Category Archives: Economy

Economy, Politics

Shut It Down, If That’s What It Takes

At this point in our deficit and national debt, shutting down the government, for as much as it will actually be shut down, would be an improvement. It means they would be unable to spend more than had last been allocated under an approved budget, which was in 2010.

Since the media seems to have forgotten why Washington is haggling over CR’s (continuing resolutions), let me remind you. And no, it’s not Bush’s fault. It is Obama’s fault. And to top it off, I just heard him say today that it is irresponsible to not have a budget. What? Yes, he said that.

“At a time when you’re struggling to pay your bills and meet your responsibilities, the least we can do is meet our responsibilities to produce a budget.

“That’s not too much to ask for. That’s what the American people expect of us. That’s what they deserve. You want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize it is not just my way or the highway.”

How’s that for a cup of arrogance and a pound of audacity?

Here’s where it began. Well, actually it began in a Democratic caucus somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol, but it ended in this: House Democrats Deem Faux $1.1 Trillion Budget as Passed

Adding a little perspective to the dollars and the demagoguery: Obama’s Budget Up Close

And now for the real reason that we are where we are today. The Obama administration made the political calculation NOT to have a budget in public view prior to the mid-term elections. From where I sit, Harry Reid and the rest of them have absolutely no standing whatsoever to demagogue the party that has a plan to fix the financial mess and the 2012 budget because they voted present on both. No Federal Budget for 2011.

Link: Obama calls crunch budget talks

Economy, Florida, Pensacola, Politics

Early Retiree Reinsurance Program

This is what Speaker Pelosi meant by having to pass the (health care) bill to find out what’s in it. Who knew that the ‘Affordable Health Care Act’ was going to have taxpayers paying the health insurance claims for labor union, corporations, and government union employees who choose to retire early? Before they are eligible for Medicare.

The program totals $5 billion and is supposed to last until January 1, 2014 when ‘State health insurance Exchanges’ are ‘up and running.’ But there’s a problem already. Over $2 billion has already been spent, and at this rate the program will be out of money sometime in 2012. Two years earlier than ‘planned.’

Are you feeling secure now that you know your health care will be managed by the government? Do you still believe that Obamacare will bring costs down, and make the quality of care go up? We already know that we can’t keep our plan if we want to, and that we won’t be able to keep our doctor if we want to.

At this point in time, payments to individual states are dwarfed by the payout to the auto workers union, which received more than the states of New York, California, and Texas combined.  Other unions also received government funds, including the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Mine Workers, and the Teamsters.

Here’s a short list of government entities in our area that Obamacare is funding right now.
  • Escambia County Board of County Commissioners
  • Pensacola Junior College
  • The School District of Escambia County
  • County of Escambia
  • County of Santa Rosa Board of Public Instruction
  • Northwest Florida State College
  • Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners

Nationwide list HERE.  State of Florida list HERE. And you can do a search by Zip Code HERE.

Links: Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) |  New $2 billion bailout in Obamacare

Economy, Politics, Venezuela

Hugo Chavez On A Health Kick Too!

Not to be out done by First Lady Michelle Obama‘s ‘Let’s Move’ initiative to fight obesity, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (the hemisphere’s idiot) has a health initiative of his own.

Chavez’s plan is simple. He says to avoid obesity, cut your calories. Here’s the funny part . . .

“Be careful with weight gain!” warned Chavez on Sunday, speaking during his weekly television and radio program. “We are eating better, that’s been proven. We’re leaving malnutrition behind. It no longer exists in the country, but be careful with obesity.”

Contrary to Michelle’s ‘Let’s Move’ program, which is being funded from taking food from the mouths of hungry (the Food Stamp Program), Chavez’s program depends on empty shelves in the supermarket.

Venezuelans complain of shortages of basic food items: Many residents say they often take four or five trips to various markets only to end up with bitter coffee and unbuttered bread.

When he says it’s ‘been proven’ that Venezuelans are eating better, he means they are eating maybe two meals a day, up from one and a half meals a day.

Links:

Chavez urges Venezuelans to cut calorie intake |  What’s on the shelves of Hugo Chávez’s socialist supermarket |  Dems Message For Food Stamp Recipients: Eat Less, part 2

Economy, Organized Labor, Politics

More Labor-Union Bullying In Wisconsin

Wasn’t it in January 2011 that President Obama called for setting a ‘new tone’ of ‘civility?’ And just a few weeks ago he and the First Lady had a bullying summit or some such? Apparently the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, never got the message. Or they believed that the President was exempting labor unions from the general population.

They have become un-hinged and are now attacking businesses, large and small, with threats of a boycott if they don’t support their cause. That includes business who have said, hey, I want to stay out of it. Leave me alone.

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows.

If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”

I learned a long time ago that one man’s rights end where another man’s nose begins. But what do they know about individual rights? Union individual is an oxymoron. The WSEU are community activists with an underworld twist. Nice business you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.

The point these union thugs miss is this. Aside from a place that provides goods and/or services, businesses are employers. And I don’t know of any employer who would hire an applicant that threatened him.

Hey, you’re going to hire me or you’ll pay the consequences. Yeah right. If they are so ugly and in your face when they’re not working for you. Why would anyone think they’ll change if you were to hire them? And sorry, take your anger, hate and belligerence somewhere else. Thank you very much.

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics

What ‘Circling The Wagons’ Looks Like

Oh there I go again, picking on President Obama.  Not exactly. But the media is doing their best to hold him harmless for higher energy prices. It’s just a shame that circumstances beyond his control continue to deal him a losing hand.

On the road to a national energy policy, President Barack Obama is hitting pothole after pothole.

‘On the road to a national energy policy?’ Not only has he taken the wrong turn. He is lost. His idea of an energy policy is to not use it. And by all means, don’t get it. Keep on buying it from the Middle East, Russia, and Venezuela. There’s a plan. Make the cost of gasoline so high that it will cripple the economy. Small price to pay to push technologies that do not yet exist in any practical supply.

First, worries over coal-burning plants’ role in global warming prompted Obama . . .

Worries? What worries? By some divine providence, the media ignored candidate Obama’s thoughts on an energy policy where coal is concerned. Candidate Obama said that his Cap and Trade legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible for coal burning electrical generating plants to operate.

[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

Half of the electricity in the United States comes from coal fired electric plants.

and other Democrats to look more favorably on offshore oil and gas exploration.

Right. That’s why, oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico is still on hold, against court orders to the contrary, nearly a year after the crises that he didn’t let go to waste. And seven months after the Deepwater Horizon leak was plugged. That’s a pothole?

Next came a warmer embrace of nuclear power as part of a possible broad political agreement . . . Now the crisis in Japan is throwing a shadow over nuclear energy worldwide.

Right. And a year before the current crisis in Japan, Obama cut the funding for the only approved site for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.

Making matters worse for Obama, a spike in U.S. gasoline prices is angering Americans just as his re-election campaign cranks up. Experts say gas price fluctuations have almost nothing to do with the tragedy in Japan or the Gulf oil spill. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lumping various issues together and using them to club Obama.

There’s a really big wagon. Rising gas prices are not his fault. He’s just having a run of bad political luck. Is that what the media, and Democrats, were saying when Bush was in The White House?

In reality, Obama could cause the world market of oil and gasoline to fall overnight, simply on the announcement that he intends to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. That would be a part of an energy policy to embrace.

Pointing out the obvious is characterized as taking ‘cheap shots.’ The media takes the Democrat points that, if you point out that stopping oil and gas exploration and development, and if you point out that relying on technologies that are not yet practically available are major factors in rising costs and reasons for instability in the market, then you’re taking a ‘cheap shot’ at President Obama.

“As long as our economy depends on foreign oil,” Obama said, “we’ll always be subject to price spikes.”

So don’t worry. Be happy.

He called for “a comprehensive energy strategy that pursues both more energy production and more energy conservation. We’re working to diversify our entire portfolio with historic investments in clean energy.”

President Obama just said last week that we are using less energy, as if that is a good sign of conserving and using less. Here’s a clue. We are using less because our economy is slowing down. You can’t have both a growing economy and less energy consumption. All the ‘historic investments in clean energy’ are fine, but not at the expense of exploiting our own fossil fuel resources.

The problem here is our President is not the leader America, and the media, had hoped he was. If he were a leader, he would be the one leading America around those potholes, or fixing them and moving forward. Not portraying him, and us, as innocent victims.

Link: Crises In Japan, Gulf Thwart US Energy Accord

Economy

Want To Fix Our Economy?

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS NEED TO HAVE LASTING ANSWERS  

Farid A. Khavari (Ph.D., Economist)

As the economic woes around the world keep growing, politicians and economists fall back on measures that could only be temporary and give them breathing space, until the next round of compounded escalated and accelerated problems kick in.

The existing economic problems, compounded through rising unemployment rates, soaring food and housing costs, foreclosures, runaway healthcare costs, ruinous education debt and other issues, cannot be offset for long or resolved through conventional economic-political measures.

Such non-working measures include stimulus packages, handouts, subsidies, rising wages, grants and reduced tariffs on imported goods. When politicians decide to balance the budget or cut the budget, those economic-political measures will be economically detrimental. Using these contractive measures only compounds the problems even more, making a bad economic situation even worse! Here are a few examples:

According to The Economist (March 12, 2011, Page 32):

“To buy off economic discontent, the Arab governments are introducing new handouts. The commonest is the old-fashioned wage rise. Saudi Arabia is boosting public-sector pay by 15% as part of a $36 billion spending splurge. Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Oman and Syria are all raising wages and benefits for public employees, though whether the 150% pay rise for Libyan civil servants will actually be paid is another matter.”

“Fuel subsidies are bigger. In 2009 they amounted to roughly $150 billion in the Middle East and North Africa. Oil then cost over $60 a barrel. It is now almost double that, so if prices were to stay at the same level regional fuel subsidies would rise to almost $300 billion this year. That is 7.5% of the area’s GDP, a vast amount. The only way to prevent such a jump would be to increase domestic fuel prices. But no countries have been brave enough to risk that except Qatar and Iran.”

Of course, this may buy the beleaguered rulers of these countries some time, but it cannot be a lasting answer, to the economic problems from which the people of those nations suffer. Similarly, the United States suffers from the same inept, shallow and shortsighted economic policies when ineffective and costly stimulus packages or the economically fatal and destructive measures of balancing budgets or arbitrary budget cuts are implemented.

Balancing budgets or budget cutting is only attractive and can only be considered viable when the economy enjoys full- or over-employment. In this case, extra employees are removed from the governmental agencies through increased productivity, and these labor forces are then integrated into the private sector. It would be an unlimited act of stupidity and ineptness to reduce governmental employees in order to cut the budget or to balance the budget in an economy that is suffering from high record unemployment rates. The government would then be creating additional unemployment costs, as well as adding to growing criminal and social costs of all types, while also adding to the economic misery of that economy as a whole.

WHAT ARE THE SOUND AND LASTING ANSWERS?

Despite the grave economic problems, a solid and sound economic plan would be to include these three goals:

1) To create income for all Americans with the creation of  new jobs in the private sectors of the economy;

2) To reduce the cost of living of all Americans;

3) To help Americans accumulate and protect true wealth for retirement.

It must be noted that in an economy based on these three goals, decreasing the cost of living has the same effect that increased salaries or wages do. Even when wages remain the same, purchasing power increases, when the cost of living goes down and when the living cost falls below wages, there is money remaining for savings.

This is the foundation of the Concept of a Zero-Cost Economy. For more details, please visit www.zerocosteconomy.com.

HOW TO ACHIEVE THESE GOALS?

In order to create jobs, we must realize that in a saturated economy like the one we have in the United States, we must stimulate demand in those manufacturing sectors whose products would help in reduce the cost of living. There are endless products of these types. Decentralized solar and wind energy systems belong to this category.

Further, we must create a public-friendly financial system, providing low-cost loans and mortgages to private households and small businesses. A financial system that is built to benefit the people and small businesses, within the communities.

Last, but not least, we must cut the cost of healthcare insurance by increasing the productivity in the healthcare delivery system along with rigorously cutting recurring cost and eliminating fraud.

Economy, Florida

North Dakota Is Booming

1 Comment

Interesting article showing how North Dakota is not participating in the Obama recession. Their population, and jobs, are growing by the tens of thousands a year.

One obvious omission to the USA Today article is the economic engine that’s been running in North Dakota for nearly the last 100 years. That made everything else possible. It was something that Independent candidate for governor of the State of Florida, Farid Khavari, ran on. The state bank of North Dakota.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, please take note!

Link:  North Dakota economy booms, population soars

 

Economy, Politics

Who’s Driving This Car Anyway?

January of 2009. Hope was in the air, but more importantly, gas was under two dollars a gallon. Since then gas prices, have gone up 67 percent and it’s an ominously upward trend. Interestingly enough, the Heritage Foundation also took a look at the first 26 months of Bush’s presidency — gas only rose 7 percent during that time frame.

Of course, there’s more to the story. Available HERE. As for who is driving this car? His name is Hope.

Link: Hope and Change: Gas Prices Have Gone Up 67 Percent Since Obama Became President

Economy, Media, Politics

‘Two Americas’ And Oil

Remember those ‘two Americas’ that John (the Breck girl) Edwards was talking about in the 2004 presidential campaign? The rising prices of crude oil, now north of $104 per barrel, and gas at the pump north of $3.50 (and 9/10) a gallon, and rising by about a dime a week got the attention of the New York Times with this front page analysis.

The highlights . . .

 

  • Rising Gas Cost Finds the Nation Better Prepared.
  • The increase in energy prices is beginning to resemble the rise in 2008. But this time, the American economy may be better prepared for higher fuel costs.
  • While the latest surge in energy prices is likely to cause some pain and slow the recovery from the recession, economists say the spike is unlikely to derail the rebound unless prices rise a lot further.
  • One big reason is that consumers and businesses have learned lessons from the last oil shock. … Industries like airlines and trucking, which are most severely affected by fuel prices, have passed on their higher costs almost immediately instead of waiting for the price increases to hammer profits.
  • And much of the rest of the United States economy is far less dependent on oil than it used to be.

    A fascinating and in-depth analysis of the high gas prices that took the combined efforts of five reporters. So you know it must be complete and comprehensive.

    Harken back to the high gas prices under the Bush administration which, according to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), was blamed on the Bush administration and the fact that there were ‘two oil men in The White House.’ Today, it is apparent from the New York Times that the cost of crude and gas have nothing whatsoever to do with Washington.

    There’s your ‘other’ America.

    Link: U.S. Economy Is Better Prepared for Rising Gas Costs | ‘Two oil men’ to blame for high gas prices, Pelosi says