar (really more like crack cocaine) from the government, it keeps feeding and feeding from the massively-government-subisidized feeding trough.

Look at the chart above and answer this question: if I were a drug addict pursuing doses of crack, how would a graph of my behavior look different?  I’d have my hit (QE1) and then crash; then I’d take another hit (QE2) and then crash; so I’d need another hit (QE3).  And then another one, ad infinitum.  That is the nature of destructive addictive behavior; and the addict either changes or he dies.  We’ll see in November if we’re ready to change or if we want to keep pursuing economic crack until we collapse and die as a nation.

How many times do you keep doing the same thing?  Now that we are at “QE3,” how is this not the classic definition of insanity???

What do you think the odds are that the market is going to tank again just like it did the first two times in anticipation of a QE4????  And you need to realize that a vote for Obama IS a vote for QE4.  And QE5.  And we’ll be a banana republic before Obama’s Fed would have a chance to do a QE6.

Not counting QE3 today, the Federal Reserve has pumped (or dumped) more than $2.3 trillion in money that it invented by adding zeros to their computer under Obama.

Let me ask you a question?  Where did that $2.3 trillion go?  Are you richer???

You sure aren’t.  In fact, even if you blame the ENTIRE recession on Bush (as liberals invariably do), Obama has still been very nearly TWICE as disastrous for household incomes in his “recovery” than you can blame Bush for during “his” recession.  You’re being lied to every single day.

When George Bush left office, a senior citizen with $300,000 in bonds – basically a fairly average retirement nestegg – could collect $1,500 a month in interest.  Which was enough for them to live on and be able to have the principal for emergencies and hopefully be able to leave that principal to their children.  But Obama and Bernanke have obliterated that; now that same $300,000 is producing only $200 a month in interest.  Which is very obviously nowhere NEAR enough to live on.  And so senior citizens are eating away at that nestegg that they counted on at a very alarming rate.  Obama and his failed policies have screwed these people – and the mainstream media will NOT talk about it.

Now the Fed balance sheet is going to be over $3 trillion.  And you can add to that shocking tally another $40 billion every single month for the foreseeable future.  Before Obama took office, it was $800 billion.  Nobody’s talking about what that massive devaluation of our currency is going to ultimately cost us.  Nobody is talking about the fact that the people who are going to pay the highest tax as a result of this action – and it IS a regressive tax – will be retirees who will see the value of their savings drop even as they look at interest rates and pension funds that pay them nothing.  Retirees are not in a position to snort the crack of quantitative easing; they depend mostly on bonds.  And the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have decided to stab the bond market  that older investors necessarily depend upon in the heart to artificially inflate the stock market.  Until they have to do it again.  And again.  And of course pretty soon again and again after that.

Commodities like oil and food – which conveniently are being ignored as proof positive that we are already seeing MASSIVE inflation – will continue to go up and up and up (see here and here and here for examples).   The fact of the matter is that prices are rising dramatically and HAVE BEEN rising dramatically, and what just happened today will sure that they CONTINUE to rise dramatically.  And everybody but Obama and the Federal Reserve know it.

I put it in biblical terms here.  And I pointed out:

The only thing propping up the economy under Obama’s morally and fiscally idiotic policies is QE2. Banks and major businesses are not being allowed to fail (it’s all too big too fail in an increasingly fascist system in which the government dominates the banking and corporate spheres). Right now, the system Obama has only made more broken is being kept afloat in cash being created out of thin air. The last time quantitative easing ended, the DOW immediately lost 16% of its value in two weeks. And QE2 is set to end in June.

This means QE3, and then of course QE4. Because “QE” means “Quack Economics” far more than it should mean anything else.

I also pointed out that this would fail way back in 2010.  And I pointed out that all the Federal Reserve is doing is monetizing Obama’s damn insane deficits.

But the real inflation monster is still yet to come.

Back in May of last year I wrote this:

QE2 is the economic equivalent of sugar in nutrition. Will it provide quick energy? Sure it will. Will that quick energy come at the expense of future health? You bet it will.

Right now, as a result of the Obama Federal Reserve’s policy of increasing the monetary supply by buying debt from itself (literally creating money out of thin air), there is more economic activity. Right now, as a result of this policy, credit rates are lower. Fewer banks and corporations are going under because of the ready access to cheap money. Investors see the stability and invest.

We should all feed our children tons of sugar, so we can enjoy the short term bonanza of frenetic activity.

Unless you worry about all the cavities, the weight gains, the diabetes, and of course that huge depressing crash with all of those catastrophic health consequences that necessarily come later.

The first time we ended QE1, the stock market lost 16% of its value in two weeks. Which is to say it didn’t work the first time for the same reason it won’t work this second time. Or a necessary third time, etcetera.

One of the more sinister effects of quantitative easing is that it essentially becomes a tax on saving. You were busy at work putting away as much as you could during a period when your money was worth more. But now, as a result of artificially increasing the money supply, all that money you accumulated in saving is worth less. Why is this? Because you can increase the money supply all you want, but you’ve still got the same finite amount of goods and services. And when you’ve got twice as many dollars in the money supply as you had before, over time those same goods and services will cost twice as much as before, and so on.

Right now, prices are going up dramatically on virtually everything that matters. And yet the only ones who refuse to admit it are the federal government and its staunchest mainstream media propagandists who think and report what the Obama regime wants them to think and report.

In another article I wrote over two full years ago:

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 is why we haven’t yet experienced truly catastrophic inflation YET.  But the moment we ever actually start to get out of the economic hellhole Obama has dug us into, we will see inflation at levels that will shock and dismay you.  You mark my words.

Now that we are officially at QE3, I want you to watch this video to see what necessarily awaits you:

Get ready, because the American economy WILL be going on a scary ride:

Democrats’ War On Poverty Has Been A War On America That Has Done NOTHING To Help The Poor

One of my favorite programs is the Wall Street Journal’s “Journal Editorial Report” which appears on Fox News.  This segment helps you understand why:

When we come back, Paul Ryan takes on the religious left after 90 Georgetown professors attack his budget proposal as going against Catholic social teaching. Would Jesus Christ really have favored big government?
 
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
 
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN, R-WISC., CHAIRMAN, HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE: Since we meet here today at America’s first Catholic university, I feel it is important to discuss how, as a Catholic in public life, my own personal thinking on these issues has been guided by my understanding of the church’s social teaching. Simply put, I don’t believe the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government.

 (END VIDEO CLIP)
 
GIGOT: That was the House budget committee chairman, Paul Ryan, last week delivering an address at Georgetown University. The Wisconsin Republican has come under fire from some Catholics on the left who claimed the blue print goes against the church’s social teaching. Ninety Georgetown faculty and administrators sent a letter to Ryan in advance of the appearance that read, in part, “We would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few.”
 
Joining the panel this week, Wall Street Journal columnist and deputy editor, Dan Henninger, and columnist, Mary Anastasia O’Grady.
 
Dan, we’ll put it on the table, we are all Catholics here, grew up with Catholic social teaching.
 
DAN HENNINGER, COLUMNIST & DEPUTY EDITOR: Right.
 
GIGOT: To my mind, the news is not so much Jesuits or Georgetown faculty by conservatives. That is an old story. The news is that Ryan is willing to mix it up in return. Why is the debate important?
 
HENNINGER: The debate is important for — I tell you, Paul, it is important for reasons that both Ryan’s critics and Paul Ryan cite, both that letter and his talk said the same thing. One in six Americans are in poverty. Now, the Great Society started in 1965, creating programs to address poverty.
 
GIGOT: Lyndon Johnson.
 
HENNINGER: Lyndon Johnson.
 
GIGOT: Expansion of government.
 
HENNINGER: 50 years later, one in six Americans are in poverty? After spending trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. Now Ryan is saying, first, we need accountability over why that has happened. Second, the three main programs — two main programs were created then, Medicare and Medicaid, adding in Social Security, the three major entitlements, the costs are so large that they drain money away from other programs for the poor.
 
GIGOT: Right.
 
HENNINGER: And Paul Ryan is saying we have to look at this and start making some decisions about where that is going. And that’s what he’s asking his critics to come and talk to him about.
 
GIGOT: This is what the late Senator, a Democrat, and a Catholic, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, used to make the case to me that — he said, Democrats should reform entitlements for seniors and Medicare and Social Security because, as Dan said, they are growing a huge wedge in the federal government. They will soak up, if trends continue, almost all the spending there is, the money there is, and there would be no money left for child care, for example, or education, or transportation, much less defense — good liberal purposes.
 
MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY: But, Paul, why are you talking about facts?
 
(LAUGHTER)
 
Facts are not what the left has used to grow the government to what it is right now.
 
GIGOT: That’s one my big flaws.
 
(LAUGHTER)
 
O’GRADY: Really, you have to stop that.
 
Paul Ryan is freaking these guys out because he is taking their language and using it against them. He talks about how government dissolves the common good of society, how it dishonors the dignity of the human person. They think they own that language. And they think that language justifies big government. And he is saying, no, what you have done with this big government has actually undermined the things that Catholic teaching is supposed to be about. And that is why they are upset about it. If Paul Ryan, God forbid, gets the morale high ground, which they think they own, they will have to go back to the facts. And the facts will not support their position.
 
GIGOT: Important point, a lot of Republicans and conservatives tend to shrink, at least in my experience, from moral arguments. Look at my failing here, brining — talking practical points in fact.
 
(LAUGHTER)
 
But if — so you leave them a monopoly on the moral rhetoric, which is very power of in politics, on the left. Ryan is saying, I will meet you on that same battlefield.
 
HENNINGER: Well, he has created a phrase, which is the immorality of debt. And, in fact, Pope Benedict himself apparently said that if you live with debt that begins do impede the government’s ability to provide basic services, then you are living in untrue — Benedict is obviously talking about Europe.
 
GIGOT: Right.

HENNINGER: And Europe has had a tremendous commitment to social justice and social programs, and now we see Europe as a case study in struggling with trying to pay for commitments that simply they can no longer afford. And that is the issue that Paul Ryan is trying to raise. And he now is putting it in moral terms. And there is a moral issue there. And I think he deserve a good-faith answer.
 
GIGOT: If you look at Europe, one thing that we can see is when you have a debt crisis, and you finally have to do something about it, who suffers the most and first? It isn’t the Georgetown faculty. 

(LAUGHTER)
 
It is the poor, who have their budgets and spending cut?

This is precisely the kind of moral argument that I have been advocating for on this blog.  Here’s an example:

So let’s read the Bible and see what it says.

First there’s that little passage in 1 Samuel that warns about the danger of a socialist king who would seize what rightly belonged to the people if they wickedly chose big government instead of trusting in God (as I previously have pointed out):

The story of abusive big government is not a recent one. The prophet Samuel describes it in the Old Testament:

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles. — 1 Samuel 8:19-20

Who are we really rejecting? God said to Samuel:
“…it is not you they have rejected, Samuel, but they have rejected me as their king.” — 1 Samuel 8:7

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.” — 1 Samuel 8:10-18

The tenth of everything that God warned the people the king would take was on top of the tenth that belonged to God. Which is to say that the king would double their taxes in addition to treating the people like they belonged to him. Of course, that tyrant king was only seizing an additional tenth of his people’s wealth; imagine today, where in the highest-taxed states (which are all Democrat states, fwiw), some Americans are forced to pay more than half of their income in taxes. A mere extra tenth would be like a blessing to them.

It doesn’t sound as if the king whom we are told again and again – ”he will take” – is a good thing. Except on Al Sharpton’s and demonic Democrats warped and evil account of the passage.

Then there’s Jesus, who contrasted what the government confiscated with what belonged to God:

“Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?” Caesar’s,” they replied. He said to them, “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” — Luke 20:24-25

Notice that what belongs to God isn’t also described as belonging to Caesar. What Jesus is MOST DEFINITELY NOT SAYING here is that giving unto Caesar is in any way, shape or form tantamount to giving to God. Unless, that is, you are a Democrat (i.e., a demonic bureaucrat), in which case worshipping the State is identical to worshipping God.

When Democrats want to let Obama take more of what belongs to us, they are giving their god his due, not the God of the Bible.

As you could see by examining the links, I took part of that argument from a previous article titled, “Obama’s Government As God Believes It Owns Everything The People Earn.”

So when liberals demand the expansion of government they are not being “pro-God”; they are being ANTI-God.  And it also turns out to be the case that they are tragically anti-poor, too.

In another article, I wrote the following to document how Democrats have undermined charity in favor of socialism – while being anything but “charitable” in their own lives – while hurting the people they claimed they were helping:

I once quoted Burton Folsom in his great book “New Deal Or Raw Deal?” It’s time to quote that passage again:

Throughout American history, right from the start, charity had been a state and local function. Civic leaders, local clergy, and private citizens, evaluated the legitimacy of people’s need in their communities or counties; churches and other organizations could then provide food, shelter, and clothing to help victims of fires or women abandoned by drunken husbands. Most Americans believed that the face-to-face encounters of givers and receivers of charity benefited both groups. It created just the right amount of uplift and relief, and discouraged laziness and a poor work ethic.

The Founders saw all relief as local and voluntary, and the Constitution gave no federal role for the government in providing charity. James Madison, in defending the Constitution, observed, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” In other words, if relief, and other areas, were made functions of the federal government, the process would become politicized and politicians and deadbeats could conspire to trade votes for food” (New Deal or Raw Deal, page 76-77).

Prior to FDR, the American people took care of their OWN, family by family, town by town, county by county, state by state. They had NEVER had welfare, and in fact found the very concept of welfare distasteful. And I’m going to tell you right now that they were better, stronger people than we are as a result of that moral superiority and that faith in THE PEOPLE and not the GOVERNMENT.

Barack Obama – who gave virtually NOTHING to charity when giving would have demonstrated the character he proved he DIDN’T have – doesn’t trust the American people, or much care about them, for that matter. He doesn’t want to help people; he wants to grow the size of government. He wants only to make the state bigger and bigger and more and more powerful and controlling. Obama is angry because he doesn’t believe people should have the right to decide for themselves how much of their own money they “need”; HE wants to make that decision for them and then impose it on them so he can seize their money and redistribute it to people who will vote for him and for his party.

Whenever a Democrat calls for more taxes, understand that what they are really saying is that they believe that the government is too small and needs to become larger. And whenever they call for more taxes for the sake of helping people, what they are really saying is that you are a bad and immoral person who can’t and shouldn’t be trusted to help people in need and that it is better to take your money away from you and put it into the coffers of a big government socialist redistributionist agency which will piss it away on boondoggle programs that benefit the politically connected far more than they do the poor. And the fact that even as Barack Obama and the overwhelming Democrat majority that had dictatorial control of both branches of Congress made government bigger than it has ever been and yet blacks are now worse off than they’ve been for generations and women are being set way back is the icing on the cake of the proof of that fact. Liberals hurt the people they cynically and falsely claim to be helping – and then demagogically use the misery that they themselves created to accumulate even more power for themselves and their failed agenda.

A lot of Americans like Social Security.  But they wouldn’t if they knew the facts about it the massive debt it has compiled and the alternatives to it – proposed by Democrats, for that matter – that would have been demonstrated to have been FAR better.

Obama’s policies have sent real inflation (things like food and gasoline) skyrocketing.  And who does that hurt more: the rich or the poor???  Let me assure you that it’s not rich people who are being forced to choose between putting gas in their cars so they can make it to work or buying food for their families.

Obama and his Democrat lackeys rammed minimum wage hikes through.  Conservatives said it would severely hurt teen employment.  And the documented reality is that it has massively hurt young workers EXACTLY AS CONSERVATIVES PREDICTED.

It is no surprise that the economy is in the worst condition since the LAST TIME we let a socialist run it.

Just as it is absolutely no surprise that poverty is the highest it has been in at least 52 years – and frankly in HISTORY – under this failed president whose only ability is the ability to lie and slander and demagogue.

Liar-In-Chief Obama Distorts Ronald Reagan As A ‘Wild-Eyed, Socialist, Tax-Hiking Class Warrior.’ Versus the Truth.

Even CBS wouldn’t buy Obama’s latest whopper of a lie:

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley was barely able to contain his laughter Wednesday night after playing a clip of President Obama invoking Ronald Reagan on behalf of his “Buffett Rule” tax hike quest. Nearly breaking into a laugh, a baffled Pelley wondered to CBS News political analyst John Dickerson: “So a vote for President Obama is a vote for Ronald Reagan?!”Dickerson snickered too. (Watch the video to see Pelley’s puzzled reaction.)

[The video is available at the above link].

Oliver Knox goes a little bit further to point out in his Yahoo News analysis that Barack Obama literally points a finger at Barack Obama and screams, “You lie!” to HIMSELF.

Today’s Republicans might view Ronald Reagan as a “wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior,” and the late conservative icon’s views on taxes might have disqualified him from the party’s nomination in 2012, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

Obama, defending his “Buffett Rule” call for higher taxes on the very rich, said in a speech that he was “not the first president to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share.” He went on to say:

Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong. So this president gave another speech where he said it was “crazy”—that’s a quote—that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary. That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan.

He thought that, in America, the wealthiest should pay their fair share, and he said so. I know that position might disqualify him from the Republican primaries these days, but what Ronald Reagan was calling for then is the same thing that we’re calling for now: a return to basic fairness and responsibility; everybody doing their part. And if it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan Rule instead of the Buffett Rule.

Yet Reagan also championed the very same “trickle-down” economics that Obama has roundly denounced—the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy lead to investment that generates growth and thereby jobs. Obama on Tuesday described this economic policy in harsh terms, saying its supporters “don’t seem to understand how it is that America got built.”

“In this country, prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few,” he said. “Prosperity has always come from the bottom up, from a strong and growing middle class.”

Obama lumped trickle-down economics among “old broken-down theories” that he blamed for the 2008 global economic meltdown.

The Blaze further points out that Obama’s demagogic claiming of the Reagan mantle gets even more warped, pointing out:

The comparison is equally confounding when you consider President Reagan’s historic tax reform:

The video comes from Ronald Reagan speaking at the signing ceremony for his 1986 Tax Reform Act.  What exactly did Reagan say that Obama can cling to?

Ronald Reagan, speaking at signing ceremony for Tax Reform Act, October 22, 1986

Thank you all, please be seated. Well, thank you, and welcome to the White House. In a moment I’ll be sitting at that desk, taking up a pen, and signing the most sweeping overhaul of our tax code in our nation’s history. To all of you here today who’ve worked so long and hard to see this day come, my thanks and the thanks of a nation go out to you.
 
The journey’s been long, and many said we’d never make it to the end. But as usual the pessimists left one thing out of their calculations: the American people. They haven’t made this the freest country and the mightiest economic force on this planet by shrinking from challenges. They never gave up. And after almost 3 years of commitment and hard work, one headline in the Washington Post told the whole story: “The Impossible Became the Inevitable,” and the dream of America’s fair-share tax plan became a reality.
 
When I sign this bill into law, America will have the lowest marginal tax rates and the most modern tax code among major industrialized nations, one that encourages risk-taking, innovation, and that old American spirit of enterprise. We’ll be refueling the American growth economy with the kind of incentives that helped create record new businesses and nearly 11.7 million jobs in just 46 months. Fair and simpler for most Americans, this is a tax code designed to take us into a future of technological invention and economic achievement, one that will keep America competitive and growing into the 21st century.
 
But for all tax reform’s economic benefits, I believe that history will record this moment as something more: as the return to the first principles. This country was founded on faith in the individual, not groups or classes, but faith in the resources and bounty of each and every separate human soul. Our Founding Fathers designed a democratic form of government to enlist the individual’s energies and fashioned a Bill of Rights to protect its freedoms. And in so doing, they tapped a wellspring of hope and creativity that was to completely transform history.
 
The history of these United States of America is indeed a history of individual achievement. It was their hard work that built our cities and farmed our prairies; their genius that continually pushed us beyond the boundaries of existing knowledge, reshaping our world with the steam engine, polio vaccine, and the silicon chip. It was their faith in freedom and love of country that sustained us through trials and hardships and through wars, and it was their courage and selflessness that enabled us to always prevail.
 
But when our Founding Fathers designed this government-of, by, and for the people-they never imagined what we’ve come to know as the progressive income tax. When the income tax was first levied in 1913, the top rate was only 7 percent on people with incomes over $500,000. Now, that’s the equivalent of multi-millionaires today. But in our lifetime we’ve seen marginal tax rates skyrocket as high as 90 percent, and not even the poor have been spared. As tax rates escalated, the tax code grew ever more tangled and complex, a haven for special interests and tax manipulators, but an impossible frustration for everybody else. Blatantly unfair, our tax code became a source of bitterness and discouragement for the average taxpayer. It wasn’t too much to call it un-American.
 
Meanwhile, the steeply progressive nature of the tax struck at the heart of the economic life of the individual, punishing that special effort and extra hard work that has always been the driving force of our economy. As government’s hunger for ever more revenues expanded, families saw tax cuts-or taxes, I should say, cut deeper and deeper into their paychecks; and taxation fell most cruelly on the poor, making a difficult climb up from poverty even harder. Throughout history, the oppressive hand of government has fallen most heavily on the economic life of the individuals. And more often than not, it is inflation and taxes that have undermined livelihoods and constrained their freedoms. We should not forget that this nation of ours began in a revolt against oppressive taxation. Our Founding Fathers fought not only for our political rights but also to secure the economic freedoms without which these political freedoms are no more than a shadow.
 
In the last 20 years we’ve witnessed an expansion and strengthening of many of our civil liberties, but our economic liberties have too often been neglected and even abused. We protect the freedom of expression of the author, as we should, but what of the freedom of expression of the entrepreneur, whose pen and paper are capital and profits, whose book may be a new invention or small business? What of the creators of our economic life, whose contributions may not only delight the mind but improve the condition of man by feeding the poor with new grains, bringing hope to the sick with new cures, vanishing ignorance with wondrous new information technologies? 

And what about fairness for families? It’s in our families that America’s most important work gets done: raising our next generation. But over the last 40 years, as inflation has shrunk the personal exemption, families with children have had to shoulder more and more of the tax burden. With inflation and bracket-creep also eroding incomes, many spouses who would rather stay home with their children have been forced to go looking for jobs. And what of America’s promise of hope and opportunity, that with hard work even the poorest among us can gain the security and happiness that is the due of all Americans? You can’t put a price tag on the American dream. That dream is the heart and soul of America; it’s the promise that keeps our nation forever good and generous, a model and hope to the world.
 
For all these reasons, this tax bill is less a freedom-or a reform, I should say, than a revolution. Millions of working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether, and families will get a long-overdue break with lower rates and an almost doubled personal exemption. We’re going to make it economical to raise children again. Flatter rates will mean more reward for that extra effort, and vanishing loopholes and a minimum tax will mean that everybody and every corporation pay their fair share. And that’s why I’m certain that the bill I’m signing today is not only an historic overhaul of our tax code and a sweeping victory for fairness, it’s also the best antipoverty bill, the best profamily measure, and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.
 
And now that we’ve come this far, we cannot, and we will not, allow tax reform to be undone with tax rate hikes. We must restore certainty to our tax code and our economy. And I’ll oppose with all my might any attempt to raise tax rates on the American people and I hope that all here will join with me to make permanent the historic progress of tax reform.  I think all of us here today know what a Herculean effort it took to get this landmark bill to my desk.  That effort didn’t start here in Washington, but began with the many thinkers who have struggled to return economics to its classical roots-to an understanding that ultimately the economy is not made up of aggregates like government spending and consumer demand, but of individual men and women, each striving to provide for his family and better his or her lot in life.
 
But we must also salute those courageous leaders in the Congress who’ve made this day possible. To Bob Packwood, Dan Rostenkowski, Russell Long, John Duncan, and Majority Leader Bob Dole; to Jack Kemp, Bob Kasten, Bill Bradley, and Dick Gephardt, who pioneered with their own versions of tax reform-I salute all of you and all the other Members of the Senate and House whose efforts paid off and whose votes finally won the day. And last but not least, the many members of the administration who must often have felt that they were fighting a lonely battle against overwhelming odds-particularly my two incomparable Secretaries of the Treasury, Don Regan and Jim Baker-and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I feel like we just played the World Series of tax reform- [laughter] -and the American people won.

Barack Obama is the most conniving and dishonest weasel to ever occupy (or should I capitalize that word to denote the Occupy Movement that are serving as Obama’s brown shirts today?) the White House.

If Ronald Reagan were alive today he would walk up to Obama after his incredibly slanderous and dishonest words, slap him right in the face, and say, “How DARE you?” But genuine and profound coward that he is, Obama goes after the legacy of a dead man rather than all the men Reagan named who are still alive to defend the record.

For the factual record to correct Obama’s lies, everything that Reagan said was in perfect harmony with the principle I expressed in the title of one of my articles: “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.”

Reagan repeatedly referenced the menace of inflation in his speech.  I had the following to say about Jimmy Carter versus Reagan and by extension Reagan versus Barack Obama:

The numbers told the sad story of the Jimmy Carter presidency: interest rates of 21%; inflation at 13.5%, and an unemployment rate of 7%. And a relatively new economic device called “the misery index” – the combination of the unemployment and inflation rates which Carter had himself used to great effect in his 1976 campaign to win election – was at a shocking 20.5%.

And those who went through those dark and difficult times may soon be looking back to that period as “the good old days.”

Welcome back, Carter.

When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

But Ronald Reagan had a solution. And by the time he left office, he had solved the problem of creeping inflation increases and had actually reversed the trend: he left behind a healthy inflation rate of 4.1%.

Reagan’s policies set the trajectory for growth that would last for 20 years.

And the only thing that could truly destroy the fruit of Reagan’s policies was the coming of another Jimmy Carter.

That’s exactly what we’ve got in Barack Obama: a dishonest and Marxist version of Jimmy Carter.  And everything that Reagan accomplished refutes Barack Obama, Barack Obama’s economic plan and pretty much everything about Barack Obama.

Jimmy Carter’s policies gave us shocking inflation and a catastrophic misery index; Ronald Reagan’s policies saved America from a monster that Jimmy Carter could not understand and acknowledged he had no solution for.

Now let’s consider the shocking inflation that Barack Obama has cursed America with:

Obama loves the poor: that’s why he’s created so damn many of them.

In the God damn America of Barack Obama, the poor people that Obama promised his policies would save are (of course) unable to buy a house while watching their rents skyrocket.

They could live in their cars, but damn it’s too expensive for them to pay the regressive tax of Obama’s gas prices.

Of course, it used to be that you could always at least find a minimum wage job to help make ends meet – but Obama in his abundant compassion kept millions from that kind of drear and drudgery.

The thing is, Michelle Obama would never say, “Let them eat cake” and is frankly offended that cake is being wasted on the proletariat who clearly don’t deserve cake until November when it’s time to vote again.

There is a shocking increase in food prices:

As is often the case, there is a big difference between what the government statistics are reporting and what’s going on in the real world. According to the most recent inflation reading published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), consumer prices grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in August.

The government has an incentive to distort CPI numbers, for reasons such as keeping the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security payments low. While there’s no question that you may be able to get a good deal on a new car or a flat-screen TV today, how often are you really buying these things? When you look at the real costs of everyday life, prices have risen sharply over the last year. For simplicity’s sake, consider the cash market prices on some basic commodities.

On average, our basic food costs have increased by an incredible 48% over the last year (measured by wheat, corn, oats, and canola prices). From the price at the pump to heating your stove, energy costs are up 23% on average (heating oil, gasoline, natural gas). A little protein at dinner is now 39% higher (beef and pork), and your morning cup of coffee with a little sugar has risen by 36% since last October.

And of course Reagan also talked about how his policies would ultimately benefit the poor.  Did you notice that first link in the article above, which documented that Barack Obama has given America the highest poverty in 52 years??? 

The poor need Reagan; but they are cursed with Obama.

The same day I wrote the above article I had stuff to add in about other ways Obama has created inflation and hurt the poor.

I pointed out previously that “Everyone But Obama And Obama’s Fed Knows That Prices Are Rising Drastically.”

And I pointed out some facts after Obama’s state of the disaster speech about the “REAL State Of The Union: Under Obama, Price of Gas Has Jumped 83 Percent, Ground Beef 24 Percent, Bacon 22 Percent.”

Under Obama, fully 85% of businesses say America under Obama is on the wrong track.

Going back to the years that Carter waged war on the American economy, the misery index has been the HIGHEST EVER under Obama’s failed leadership.

Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner points out that at anything remotely beyond the most superficial level, Obama’s lie fails the laugh test:

Yes, it’s true that on June 28, 1985, Reagan gave a speech to Bloom High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois about problems with the tax code in which he told an anecdote about an executive who was paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. But if you read the whole speech, it’s clear that Reagan was telling the story as part of his pitch for tax reform.

In that same Reagan speech that Obama is demagoguing, Reagan explained precisely what he meant when he brought up the issue of tax rates and “fairness”:

It stands to reason that the more complex our tax code is, the more open it is to abuse. So, we’re making it simple to make it fair. America’s tax plan will do away with special breaks for a few so we can lower the tax rates for all. Our simpler, three-bracket design will assure that no American pays one penny more than his fair share.

Phillip Klein continues, pointing out:

So there are several key differences with Obama. To start, Reagan was talking about simplifying the tax code, whereas Obama’s Buffett Rule would add another layer of complexity. Reagan was arguing for allowing people to keep more of their own money and reduce the burden of government. By contrast, Obama is arguing for instituting the Buffett Rule so that more money is available to pay for government programs.

Reagan’s push for tax reform helped lead to landmark reform legislation the following year that broadened the tax base, consolidated the nation’s 14 brackets into just two and lowered the top marginal income tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent. This is actually pretty close to the framework that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., outlined in the House GOP budget and couldn’t be more far off from Obama’s Buffett Rule gimmick.

And, yes, Ronald Reagan in the 1980s talked about simplifying the tax code, lowering rates across the board and eliminating myriad and byzantine deductions.

How DARE Barack Obama so thoroughly disrespect the legacy of Ronald Reagan and try to slanderously steal the credibility that Reagan EARNED by standing for everything that Obama has stood against???

Experts Point Out 2011 Ended In Empty Hype That Economy Will Pay For In 2012

Has the economy turned around?

Don’t bet on it (and note that this is MSNBC, not Fox News):

Unsold goods weigh on future economic growth
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

The U.S. economy perked up late last year as hiring accelerated and factories ramped up production. Unfortunately, a lot of what those factories made is still sitting in warehouses and on store shelves.

That doesn’t bode well for growth in the coming months.

At first blush, the numbers posted by the Commerce Department for gross domestic product in the last three months of 2011 looked strong. Overall growth advanced by 2.8 percent on an annual basis, a little weaker than economists had expected based on a series of other positive economic reports. That was much better than the 1.8 percent pace in the third quarter and the best showing since the second quarter of 2010.

But much of the fourth quarter growth came from businesses restocking inventories, which swelled by $56.0 billion, adding nearly 2 percentage points to GDP growth. The so-called ”final sales” number, which tracks how much was actually sold, rose a meager 0.8 percent.

“The pickup in GDP growth doesn’t look half as good when you realize that most of it was due to inventory accumulation,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “Despite the apparent improvement in some of the incoming economic data, it still looks like … another disappointing year.”

Ashworth is among a number of private economists who see the fourth quarter growth spurt easing this year. He expects to see U.S. GDP advance by just 1.5 percent in 2012.

Federal Reserve officials echoed that prediction this week, though they’re a bit more optimistic. The central bank is looking for growth of 2.7 percent in 2012, but the latest forecast was trimmed by two-tenths of a percentage point. The Fed expects unemployment to drop as low as 8.2 percent by the end of the year.

Vote: Will the economy continue to accelerate?

The lowered growth forecast prompted central bankers to extend their pledge to keep interest rates at or near zero for another year; they now expect to hold rates at rock bottom until at least 2014 to try to encourage businesses and consumers to borrow and spend more money.

Business investment slowed sharply in the fourth quarter after heavy spending earlier last year.

Consumers continued to do their part; consumer spending grew at a 2 percent annual rate, up a bit from the third quarter. Car sales zoomed ahead as the average age of the cars and light trucks on the road hit record levels. The replacement of those worn-out vehicles helped boost car sales by 14.8 percent.

Consumers are feeling a bit better about the outlook for the economy. A separate report Friday showed the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index edging up for the fourth straight month. But the level of confidence remains weak.

“Despite the rise, this and other confidence measures remain in recession territory due to global sovereign debt fear, Congressional dysfunction, and high food and energy prices,” said economist Mike Englund at Action Economics

Consumers have also fallen back on car loans and credit cards to maintain their spending. Consumer borrowing jumped by $20.4 billion in November, the Federal Reserve said Monday. That was the third straight increase and the largest monthly gain in a decade. Consumers have boosted borrowing in 13 of the past 14 months.

The gradual improvement in the job market may explain some of the rise in borrowing. But many households are also leaning harder on debt because their wages are rising as fast as the price of the goods and services they need to buy.

A breakdown of the fourth quarter GDP numbers, with Mark Olson, Treliant Risk Advisors co-chairman/former Fed governor; CNBC’s Steve Liesman & Rick Santelli

Personal incomes rose at an 0.8 percent annual rate, according to Friday’s GDP report, after falling for the last two quarters. Consumer prices are climbing at an annual rate of 3 percent, according to the latest government data.

Much of that spending appears to represent people buying goods, not services. That’s a sign that households are sticking to necessities, according to Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors.

“The clearest sign that households remain cautious was in services spending,” he said. “This is the largest component of consumer demand and it fairly budged. People are not yet comfortable buying the little luxuries in life.”

With consumers tapped out and cautious, the economy faces other headwinds in the coming year. The housing industry remains stuck in the worst recession since the 1930s. A separate report Friday showed that the pace of new home sales fell in December, making 2011 the worst sales year since the Commerce Department first began collecting the data in 1963. Sales in December fell to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000 – less than half the 700,000 that economists say represents a healthy pace.

Slack sales have forced builders to slash prices, which has kept many would-be buyers on the fence until they see signs that the market has bottomed. The median sales prices for new homes dropped in December by 2.5 percent to $210,300.

Though ultra-low mortgage rates have made home buying more affordable than it has been in decades, mortgage bankers remain very choosy about to whom they’ll lend. Some 12 million potential “move-up” buyers are stuck with mortgages that are bigger than their homes are worth.

Growth in the fourth quarter was also held back by big cuts in government spending, which lopped 0.9 percent from fourth-quarter GDP. That belt-tightening will likely continue.

Why did we have all of this extra manufacturing?  For the same reason that Charlie Brown tried to kick the football again: somebody (in this case the mainstream media) lied to them and told them everything was looking just peachy when it really wasn’t.

We saw the same exact thing happen last year: the media assured us that happy times were here again (because the same media that unceasingly demonizes the economy in any Republican administration unceasingly exalts it in any Democrat one) in the 4th quarter of 2010.  And then suddenly it wasn’t the Holiday Season anymore and things went back to sucking.

Let’s look at a couple of facts a little more closely, beginning with the fact that as Obama begins his fourth year, the housing market that collapsed in 2008 to kill the economy is WORSE than it HAS EVER BEEN:

New home purchases fall, making 2011 worst year ever for sales
Associated Press
Thursday, January 26th 2012, 12:11 PM

Fewer people bought new homes in December. The decline made 2011 the worst year for new-homes sales on records dating back nearly half a century.
 
The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.
 
About 302,000 new homes were sold last year. That’s less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making last year’s sales the worst on records dating back to 1963. And it coincides with a report last week that said 2011 was the weakest year for single-family home construction on record.
 
The median sales prices for new homes dropped in December to $210,300. Builders continued to slash price to stay competitive in the depressed market.

And what about 2012?

Housing Prices Will Bottom in 2012: Freddie Mac
By Shanthi Bharatwaj 12/14/11 – 04:33 PM EST

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Housing prices are likely to move lower and bottom out in 2012 with modest appreciation likely in 2013, Freddie Mac(FMCC.OB) Chief Economist Frank Nothaft said in his outlook on Wednesday.

The Freddie Mac Housing Price Index is forecast to dip by 1% in 2012, marking the sixth consecutive year of declines. The index is expected to move higher by 2% in 2013.
 
The economist said in his report that national indexes masked sizable variation in local house-price performance. “Some markets have appreciated over the past year and are likely to gain further in 2012, while those markets with higher vacancy rates and relatively large distressed sales will continue to see downward price pressure over the next year.”

Anybody who says Obama “fixed” the economy is a liar or an idiot or a lying idiot.  Because it was the housing bubble’s bursting that blew up the economy in 2008 – and the man hasn’t done a damn thing to fix it.

As for inflation, Obama has been like a curse from an angry old gypsy lady who pointed a finger at us and said, “You will vote for a fool to eat your wealth like a cancer!”

Food prices have skyrocketed. 

Fuel prices have skyrocketed.

Another “worst”: Gasoline prices were the worst over the year 2011 of any year IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

The Obama economic record is a very ugly thing indeed:

And as I have previously pointed out:

Barack Obama is destroying the middle class before our very eyes even as he incessantly claims to be the one standing up for the very middle class that he is destroying.

Under Obama, poverty has soared to its highest rate EVER in the entire 52 years that the Census Bureau has tracked it.

Under Obama, the misery index is at its highest rate EVER.

85% of the small business America depends on to create jobs and build the economy are terrified of Obama and his idiotic policies.

Obama’s reverend and spiritual mentor prophetically anticipated an Obama presidency when he screamed:

“No, no, no!  NOT God bless America!  God DAMN America!”

Hopefully you’ve had your fill of God damn America.

REAL State Of The Union: Under Obama, Price of Gas Has Jumped 83 Percent, Ground Beef 24 Percent, Bacon 22 Percent

Thought this article was particularly relevant and appropriate following Obama’s State of the Illusion speech:

Under Obama, Price of Gas Has Jumped 83 Percent, Ground Beef 24 Percent, Bacon 22 Percent
By Christopher Goins
January 20, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(AP Photo)

During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent.

When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent increase from January 2009.

The price of unleaded gasoline never reached the 10-year high of $4.09 back in July 2008 under George W. Bush’s administration, but it did get close.

By May 2011, gas prices hit a high under the Obama administration at $3.93, about four percentage points away from the July 2008 high.

Ground beef. (AP Photo)

The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak. (Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)

Whole wheat bread prices from January 2009 to December 2011 increased about five percent (5.02 percent) from $1.97 to $2.07. (The inflation rate in December 2011 was 3.0 percent.)

Among the first 36 months of Obama’s presidency, the last four (September, October, November, December) showed the average price of one pound of whole wheat bread hovering slightly above two dollars.

Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.

Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1 percent.

One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.

Bacon. (AP Photo)

Whole milk prices averaged above three dollars 33 out of the 36 months since Obama took office. In January 2009, the price for one gallon of whole milk was $3.58; but by December 2011, milk prices had slightly declined less than one percent (0.28 percent) to $3.57 per gallon.

The average retail price of Grade A eggs per dozen from January 2009 to December 2011 increased by less than two percent (1.30 percent) from $1.85 to $1.87.

 

 

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We recently celebrated Thanksgiving, and because of Obama we all felt like turkeys paying for our groceries due to the shocking inflation of food (that, along with fuel somehow isn’t factored in when “inflation” is calculated).

The above article doesn’t go anywhere NEAR far enough in condemning Obama for the rise of gasoline prices.  Yes, the price of gas spiked temporarily under Bush in 2008 (and Democrats viciously demonized him for that increase); BUT THE PRICE OF GASOLINE THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE YEAR WAS THE HIGHEST IN AMERICAN HISTORY IN 2011 UNDER OBAMA.  And 2012 is going to be even worse.

Here’s the REAL Obama economic record:

Barack Obama is destroying the middle class before our very eyes even as he incessantly claims to be the one standing up for the very middle class that he is destroying.

Under Obama, poverty has soared to its highest rate EVER in the entire 52 years that the Census Bureau has tracked it.

Under Obama, the misery index is at its highest rate EVER.

85% of the small business America depends on to create jobs and build the economy are terrified of Obama and his idiotic policies.

THAT’S the REAL “state of the union.”

 

Obama Destroying Middle Class Right Before Our Eyes – 30 Statistics Mainstream Media Propaganda Aren’t Talking About

This one caught my eye – and then made my eyes get real wide given how Obama is constantly out spouting how he’s protecting the middle class:

30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing. The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012. The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades. Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace. As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.

Today I went over to Safeway and I was absolutely appalled at the prices. I honestly don’t know how most families make it these days. I ended up paying over 140 dollars for about two-thirds of a cart of food. That was after I “saved” 67 dollars on sale items.

When the cost of the basic things that we need – housing, food, gas, electricity – go up faster than our incomes do, that means that we are getting poorer.

Sadly, if you look at the long-term numbers, some very clear negative trends emerge….

-The number of good jobs continues to decrease.

-The rate of inflation continues to outpace the rate that our wages are going up.

-American consumers are going into almost unbelievable amounts of debt.

-The number of Americans that are considered to be “poor” continues to grow.

-The number of Americans that are forced to turn to the government for financial assistance continues to go up.

After you read the information below, it should become abundantly clear that the U.S. middle class is in a whole heap of trouble.

The following are 30 statistics that show that the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012….

#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.

#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are working.

#3 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.

#4 Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#5 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.

#6 According to that same article in the New York Times, 34 percent of all elderly Americans are living in poverty or “near poverty”, and 39 percent of all children in America are living in poverty or “near poverty”.

#7 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was 10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger. Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.

#8 Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

#9 The total value of household real estate in the U.S. has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today. Most of that wealth has been lost by the middle class.

#10 Many formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into ghost towns. Since 1950, the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has declined by more than 50 percent. In Dayton, Ohio 18.9 percent of all houses now stand empty.

#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.

#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by 18,000% since 1913. The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.

#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.

#14 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#15 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years. During 2010 it got even worse. Last year, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States.

#16 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#17 Most Americans are scratching and clawing and doing whatever they can to make a living these days. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace. The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.

#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#20 The average American household will have spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline by the end of 2011.

#21 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation in the United States would be well over 10 percent.

#22 If the number of Americans considered to be “looking for work” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

#23 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012. Most of that debt is owed by members of the middle class.

#24 Incredibly, more than one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps at this point.

#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.

#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”. By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.

#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.

#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#30 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

Sadly, this article could have been much, much longer. There are so many other statistics about the middle class that could have been included.

For even more insane economic numbers that show just how dramatically the U.S. economy is declining, just check out this article: “50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe“.

What is even more frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get.

We have already had “the economic recovery”, such as it was.

Now we are heading for another major financial crisis. Just like back in 2008, the entire world is going to feel the pain.

But we never recovered from the last financial crisis. We are like a boxer that is not ready to handle another blow.

And who is going to get hurt the most? It will be those at the bottom of the food chain of course. Tens of millions of Americans that are living in poverty will experience a massive amount of pain, and millions more Americans will fall out of the middle class and will join them.

If you have a good job, do your best to hang on to it. If you don’t have a job, do your best to get one while you still can. Jobs will become very precious in the years ahead.

But also try to do what you can to become less dependent on the system. Almost anyone can find ways to make some extra money on the side. Yes, it will likely cut into your television time. If someday you were to lose your job you don’t want to be left with zero income.

Right now, the U.S. economy is slowly dying and as time goes by the number of middle class Americans it will be able to support will continue to decrease.

Yes, it is like a perverse game of musical chairs, but this is where we are at.

I encourage all of you to think about how you plan to make it through the collapse that is ahead.

Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay is not going to help anyone.

But if we all start planning for the storm that is ahead, and if we get others around us to wake up as well, that is going to do a great deal of good in the long run.

I have written about Obama being the “Cloward and Piven President.”  If you kill the middle class and overwhelm the social support/welfare system, you will get a societal and economic crash.  And a desperate American people will cry to the government to save them.  And Democrats will finally get the Marxism they’ve been trying to create since the last two anti-communist presidents (JFK and LBJ) left office.

After Setting Middle East On Fire And Allowing Iran To Build The Bomb, Obama Follows Up By Dismantling America’s Nuclear Deterrent

A picture is worth a thousand words, so:

Obama has set the Middle East on fire.  He didn’t do it via “hope and change” there any more than he inspired it in the broken wreck he’s made out of America.

He did it by devaluing and destabilizing the U.S. dollar which every Middle Eastern nation that has anything to do with oil has to base their own currency on (oil is bought and sold exclusively in U.S. dollars).  What is just really, really bad food inflation here has been catastrophic in the much weaker Middle Eastern economies.

That people are actually so utterly stupid that they are looking at the shocking damage Obama has made of foreign policy is proof that we are in the very last days just before the world chooses to worship the satanic beast of the Book of Revelation.

So Obama has set the Middle East on a fire that is continuing to burn out of control.  He has allowed Iran to grow closer and closer to its goal of having nuclear weapons and the nuclear immunity that will accompany it.

And he is simultaneously dismantling the American nuclear arsenal – and the deterrent that that arsenal created for the last sixty damn years:

US’s Biggest Nuclear Bomb Dismantled in Texas
By BETSY BLANEY Associated Press
AMARILLO, Texas October 25, 2011 (AP)

The last of the nation’s biggest nuclear bombs, a Cold War relic 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was dismantled Tuesday in what one energy official called a milestone in President Barack Obama’s mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

This is God damn America.  And God will surely damn the American people for electing the greatest fool who ever lived as he labors unceasingly to bring about World War III and Armageddon.

We can go back a few years, to when demonic, vile, un-American Democrats – including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton – demonized George Bush for trying to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  And we can zoom ahead and see how the same weakness that epitomized the Democrat Party has taken America to new depths of weakness since.

When I say that the Democrat Party is under the direct control of Satan, I tell no lies.

Now Iran has the bomb, Russia and China are arming themselves and the United States of America under the biggest fool who ever sat in the Oval Office is dismantling the only thing that gives us any power following Obama’s destruction of the US economy.

God damn America does not have long to go.

Misery Index HIGHEST EVER, Hiring Only 70% Of 2006 Levels, And Boy Do We Ever Need A New President

Economics statistics are well on their way to becoming a Department in the 1984-style “Ministry of Truth.”

We start with misery, and the real apples-to-apples misery index that we can compare to the misrule of Jimmy Carter.  From Economic Policy Journal:

John Williams, over at Shadow Stats, compiles economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990. Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate.  If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president. Most believe the height of the Index along with the Iranian hostage crisis is what caused Carter to lose his re-election bid.

 

 

Using current calculation methods, April unemployment came in at 9.0% and the annualized April CPI number came in at 4.8%, for a Misery Index reading of 13.8.

The last time the Index came in with a higher reading with this index reading was in March 1983, with a reading of 13.90.

Ronald Reagan, of course, was president in 1983.  Reagan had a monster that Jimmy Carter largely created called out-of-control inflation.

As I previously explained:

The numbers told the sad story of the Jimmy Carter presidency: interest rates of 21%; inflation at 13.5%, and an unemployment rate of 7%.  And a relatively new economic device called “the misery index” – the combination of the unemployment and inflation rates which Carter had himself used to great effect in his 1976 campaign to win election – was at a shocking 20.5%.

And those who went through those dark and difficult times may soon be looking back to that period as “the good old days.”

Welcome back, Carter.

When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

But Ronald Reagan had a solution.  And by the time he left office, he had solved the problem of creeping inflation increases and had actually reversed the trend: he left behind a healthy inflation rate of 4.1%.

Reagan’s policies set the trajectory for growth that would last for 20 years.

Jimmy Carter didn’t have an answer for the economy, so he just made it worse and worse and WORSE.  Reagan had an answer.  He not only made it better; he established a trajectory of economic success.

And of course, we’re heading right back to that time of shocking inflation.  The cost of EVERYTHING is going up.  And there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that Barack Obama has an answer that is working.  Which is only going to make the pain last longer and the solution more difficult.  Presuming there is another Reagan waiting in the wings for that time when the American people overwhelmingly abandon Democrats and revile them for the failures that they are and basically always have been.

So what does the mainstream media do with that?

They create the propaganda that somehow Obama is a new Reagan, despite the fact that Obama reviles everything Reagan stood for, just as Reagan would have reviled everything Obama stands for.

Then there’s the enemployment beast.  How’s THAT hope and change working out for you?

Here’s some new news about hopey changey from the Wall Street Journal:

 MAY 16, 2011
Why the Job Market Feels So Dismal
The number of hires is the same today as it was when we were shedding jobs at record rates.
By EDWARD P. LAZEAR

Why don’t American workers feel that the labor market is on the mend? After all, the May 6 jobs report could suggest that the labor market is improving. Nonfarm employment rose by 244,000 and employment growth over the last three months is averaging over 200,000 per month. With unemployment at 9%, employment is still down many millions from where it should be, but up from its recession lows.

The fact is the jobs numbers that create so much anticipation from the business press and so many pundit pronouncements do not give a clear picture of the labor market’s health.  A better understanding requires an examination of hires and separations, or what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data. Here are some surprising facts:

First, the increase in job growth that occurred over the past two years results from a decline in the number of layoffs, not from increased hiring. In February 2009, a month during which the labor market lost more than 700,000 jobs, employers hired four million workers. In March 2011, employers hired four million workers. The number of hires is the same today as it was when we were shedding jobs at record rates.

We added jobs because hires exceeded separations, not because hiring increased. There were 4.7 million separations in February 2009. In March 2011 that number had fallen to 3.8 million. The fall in separations reflects a decline in layoffs, which went from 2.5 million per month in February 2009 to 1.6 million per month in March 2011. One small piece of good news is that the just-released April data showed hires up about 2% over last year’s average and 12% above the low reached in January 2010.

The decline in layoffs is not unexpected and does not necessarily reflect labor-market health. Layoffs tend to occur early in a recession. When an economy has reached bottom and has already shed much of its labor, layoffs slow. But that doesn’t mean that the labor force is recovering. We could have high unemployment and a stagnant labor force even when layoffs are low. Isn’t the fact that hires exceed separations indicative of a healthy labor market? Unfortunately, no.

At any point in the business cycle, even during a recession, American firms still hire a huge number of workers. That’s because most of the action in the labor market reflects “churn,” the continual process of replacing workers, not net expansion or contraction of employment. The lowest number hired in any month of the current recession was 3.6 million workers. Even during the dismal year of 2009 there were more than 45 million hires.

Bear in mind that the U.S. labor force has more than 150 million workers or job seekers. In a typical year, about one-third or more of the work force turns over, leaving their old jobs to take new ones. When the labor market creates 200,000 jobs, it is because five million are hired and 4.8 million are separated, not because there were 200,000 hires and no job losses. When we’re talking about numbers as large as five million, the net of 200,000 is small and may reflect minor, month-to-month variations in the number of hires or separations.

The third fact puts this in perspective. In a healthy labor market like the one that prevailed in 2006 and early 2007, American firms hire about 5.5 million workers per month. Recall that the current number of hires is four million and it has not moved much from where it was two years ago. The labor market does not feel like it is expanding if hiring is not occurring at a recovery-level pace—and that means at least a half million more hires per month than we are seeing now.

The combination of low hiring and a large stock of unemployed workers, now 13.7 million, means that the competition for jobs is fierce. Because there are now many more unemployed workers, and because hiring is only about 70% of 2006 levels, a worker is about one-third as likely to find a job today as he or she was in 2006. It is no wonder that workers do not feel that the labor market has recovered.

One final fact is worth noting. Healthy labor markets are characterized not only by high levels of hiring, but also by high levels of separations. Although it is true that the importance of quits relative to layoffs rises during good times, even the number of layoffs was greater in the strong labor market of 2006-07 than it is now. No one would suggest that layoffs are good for workers, but what is good is a fluid labor market, where workers and firms constantly seek to produce better products and to find more efficient ways to produce them. High labor market churn is a characteristic of a strong economy. It generally means that workers are moving to better jobs in growing sectors that pay higher wages and away from declining sectors that pay lower wages.

Allowing maximum flexibility encourages fluidity and means that employers are willing to hire workers who lose their jobs elsewhere. Many European countries have restricted mobility by imposing severance pay penalties on employers that lay workers off. More than reducing layoffs, these rigidities make employers reluctant to hire because of the penalties that they will later incur if a layoff is necessary. Such restrictions are in large part responsible for the chronically high rates of unemployment that have been prevalent in many European countries.

The prescription for the American labor market is simple: low taxes on capital investment, avoidance of excessively burdensome regulation, and open markets here and abroad. We must create a climate in which investment is profitable, productivity is rising, and employers find it profitable to increase their hiring rate. These are the mantras that economists have chanted in the past. But they are our best bet for ensuring a dynamic and growing labor market.

Mr. Lazear, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009, is a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a Hoover Institution fellow

Wait a minute.  What was that one sentence again?

Because there are now many more unemployed workers, and because hiring is only about 70% of 2006 levels, a worker is about one-third as likely to find a job today as he or she was in 2006.

Yeah, but George Bush was bad by mainstream media propagandist definition, and Obama is good by the same standard.

If you want welfare, vote for Obama.  You’ll get it until United States of America implodes into a failed banana republic.  And then you’ll get the Marxist-fascist hybrid the left has been dreaming of for the last fifty years.  You want a job?  Vote for a conservative Republican.

Obama Cooking Up A Nasty Batch Of Poison Stew For Democrats With Shocking Inflation

If you listen to the mainstream media, Obama is unbeatable.  Which is really quite bizarre, given the state of the “it’s the economy, stupid.”

Inflation: Poison for Obama in 2012
By Nina Easton, senior editor-at-large @CNNMoney May 9, 2011: 7:22 AM ET

FORTUNE — One of my most vivid memories from 1974 was the gas station at the foot of the hill below my Southern California high school — car lines snaking out into the street, heralding the failure of the government’s price controls and lame ideas such as odd-even rationing. That also was the year President Gerald Ford cooked up an equally goofy plan: Whip Inflation Now, or WIN.

As Ford unveiled WIN to a joint session of Congress on Oct. 8, his bulbous forehead gleaming with sweat, he truly believed he was giving voice to a momentous occasion — on a par with F.D.R.’s call to action at the depth of the Great Depression. How could he know that, four decades later, people would still ridicule his pleas to farmers to grow more food, to citizens to “drive less, heat less,” and — the worst — to supporters to wear those ridiculous WIN buttons that the smart set turned upside down to declare “Need Immediate Money”?

That government leaders would embrace such silliness — it was Nixon who instituted the Stalinesque wage and price controls that set the stage for Ford’s call to citizen action — stands as a powerful testament to how much inflation unnerves the body politic. We haven’t experienced real inflation in more than a generation, so this economic blight is mostly an uncertain stranger to pollsters and political strategists — as well as to voters under 50. But if inflation warnings are right, this stranger could become the dark horse of the 2012 election and beyond.

We know that inflation distorts economic behavior. In the 1970s a combination of high tax rates and inflation prompted investors to flee production in favor of protection. “Give me shelter,” recalls Michael Barone, principal co-author of the annual Almanac of American Politics, referring to not only tax behavior but also investments in assets like real estate to beat inflation rates. But inflation also affects voting behavior — and could exacerbate already widespread anxiety and uncertainty about a struggling economy and President Obama’s reaction to it. With rising prices on everything from big-ticket items like college tuition to food and gas, consumers “feel they don’t have any safe ground to stand on,” Barone notes.

As both President Carter and the late President Ford could attest, that’s not a good place for an incumbent to be. John Huizinga, an economist at the University of Chicago, rightly notes that while unemployment affects some people — and rattles many more — “inflation affects everyone.” Huizinga co-authored a 1982 study that opened with the conventional wisdom of that era: “It is well known … that the public regards inflation as a more serious problem than unemployment.” Looking back, that seems astonishing. While the double-digit inflation of the 1970s had inched down to 8%, unemployment at that time was still a whopping 9.7%.

By historical standards, the latest consumer price index showing a 1.2% annual rise remains super low. But consumers are being hit with hikes to two key components that aren’t included in that number — gas and food. Consumer Growth Partners recently called the rise in grocery prices (6.5% in the first quarter) “the sharpest in a generation.” And gas prices are pushing toward $4 a gallon. Including gas and food, the annual inflation rate is more than double the rise in the CPI.

Even if systemwide inflation doesn’t return in this election cycle, rising gas and food prices will be on the minds of voters. President Obama already faces an unemployment rate that has only recently slipped below 9%, worsened by long-term jobless rates unprecedented since World War II. The Congressional Budget Office now predicts an unemployment rate of 8.2% on Election Day 2012; no President since F.D.R. has been reelected with unemployment over 8%. (President Reagan, facing a similarly painful recession, was elected with a 7.2% jobless rate.)

Add inflation to that mix and it could become a poisonous stew for Democrats. And we’ll know the President is in real trouble if his staff starts handing out buttons.

There’s a video (apparently unrelated to the above article) at the site with the title, “Fed has more to worry about.”  At just before the 2:30 mark, the expert guest says (and this is not a completely accurate transcript, but it’s pretty close):

“A lot of people think that what they’re going to do is raise interest rates and it’s going to turn into a replay of the Hooverism of the 1930s in this country where they raised rates just as the economy was beginning to creep forward.  And then you just end up with another big recession.”

And, of course, in this case, “another big recession” was otherwise known as THE GREAT FREAKING DEPRESSION!!!

Thanks to Obama and his Fed’s incredibly risky and immoral policies, shockingly high interest rates are a fait accompli.  You don’t spend (“throw away” on political patronate pork is more accurate) the trillions of dollars that these fools have spent; and you don’t simply create money out of thin air the way these clowns have done with their QE1 and their QE2 and very shortly QE3 and just get away with it.

The Fed is going to be forced to raise interest rates.  That is simply a fact.  The Obama Federal Reserve is about the only entity on planet earth that refuses to recognize that inflation is becoming a huge problem.  And the moment they ARE forced to ultimately raise rates, you’re going to start to see really ugly get really really really ugly.  Because there’s almost no possible way now that we’re going to be out of our economic woes before the Fed is forced to deal with inflation.

And yes, oh yes, inflation is most definitely here.

This was the Jimmy Carter problem.  And as people like me have been pointing out all along:

It took Ronald Reagan to get America out of a death spiral last time.  Sadly, this time there may not BE another Ronald Reagan.  And this time it may well just be too late.

The beast is coming.