Tag Archives: Politics

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

    Economy, Politics

    Obamanomics Setting Records

    According to preliminary numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion.

    Put into perspective, it is the 29th straight month the government has run in the red. A modern record. This one month federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats’ opening bid of $6 billion.

    And after hundreds of billions, trillions, of dollars of so-called stimulus spending, unemployment continues to worsen. Despite President Obama’s hooting the unemployment rate drop below 9 percent last week, the drop was not a result of more people getting jobs, which is what the community organizer would have you believe. No, the drop was a function of fewer people looking for work, a smaller pool of people looking for jobs that have given up looking for work is what made the unemployment rate drop.

    Analysts say an increase in the unemployment rate would indicate that the unemployed, those who have given up looking for work, would share the confidence in the economy that Obama says he has and are actively looking for work again. But that is not whats happening.

    Links:

    Economy, Organized Labor, Politics

    It’s Not A Story About Wisconsin

    Often the truth comes out when you think no one  else is listening. Take the Ring of Fire radio show for example. Last week host Mike Papantonio, still high on Koch (rhymes with coke), in a discussion with co-host Sam Seder about the Wisconsin Governor and government labor unions, Papantonio confirmed the symbiosis between Democrat leaders and Big Labor and exactly what the controversy for them is all about.

    Contrary to what they say in public, Progressives could care less about ‘the workers,’ or taxpayers for that matter.  ‘The workers’ are the tools for their political and ideological agenda.

    Making no distinction between private  and government unions, nor any legal or constitutional justification as to why, Sam Seder asserts ‘Unions do need government support.’

    Papantonio’s response . . .

    It’s not a story about just Wisconsin. It’s a story, look, here’s the chain.

    You take away collective bargaining. Once you take away collective bargaining, the union then, because they have no power, they’re not able to raise money. They’re not able to collect dues. If they’re not able to collect dues, if they don’t collect dues they can’t hire lobbys, they can’t do advertising. They can’t answer the Koch brothers on the television and the newspaper.

    Once you have that, you then have people just saying ‘Well just what does the union do? If they don’t do me any good why should I pay anything?’ Even though, if they really really analyze what the union does for them with collective bargaining, it’s huge.

    So, when that happens, what’s next thing that happens, the money for progressive ideas dries up. I mean the market of progressive ideas disappears. Because it is drowned out by the FOX News entity.

    Media, Organized Labor, Politics

    Tea Partier Makes Bomb Threat

    A person associated with the Tea Party was arrested today after calling in a bomb threat to a fundraiser for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Miami Beach on Friday.

    No wait! Correction!

    There was a bomb threat, but it wasn’t at Wasserman Schultz’s fundraiser where President Obama was the ‘special guest.’ No, this bomb threat was made by far Left protester Patrick J. Knauf, 43, of Eau Claire. And he made it last Wednesday at an aviation business in Eau Claire just hours after Governor Scott Walker spoke there. According to police, he had been protesting Governor Scott Walker all week.

    What? You mean you hadn’t heard about it in the media? Wonder why?

    H/T Black & Right

    Link: BOMB THREAT at Scott Walker News Conference–Leftist Protester Arrested!

    Economy, Organized Labor, Politics

    Jumpstarting A Vibrant & Stable Economy In The United States

    1 Comment
    JUMPSTARTING A VIBRANT & STABLE ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES
    by Farid A. Khavari

    The most devastating problem in the United States has been the high unemployment rates that are prevalent, along with the economic problems currently seen. Despite the efforts of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of stimulus monies and implementation of other economic-political measures, nothing has turned out to be effective, but instead, devastating. The economic system has gone awry. The impression that is given is that the United States is currently in the process of dismantling its own economy, either intentionally or by accident. Americans are noticeably confused or possibly mis-guided by the economic problems that we are currently under. Have Americans given up on our nation, believing that the powers that be will do whatever they feel without hearing our common voices on the economy? Americans should not think in terms of the elite controlling our nation and in turn our economic destiny. We as Americans do have solutions.  The following is an attempt to provide some clarifications to those solutions that are pragmatic, under the motto: What’s good for America, it is good for all Americans!

    Continue reading Jumpstarting A Vibrant & Stable Economy In The United States →

    Organized Labor, Politics

    Uncivil Unions

    As Obama rakes in historic campaign contributions from Wall Street money, liberals claim Republicans are beholden to “the rich.” However that may be, it is far more true, and far less remarked upon, that the Democratic Party is the party of public sector unions.

    And now, the nation watches helplessly as public sector unions and their Democratic allies say to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Nice state you got there, governor. Be a shame if something bad happened to it.

    For Democrats, the purpose of government is to generously provide jobs for people who otherwise couldn’t be hired — because their skills, attitude or sense of entitlement are considered undesirable in the private sector. And no, I’m not just talking about Barack Obama.

    Democrats use taxpayer money to fund a government jobs program, impoverishing the middle class and harming the people allegedly helped by the programs — but creating a vast class of voters who owe their jobs to the Democrats.

    This is a system designed to ratchet up costs. Look at the history of every entity where public employees have unionized, and you will find that not only are government workers paid more, but there are also a lot more of them doing a lot less useful work.

    There could be two students per class, and the Democrats would still be campaigning for “smaller class size,” so that the government would be required to hire more public school teachers to staff classes with one student. For Democrats, the purpose of public education in this country is not to teach children; it’s to create jobs for “educators.”

    Forget the nonsense about working men with dirt under their fingernails, slugging it out at dangerous jobs with a heartless management riding them to get more production at lower wages –- those guys are what liberal journalist Harold Meyerson calls “dead weight.”

    We’re talking about government employees, most of whom — when they show up to work at all — sit in comfortable, air-conditioned offices, kick off at 3 p.m., are entitled to endless sick days, personal days and holidays, whose performance can never be evaluated and who retire at age 50. (Again, I’m not focusing just on Barack Obama here.)

    Government employees are even worse than welfare layabouts. In a triple-whammy for the taxpayer, they are: (1) hideously expensive, (2) impossible to fire, and (3) doing things you don’t want done at any price.

    Hey, guess what? I’m from the government, and I can burn down your garage for $300!

    NO! I’M NOT INTERESTED!

    OK, fine, I’ll do it for you for $20.

    BUT I DON’T WANT MY GARAGE BURNED DOWN AT ANY PRICE!

    OK, the guys with the matches and gasoline will be by sometime between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. one day next week.

    As with so many other things, such as vegan restaurants and the crack epidemic, California leads the country in destruction by government unions.

    California’s civil service unions have employed all the usual thug techniques –- regular strikes (illegal until the California Supreme Court approved them in 1985), rolling strikes, the “blue flu” (cops and other public-safety workers calling in “sick”) — all of which are almost as harmful to the state as when they actually show up for work.

    While taxpayers groan under their tax burdens, one group of voters is constantly lobbying for higher taxes: government employees, who are paid by the taxpayer.

    When California voters approved Proposition 13 back in 1978, cutting astronomical property taxes 57 percent, the public sector unions went ballistic.

    Union bigwig Ron Coleman said, “We’re not going to just lie back and take it.”

    John Seferian, vice president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), said the union should have told politicians: “Hey, we’ll bring the roof down on you.” (Which you have to be a member of the roofers’ union to do.)

    Jerry Wurf, president of AFSCME, warned that the union was “prepared for confrontation.”

    His solution to the ballooning cost of government employees was … guess? That’s right, it was the same as it always is: Tax the rich.

    “Let the big shots pay!” Wurf said. Embodying the hopes and dreams of our Founding Fathers, Wurf said organizing government employees was part of his goal to “remake the economic and political system” in line with the vision of socialist Norman Thomas and the Young People’s Socialist League.

    Members of public sector unions see their pensions and benefits the way the Mafia views its “partnership” with a restaurant, as described in the movie “Goodfellas”: “Business bad? F–k you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? F–k you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? F–k you, pay me.”

    Spoiler alert: When the restaurant owner is unable to pay his mob tribute, they burn the place to the ground.

    But government employees aren’t exactly like the mob. At least the Mafia guys have a strong work ethic.

    Ann Coulter is a columnist and author of Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault On America.

     

    Economy, Media, Organized Labor, Politics

    Mt. Obama’s Arrogance And Audacity Is In Your Face

    In what would otherwise hands-down qualify for the M.R.I.O.T.D. award, what President Obama said today about congress continuing to fund what he deems as his government goes way beyond ridiculous into the absurd.

    In a statement Wednesday, the president called for immediate budget negotiations between Congress and the White House, with Vice President Biden, Chief of Staff William Daley and Budget Director Jack Lew playing a role.

    “I’m pleased that Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together and passed a plan that will cut spending and keep the government running for the next two weeks,” he said. “But we cannot keep doing business this way. Living with the threat of a shutdown every few weeks is not responsible, and it puts our economic progress in jeopardy.”

    Mt. [sic] Obama said a long term agreement “should cut spending and reduce deficits without damaging economic growth or gutting investments in education, research and development that will create jobs and secure our future.”

    “This agreement should be bipartisan, it should be free of any party’s social or political agenda, and it should be reached without delay,” he added.

    President Obama must be suffering from an early onset of Alzheimer’s or that’s not tobacco in his cigarettes, because this entire issue of pressing for CR’s to avoid a government shutdown was caused by him. His lack of leadership in pressing his Democrat-controlled congress last summer to propose a 2011 budget is why we are where we are today. He is really the one to talk about not being responsible, and of putting ‘economic progress’ in jeopardy. Do you see any economic progress?

    Calling for a meeting with Joe BFD Biden, William Chicago Daley, and new Budget Director Jack Lew about his budget mess is his way of making an empty suit look like there’s something in it. Calling meetings and committees to ostensibly solve problems is no substitute for leadership. You can be assured that the media will not notice.

    All this, and then some, could have been avoided if congress and the president had done their job last year. But it is no accident that a 2011 budget was not submitted last year. Had he submitted a budget that included doubling the size of government like he has done and increasing the debt like he has done and is planning to do, the mid-term elections would have included a new majority party in the senate as well.

    To be fair, there are a couple possibilities for why there was no 2011 budget. One is gross incompetence on the part of the president and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives under Speaker Pelosi. The other is that it was a political calculation to not have one, which would have shown Obama’s cards for what he had in store in 2011. I’d go with the latter. Unrestrained by a budget, spending like there’s no tomorrow to prop up Big Labor and kill the economy by burdening future generations with debt becomes much easier.

    Neither possibility is good. Not for them or America. You might expect it of a community organizer, but not the President of the United States. Which one works for you?

    Link: Obama signs bill to head off government shutdown

    Economy, Organized Labor, Politics

    Differences Between Right to Work and Non-Right to Work States

    2 Comments

    Contrary to what the labor union leaders, activists, and fleebaggers say about how good labor unions are for ‘the middle class,’ the statistics tell an entirely different story. You have to excuse them for using class warfare though. They can’t help it. They were born that way.

    Right to work states create more private sector jobs, enjoy lower poverty rates, experience more technology development, realize more personal income growth, and increase the number of people covered by employment-based private health insurance.

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, right-to-work states added 1.5 million private-sector jobs from 1999 to 2009 for a 3.7% increase; states that are not right-to-work lost 1.8 million jobs over the same decade, a decline of 2.3%.

    The numbers really isolate where labor unions and President Obama stand when it comes to the American taxpayer. It’s all about them, and Democrats’ re-election. It’s not about ‘the workers,’ the middle class, jobs, or the economy.

    Links: Differences Between Right to Work and Non-Right to Work States |   Right to Work Statistics |  Unions And The Right To Work