Tag Archives: Economy

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics

Obama’s Virtual Economy And Virtual Truth

Contrary to the administration’s storyline, the economy is not creating jobs. We’re still short millions of jobs from when he took over, and that’s after all the so-called stimulus spending. What little economic growth there is, is happening in spite of Obama’s stimulus spending, takeovers, and Czars. Not because of them. And is the reason the economy hasn’t already shown good signs of recovery. He is depressing what is a strong economy eager to be set free.

The administration, with a little help from the media, is attempting to redefine progress. Let’s look at where we are: 8.2% unemployment is the new 5.2%.  The new norm.  That 8.2% is nothing to be alarmed about.  No problem.  And $5/gallon gasoline, that’s the new $3.  Not $4.  Remember when $4 was hit, everybody went crazy?  No, now $5 gasoline, “Hey, it’s the new the norm! It’s not as much as they’re paying in Europe.  You should feel lucky.”

Then there’s the oil head-fake, lie. The oil ‘subsidies’ which are not really subsidies but current tax law, are the same production and manufacturing incentives that all companies enjoy, whether they make cars or gasoline.

Yet, the Divider-in-Cheif continues to demagogue the entire industry, urging Congress to “stand with the American people” by voting to end subsidies to oil companies. Funny thing happened last week. The Democrat-controlled Senate stood with Big Oil and voted 51-47 against the bill. And how does the media report it? CBS’s  Bill Plante frames it like this . . . “GOP blocks Obama’s bid to end oil subsidies.”

From The White House, on the same day the Senate killed his bullying initiative to raise taxes on the oil industry, President Obama said . . .

“Right now, the biggest oil companies are raking in record profits. On top of these record profits, oil companies are also getting billions a year in taxpayer subsidies.”

Here’s a fact. The biggest oil companies will likely always earn record profits in terms of dollars. Not in terms of profit margin. When what you produce runs the economies of the world, and there is an endless demand for it coming from China, India, and other developing countries, the dollar amounts will consistently hit ‘record highs’ on a monthly, if not annual basis. If they don’t, then it will be because of no economic growth. Sure makes it easy for a politician to demagogue, doesn’t it?

Acting as though he was leading the charge to end crony capitalism when he was candidate Obama, President Obama climbs in bed with George Soros and Brazil. It’s just a bit dishonest for Obama to fund oil drilling and exploration in Brazil, then pledging to be their major customer, for oil that he refuses to get here.

Links: Higher gas prices cause less public anger this time  |  Obama says US to be major purchaser of Brazilian oil  |  The New Normal: Trickle-Down Poverty

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics

High Gas Prices, A Good Thing?

While everyone else is feeling the pain at the pump, President Obama is having trouble feeling your pain. In a most amazing turnaround from an economical and political standpoint, high gas prices are now a good thing.

Watch the transformation in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qKdScVerrBU

Steven Chu is Energy Secretary because he and Obama are soul brothers in the concept of sacrificing the economy with high gas prices so as to (in their liberal minds) force development of alternative energy sources. Chu is the same Energy Secretary that wants you to paint the roof of your house a reflective white, ostensibly to change climate change. Not sure if there is any racial implication in that. Anything is possible with this administration.

Raising ‘taxes’ on the poor is part of the plan. See The Poor Tax, and how Obama screws the poor while saying he has their back. Backside is more accurate. Of course, the media doesn’t see it that way.

Economy, Organized Labor, Politics

Labor Unions Over Half Of Government Employees

There is a certain synergy between labor unions and the government.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S844k_GigaQ

When you follow the money, that relationship is nearly incestuous. Some observers, like Rush, label it as a money laundering scheme. Your taxes go to Washington, to Big Labor, and back to Washington in the form of campaign contributions.

It’s a great system, for the public labor unions. Not so good for the taxpayers footing the bill.

It also explains why Big Labor is against voluntary membership and for mandatory dues payroll deductions. Both of which the Obama Administration support. Both of which, for example, is why Big Labor is spending millions of dollars trying to recall the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.

Economy, Media, Pensacola, Politics

News Print Industry Downsizing

More early retirements at our local newspaper, the Pensacola News Journal. What we are seeing at the PNJ is happening to the newspaper industry. It is an industry in a state of change.

What is happening at the News Journal is symptomatic of an aging industry. Whether that makes the PNJ more a victim of circumstance than of their own doing is arguable, but the fact is the print news industry is changing. The computer age that enabled the media to get and share info has become a not insignificant part of the industry’s woes because the same information, and more, is also available online to their customers.

There is plenty of evidence of how industries evolve as the need to meet customers’ demand changes. Some evolve and survive. Others die.

Look at the effect the internet has had on the movie industry. Retail stores sprung up all over the country to rent movies. Movie Gallery, Blockbuster, and small mom and pop stores renting movies. In the quest for a better mouse trap, companies like NetFlix and RedBox sprung up making movie distribution so much more convenient. The customers get their needs fulfilled in a way that no longer includes the brick and mortar stores. That industry is changing, never to be the same again. The brick and mortar stores are closing, giving way to movie vending machines or internet access from your home that need no employees to serve you when you want to be served. The recording industry faced the same metamorphosis. Record stores are more like antique shops. The trend now is online with shops like iTunes.

Remember the Sears Catalog Sales stores where you could buy your washing machine and pick up your catalog order from “The Book” in the same store? Sears, once the largest retailer in the world, has seen the end of the catalog segment of their business.

With its roots in the late 1950’s and 60’s, a ‘new’ industry arose in the 70’s and 80’s. The Catalog Showroom industry. The Sears ‘Big Book’ was, for all intents and purposes, replaced by a thinner book and monthly and seasonal flyers inserted into newspapers for stores that carried (on a good day) everything that was in the catalog. The giants in that industry were Service Merchandise (TN) and Best Products (VA). Smaller players in this industry were, H.J. Wilson (LA) and Present Company (NY). In fact, it was H.J. Wilson Co. that brought my family to Pensacola in the early 1980’s. I saw the industry grow for about 25 years, then die a slow death. They were replaced by stores that were even more convenient.

I don’t see the news industry dying. But it is in a state of change. Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess. What is certain though is that there will be something better, from a consumer standpoint, that will either augment or replace the newsprint industry. That is, as long as free-market forces are at work and Washington stays out of the bailout business.

Link: Richard A. Schneider: And so we say goodbye to 11 of our best

2012 Election, Economy, Politics

Obama’s 2012 Campaign

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Four years ago, President Obama had no record to run on besides Hope and Change. Four years later, after stimulus spending that did not work and a health care law that is illegal, a proposed budget plan that makes deficit spending the norm with no path to bring the budget into balance, President Obama still has no record to run on.

Obama’s campaign is left with attacking the court, being community organizer to the dumb masses, and attacking Republicans for coming up with a budget that eventually brings deficits down to a balance condition in 28 years by characterizing Republicans as foisting draconian cuts on (wait for it) the backs of the poor.

Truth is, this administration doesn’t have the will or the way to return fiscal and budgetary sanity to the government.

 

2012 Election, Economy, Judiciary, Politics, Supreme Court, Whiners

Presidential, Or Community Organizer, You Decide

The President’s unloading on the Supreme Court Monday, before any decision on his Affordable Health Care Act has been announced, was very un-presidential. You could argue that he should know better than to act that way, but, he has done it before in public. At the 2010 SOTU show over a campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. United States.

Yes, he missed a teachable moment as a ‘constitutional’ attorney. Instead of sitting at his Oval Office desk, giving the American people the confidence that our system of government, big and slow as it is, is working on settling everyone’s concern about the constitutionality of Obamacare1,  President Obama acted more like the community organizer he is than the president he should be. He, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and leading Democrats employed veiled threats and intimidation to try to effect the Supreme Court’s decision, and at the same time, rile up half the country against the Supreme Court, and against the other half of the country. It’s what community organizers do on a country level.

From all the whining and imputing comments from our President over the Court’s decision, expected to be announced at the conclusion of their session in June, makes one wonder if he hasn’t already been tipped off as to how the court voted?

Links: Dems wage pressure campaign on Supreme Court over health ruling  |    Bruised Obama tries to walk back his attack on the Supreme Court

1 President Obama’s signature piece of legislation that was more important (to him) to enact than creating jobs and our economic recovery.

Economy, Pensacola, Politics, Supreme Court

Obamacare Is Non-Severable, VOID

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Let’s go back 14 months to January 31, 2011 when Pensacola’s own Judge Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida became the second federal judge to strike down Obamacare’s individual mandate.

But Judge Vinson went further. He dealt with what the Supreme Court is having to decide now, whether or not the legislation is severable. Whether some parts can be stricken and the rest stand?

Judge Vinson’s decision, which was proffered by the government’s attorney, was that “the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit.” Accordingly, Vinson concluded: “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.” {emphasis added}

Had the administration followed the legal process, they would have either appealed the decision or requested a stay. They did neither. The reaction of the lawless administration was that because the judge did “not order the government to stop implementing the law, a senior administration source said ‘implementation will proceed at pace.’”

Then in August 2011, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit also ruled that the provision of the law that requires people to buy health insurance or face an annual penalty is unconstitutional. The ruling affirmed an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Pensacola, Florida.

Curiously though, the court also ruled that absent the mandate, the Act can continue. What this means is that three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit pulled a severability clause out of thin air. Because neither the individual mandate or the Act itself contain a severability clause, on purpose.

The future of our country and our relationship with the government rests on whether this bill dies at the Supreme Court. If not, then the 2012 election will be repeal and replace. There is a private-sector alternative.

Links: Obamacare Is Void, Lawless Administration Doesn’t Care  |  11th Circuit Court Of Appeals Affirms Judge Vinson, Sort Of  |  An Alternative To Obamacare Already Exists

2012 Election, Economy, Energy, Media, Politics

Poser-in-Chief

The timeline goes like this.

  1. Gas prices going up.
  2. President Obama nixes the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada to Texas.
  3. Gas prices still going up.
  4. Public polling suggest that two-thirds of Americans believe gas is too high and are in favor of the XL Pipeline.
  5. President Obama goes to Oklahoma to glam onto what would be the end part of the XL Pipeline to speed up a construction project that has already been approved, and, that did not need Presidential approval in the first place.
  6. The President is a poser, trying to give Americans the illusion that he has changed his tune on the XL Pipeline.
Economy, Media, Politics, Supreme Court

An Alternative To Obamacare Already Exists

On the eve of the Supreme Court taking up the constitutionality of Obamacare, and a week after the CBO said that the cost of Obamacare is now estimated to be almost double what was promised, it is time to check the private-sector solution to reforming health care.

Introduced in the 111th Congress, where it died in the Democrat-controlled Senate, was a bill called H.R.3400, The Empowering Patients First Act.

It’s not that Americans would not like improvements in health delivery and health insurance in this country. It’s just that they did not ask for and do not want THIS solution.

The alternative exists that will deal with those ten percent of Americans that don’t have and for some reason do not want health insurance. It will do it without ruining the health insurance industry and the plans for the other 80 or 90 percent of Americans and their employers that are just fine with their current situation and the plans they have. The alternative is not a budget buster. Nor does it take your choice away or make your health care decisions for you. That alternative is H.R. 3400

The Empowering Patients First Act, or H.R. 3400, would allow:

  • Individuals to choose their health insurance (no mandates)
  • Deductibility of health insurance premiums regardless of who pays
  • Employers to give flexible health-insurance options to employees
  • Health insurance coverage for low-income families (300 percent of the federal poverty level)
  • Health insurance for high-risk individuals (pre-existing conditions)
  • Sale of health insurance across state lines
  • Expansion of Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs
  • Individual membership association health insurance plan
  • Association Health Insurance Plans
  • Medical liability limitations (Tort reform)

Unlike Democrat-care, the Republican alternative would not impose fines on workers or employers, require cuts in Medicare, increase taxes, require a new government bureaucracy, require a “government health insurance” option nor add $1 trillion or more to the national debt.

Pulled this out of the archives . . .

At the beginning of President Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009 a truism was spoken about “comprehensive” (that’s political-speak for government-controlled) health care.

President Obama said “A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell Sr. in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session.”

The truism that seems to escape Democrats is that for 65 years, they continue to ignore the will of the people. That socialized medicine is one thing that Americans do not want, and it’s time to move on. If the president really believes what he is saying, then he ought to be confident enough to also say that if his plan does not increase the availability and quality of care and the debt, and does not decrease the cost, then he will scrap his version of health care reform before his term ends and enact H.R. 3400, the Republican alternative.

Regarding President Obama, you have a decision to make. Is he lying about their not being a Republican alternative, or is he that far out of touch that he doesn’t even know it exists? Which one works for you?

Besides, if you take the president at his word, it should be President Obama calling for its repeal. He said he would not sign a health care reform bill if it did not bring down costs or if it increased the debt. By any account, Obamacare has not lived up to what he promised. Do you still trust what President Obama says? It’s a rhetorical question.

The American people already answered that one. And it’s time for a change. H.R. 3400, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, ought to be the course of action to take where actual health care reform (as opposed to deform) is concerned. Whatever comes out of it, it ought to be something that the American people want, not what a bunch of idealogues high on government-run health care want. An idea that has been rejected routinely for 65 years.

 

Economy, Politics

What Snake-Oil Looks Like

Do you happen to remember when, back in September 2009, President Obama spoke before a joint session of Congress to sell his Government controlled health care plan, known now as the Affordable Health Care Act?

There was all kinds of opposition to Obamacare then, for the same reasons as exist today. Paramount among the opposition is the debt picture, it is going to cost more money that we don’t have.

In response to the no-more-debt objection, Barack Obama brings out the snake oil and says this . . . (29:15 in video)

I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.

“And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision . . .” If he was serious, that provision would have already been written.Which begs the question, now that we know that Obamacare will cost more, way more. What happened to that cost saving “provision?” Was that a lie too?

The first two minutes of this video is worth the price of admission. That’s why it’s here.

At 12:45 in the video is the Big Lie about keeping your doctor and your plan if you want to.

At 31:00 is where President Obama says “not a dollar” of Obamacare will come from Medicare. He says “I will protect Medicare.” (well, except for that $500* Billion cut) And all the other gems of promises made.

I know this video is from September 9, 2009. But when you see this performance today, you have the advantage of seeing the same smooth talker today as three years ago. And what’s good about that is that the American people can see that after three years of Obama’s economic policies, the economy is treading water at best.

*Update 9/3/2012: The total removed from Medicare now stands at $716 Billion. That’s up from $500 Billion.