Another Cornucopia of Articles

I must say, the LA Times is impressing me. The liberal newspaper gets 2 articles this week. Here's the first:

• The Limbaugh Challenge - LATimes
  

I believe I called this one. I previously blogged about how Obama's policies would lead to some fairly obvious outcomes. Here's just one example:

• St Louis Bank CEO Quits - St Louis Business Journal

As this article below points out, nobody wants to buy hybrids. Which is hard to figure out, considering we are told there is scientific consensus that global warming is here and that man-made carbon emissions are the main cause. Knowing that you would expect hybrids and electric cars to be flying off the shelves. An even bigger question, why are automakers continuing to make these things if no one is buying them? That's easy, because the idiots in Washington are forcing them to. And since hybrids don't sell when gas is only $2.00 a gallon, Obama is already working to drive up the price of oil by limiting exploration.

• Hybrid Cars Go From 60 to 0 in Breakneck Speed - LATimes
• Toxic Omni-bus Anti-Energy, Anti-Civil Liberties Stew - American Spectator

Random Stuff:

• PETA Kills 95% of Adoptable Animals - Consumer Freedom
• Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion - Bloomberg

Lots of News

Obama taking the deficit to $9.3 trillion within 10 years:

• Agenda On Track Despite Worsening Deficits - MyWay News
• Obama Budget Projected at $9.3 trillion - IHT.com
• New Era of Spend and Blame - NYPost

Obama transparency:

• Obama White House bars press from press award ceremony - LATimes

Other economy news:

• Banker fury over tax ‘witch-hunt’ - Financial Times
• 'President of the World' Losing Favor Abroad - FoxNews
• $22,000 Tax Burden Per Person - FoxNews
• How Long Can We Sustain $1 Trillion Deficits - Review Journal

Other stuff:

• Five Signs of a Flailing Presidency - Weekly Standard
• Dreaming of an American Surge - Real Clear Politics
• Obama Criticizes Some Guantanamo Release Decisions - Yahoo News
• What Obama Said and What He Meant - Politico
• Bush's 'Folly' Ending in Victory - Boston Globe

Spending Us Right Off the Cliff

Every single day I'm more and more flabbergasted at the current administration's ability to spend money we don't have. The national debt is set to skyrocket over the next decade, which is strange considering Obama railed against President Bush and the amount of debt he racked up. I don't see how you can say X amount of debt is bad, but quadrupling it is good. What's more amazing is how they spin it back on the Bush administration. But a simple examination of the past 60 days shows just how frail that argument really is. I think we can thank the stimulus bill, the omnibus spending bill, and pending spending for abyss we are heading into at lightning speed.

In no way do I mean this in a good way, but the Bush administration left Washington with a roughly $450 billion deficit. USA Today had it lower at only $410 billion and the ultra-liberal Huffington Post put it at $482 billion, so I think $450 billion is a good middle ground. Either way you look at it that is a lot of money. Note that the $482 billion number was an estimated number for FY2009.

Next, let's look at the updated projected deficit for fiscal year 2009 since the new administration took over. The Congressional Budget Office just released a study that estimates FY2009's deficit at closer to $1.8 trillion!!! Even more scary, the CBO predicts that the Obama spending spree will land us with a $9.3 trillion deficit by 2019. Did you catch that? That is nearly 22 times worse than the Bush deficit. That number is a little more than $2 trillion worse than the current administration was predicting. I thought this interview with Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was interesting. It points out why the difference exists in Obama's numbers and the CBO's. Ultimately it looks like the administrations forecasts are extremely optimistic. The Wall Street Journal has a more detailed analysis as well.

And while we are on the topic of how Obama is running us off the economic cliff, let's discuss how he's going to tax us all to death. Just a few weeks ago he announced his plans for a cap-and-trade plan that would tax our energy producers. The estimate from the White House is that it would raise $646 billion of revenue. But that money has to come from somewhere. When your local electric compnay all of sudden has to pay for these carbon credits they are not going to eat the loss. They are going to pass those costs right on to you. Same with the oil, natural gas, and coal companies. The cost of energy is going to go through the roof. But here's the problem, the $646 billion has been upgraded to $2 trillion. That's three times worse than originally estimated.

Atleast they aren't underestimating anything else. Oh, wait, I guess they did it with the health care overhaul as well. Obama originally said it was $634 billion, but its gonna be more like $1.5 trillion.

This is pure madness. When are the American people going to stand up and revolt?

AIG debacle

I'd like to officially state for the record that I think this outrage over AIG bonuses is completely absurd. Here's why:

• the total bonus payouts consists of a meager 0.001% of the total bailout funds AIG received. To make an argument that these bonuses effect the bottom line would have a snowballs chance in hades of standing up.
• AIG entered into a contractual obligation over a year ago, long before the bailouts, with their employees that they would make these large payouts.
• Chris Dodd, D-CT, specifically wrote an amendment to the bailout package that would allow these payouts to be made. Note in that article that he denies any knowledge of it, blaming the amendment as something that was added after it left his office. Well what do you know, he fessed up to it today.
• If the government steps in and voids these contracts we are opening up a very dangerous door to a very slippery slope. For whatever reason it is apparently acceptable in this country to pillage the rich. But in doing this the government is setting a precendence that they can interfere with any contractual obligation you make with your employer. I know, many will say that this is a unique case and won't happen to anyone else. And maybe that really is the case, but as a statement of principal I can't accept that. If we allow the government to take from the rich, we are saying that its okay for them to take from anyone. I don't live in a caste system here in America, but we are moving that direction if we continually go after the rich in this country.
• The other argument I keep hearing is this. The executives are incompetant and ran the company into the ground, therefore, they shouldn't be allowed to get these huge bonuses. Okay, if these guys are incompetent and can't run a business, then why in the hell did we give them $170 billion!!!

Here are just a few of the articles blasting AIG

• AIG Bonus Story Just Keeps Getting Better - LATimes
• Making AIG Tow the Line - WCCO
• AIG Bonus Gluttons Start Giving Americans Fits - Bloomberg
• The White House Seeks to Block Bonuses to AIG - NYTimes
• Name and Shame - Breakingviews.com
• Stop the AIG Bonuses? Yes You Can - Huffington Post
• House Taxes AIG Bonuses - Yahoo

Articles that actually speak some sense:

• Spare Us Your Fake Fury - NYPost
• The Case of Paying out AIG Bonuses - NYTimes
• AIG Bonus Fiasco and Taxpayers - US News & World Report
• Cool Off the Bonus Rage at AIG - Forbes

Obama Goes Up While the Market Goes Down

The Dow is down 25% since Jan 1st. Another 10% from the day Obama was elected through the end of 2008. I've been thinking about what this means and how to square that with Obama's still relatively high poll numbers. At first glance it seems that the market and Obama's approval ratings should track fairly closely. But here's why I'm not so sure that is necessarily the case.

First, as of 2006 a whopping 41% of Americans had no tax liability after deductions and credits. Now the President has recently come out and said that he's going to raise taxes on the top 2% of income earners and give tax cuts to everyone else. So what does that mean? It means you've got 40% of wage earners who not only pay no taxes, but now will be receiving the equivalent of a welfare check. That's on top of everyone else that is currently on welfare. I have no idea how many American's that is if you add those two groups together, but let's say its close to 50%. It is no wonder then that the Presidents approval ratings are so high when half of all American's are getting kickbacks at the expense of the wealthy.

The market, however, is a completely different animal. The people on welfare and presumably those lowest 2/5ths of wage earners are not investing in the market. Its the wealthy, those making $200,000 or more that are putting money in and pulling money out. When the President makes it known that he's going to punish the wealthy by taking more of their money, its not surprising to see the market enter a free-fall. Why? Because the market is forward-looking. This point is proven in this NYTimes article. It discusses how back in October the mere prospect of the credit markets thawing caused the DOW to rocket up over 400 points. And we were told by Obama's campaign many times that just the mention of a stimulus package would jolt the market back in the right direction. So even Obama's people recognize that the market is forward looking or they wouldn't have made statements like that. But businesses can see the where the Obama policies are leading the economy. There is no value in investing and making profit when the government is going to take more and more of what you make. So while the majority of Americans who are on the dole are in favor of Obama, those that make this country run are voting with their money, and the stock market clearly shows the result.

Which brings me to an article today from ABCNews where Press Secretary Robert Gibbs commented that the stock market is a "lagging economic indicator." Obviously he is trying to spin the poor market results in favor of the President, but please Robert, even the liberal NYTimes knows better. I don't know if Obama or his assistants instructed Mr. Gibbs to say that, but it clearly shows either a severe lack of economic understanding or an outright attempt at deception.

How About Fairness Doctrines For the TV and Print Media Too

In recent weeks there has been quite a hubbub over some comments from conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Specifically, when he said he wanted Obama to fail. As you might imagine that got the media's panties all in a bunch. So I went back and read the transcripts of what Rush said, and as you might expect, I believe the media is taking his comments wildly out of context.

"I would hope he would succeed," said Limbaugh, "if he acts like Reagan. But if he is going to do FDR … why would I want him to succeed? … If he is going to implement a far-left agenda … $2 trillion in stimulus, the growth of government … nationalized health care, I mean, it's over. … That's the end of America as we have known it because that's then going to set the stage for everything being government-owned, -operated or -provided. Why would I want that to succeed? I don't believe in that. I know that's not how this country is going to be great in the future. It's not what made this country great. So I shamelessly say, 'No, I want him to fail.' If his agenda is a far-left collectivism -- some people say socialism -- as a conservative, heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?"

The gist of it is that Rush believes in capitalism, not socialism, and he feels that Obama's fiscal policies are socialist. Therefore, he wants the socialist policies coming out of Washington to fail. But isn't that the way everything is? If you disagree with a philosophy you want it to fail? Because the other side of that is if it fails then most likely your ideology/philosophy will be proven correct.

But that is not what caught my attention. What did is how for 8 years we heard much worse about George W Bush, but the media wasn't foaming at the mouth about it. People didn't just want him to fail, they wanted him killed. Yet barely a whimper from the media. For instance, here are some examples:

• 2006 Poll Showed 51% of Democrats Want Bush to Fail
• Carville Wanted Bush to Fail - FoxNews
• Vincent Bugliosi: George W. Bush Deserves the Death Penalty - Huffington Post
• Bush Assassinated in Mock Documentary - BBC News

My Beef With Republicans.... and Much Much More

Lot's to talk about today. First, I'd like to pick a bone with the Republican party. As you may recall they took control of Congress back in 1994 claiming to be the party of "smaller" government. I obviously don't know the inner workings of how budgets get passed, but I'm willing to cede the fact that from 1994 to 2000 the bloating of the government budget was a result of their "small government" mentality losing to Clinton's "big government" mindset. I don't believe that's the case, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that its true. My problem is with what happened from 2000 to 2006. The Republicans had control of Congress and the White House and should have been able to control the government's size and scope. Rather, we saw it balloon.

There is much blame to go around for the current mortgage crisis, but a large portion of it falls at the feet of Congressmen who enabled inane laws that encouraged Fannie and Freddie and the like to create and take on "toxic" loans. I hear Republicans today clamoring about the evils of Fannie and Freddie and rightfully so. But why then did they do nothing about them when they had 6 years to fix things? They appear to now be sobered up from their drunken spending spree in the first half of this decade, but it sure rings hollow to me. Just yet another reason why I consider myself a conservative, not a republican.

Next, let's talk Obama.

1. First let's discuss his executive orders. There appears to be a significant delay between when he signs an order and when it appears on the White House website. Either way, his most recent order allots $20.3 million to bring Palestinians to the US. The order hides behind the guise of bringing refugees out from the war torn areas in Gaza and the West Bank. Here's the problem, over 50% of the Palestinians support Hamas (a terrorist organization) and the suicide bombing of Americans. Countries like Syria, Jordan, and Egypt wouldn't even take these "refugees", yet we open our doors.
2. His other two major executive orders were to close down Guantanamo Bay and all interragation centers around the world. I understand that makes everyone feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it doesn't make us safer. I'm all for treating people humanely, but the second you lob grenades and then duck behind women and children, you lose your "rights" to due process.
3. George Bush may not be able to say nuclear, but apparently Obama can't speak without being told what to say.

Maybe you remember hearing about the civil disobedience that "Dr" James Hansen was promoting in Washington this past weekend as part of a global warming rally. You know, the one that got snowed out. Well, as part of that rally the zealots tried shutting down the coal-fired power plant in Washington that powers the Capital. Here again we having a shining example of liberal Democrat hypocrisy. Obama, his Energy Secretary, and even his Treasury Secretary are going after oil and coal because they believe it is responsible for global warming. He is trying to institute a cap-and-trade policy that will jack the prices of "dirty" energy through the roof. So you would think that a coal fired power plant in DC would be a no-no. Well, apparently its been too costly to make the plant green, so they are giving up. Kind of reminds of the Biblical proverb to "remove the plank from your own eye before you try and remove it from your neighbors eye."

A Shining Star of Acadamia

I read an article yesterday in the Chicago Sun Times entitled We Are Not Heading To Socialism. The article was written by a professor from UNC-Wilmington and is a perfect example of why education funding needs to be cut. I like to do this from time to time and its been awhile, so allow me break down this article paragraph by paragraph. But first, let's employ the help of Merriam-Webster for a definition of socialism:

so·cial·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done


Now that we have that defined, lets begin.

We're not heading to socialism
Helping failing industries a long way from Uncle Sam taking over

March 2, 2009
BY ROBERT BRENT TOPLIN

Socialism has become our new scare word. It is not yet the major bugaboo that communism became during the Cold War or terrorism became after 9/11, but this "ism" has been getting a lot of nervous attention of late. Some politicians warn that the government's stimulus package and aid to financial institutions could put the country on a road to socialism.

Well, I'd definitely agree with "some politicians" on that sentiment. We are closer to socialism today than we were even 6 months ago.

But current efforts by American leaders to intervene in the troubled economy have nothing to do with socialism. We need a better term that succinctly characterizes Washington's efforts to rescue troubled American businesses.

Nothing to do with socialism? Even if Obama and the other libs had the greatest intentions in the world, it doesn't change the fact that when the government comes in and takes control of businesses, that is, by definition, socialism.

In the days since Obama took the oath of office, pundits on the right have amplified this theme. Broadcaster Sean Hannity characterized Obama's stimulus package as "the European Socialist Act of 2009." Some conservatives expressed worry that the U.S. government took a stake in the financial institutions it aided. They warned that Democrats aim to nationalize banks. A few detected socialist goals in legislation that limits the bonuses of top executives at companies receiving TARP funds.

Think about that for a second. The government is limiting executive pay. You can hem and haw all you want that they don't need to make millions of dollars, and maybe that is true, but it is money that their shareholders and board of directors approved. Therefore, it is THEIR money. The fact the government mandated that they can no longer take it is a huge leap over the bounds of private property ownership. And of course, the unintended consequence is NYC is going to get hurt the most. 40,000 of NYC's 9 million residents pay 60% of the taxes in that city. What happens now that those 40,000 people have their incomes cut by factors of 10?!?!

The leading socialists of earlier American history, such as Daniel De Leon and Eugene Debs, would be surprised to hear that the emergency measures advocated by Obama and leaders in Congress constitute socialism. De Leon and Debs differed vigorously on details but agreed on essentials. Capitalism, said Debs, was a "monstrous system." As socialists, they wanted to make the government owner and manager of some of the great corporations. Socialists aimed to nationalize large businesses, because they judged capitalism exploitive. They believed socialism would provide better treatment of workers and fairer distribution of society's goods.

Maybe I'm missing something, but he appears to be arguing against himself here. He's describing socialism, which is exactly what the government is doing right now as they consider nationalizing banks.

Today's advocates of strong federal action do not share that enthusiasm for replacing capitalism with socialism. They understand that the free enterprise system is vastly superior to one based on state-run industries. And they are not enthusiastic about investing public funds in failing businesses to give them temporary protection from a meltdown.

He's back to intentions, which are irrelevant. No where in the definition of socialism is it described that one's intent is the key to making it a reality.

Obama, the Democrats and some Republicans agreed to let the government take a financial stake in AIG, auto companies, and troubled banks as well as a larger commitment to Fannie Mae because those institutions were teetering. Eventually, some banks may need to be nationalized (temporarily) so that collapse can be prevented, toxic assets can be removed from their balance sheets, and depositors are protected.

Why should collapse be prevented? True capitalism punishes businesses when they make mistakes. AIG is getting another $30 billion as of yesterday, which makes it the first business in history to fail 4 times. Apparently all the liberals who adhere to evolutionary theory and "survival of the fittest" don't feel that it applies to businesses. The reason the DOW is down over 2700 since Nov 4th is because the government is prolonging the crises by propping up bad companies.

Leaders in Washington are pouring public money into troubled institutions to save them for capitalism, not to transform them into socialist enterprises. When the crisis passes and, hopefully, these organizations become solvent again, government leaders will happily free Uncle Sam from the financial commitments. Leaders in Washington are not happy with an arrangement that socializes losses and privatizes profits, but they see no alternative in the crisis.

Again, this all looks and sounds good, but its just not true. I ask anyone to show me a single example of a program, department, or agency that has been created by the United States government and given the "temporary" tag that is no longer in existence today.

Since "socialism" fails to identify the government's controversial initiatives, how can those actions best be characterized? Revival of an old concept, Welfare Capitalism, can throw light on the situation. In the past, historians employed this term to identify a capitalist society that offers welfare programs for its citizens, and they used it, also, to describe businesses that provide welfare-like services to their employees. In a related way, this term suggests the main idea behind current measures.

Washington's rescue efforts are providing welfare for businesses. The federal government is assisting huge corporations so that they can avoid collapse, much like the government sometimes helps individuals who confront a temporary economic crisis. Leaders in Washington certainly do not wish to keep AIG, Citicorp, and General Motors on the dole. They want these organizations to take full responsibility for their affairs once they "find a job" -- that is, return to profitability.

Let's recognize the new situation for what it is: Welfare Capitalism. Americans are not happy about the program's huge cost, and they are disgusted that some of the business titans whose actions contributed to the financial mess may benefit if the rescue works. But Americans remain committed to the free enterprise system, and most of them understand that in an emergency government has an important role to play in saving capitalism from its excesses.

Typical of a liberal to try and redefine terms when they know their ideas are losing traction with the populace. Babies become fetuses. Global warming becomes climate change. And now apparently socialism becomes "Welfare Capitalism." But look on the bright side, this guy is teaching our future generation!!! I was delighted to see that this guy was absolutely shredded by all the comments on the article. Apparently there are still some people out their who have a brain.