In North Carolina yesterday, meeting with the Council on Jobs and Competiveness, Barack Obama was questioned about the fact that government bureaucracy invariably delays projects and even oftentimes puts a stop to them altogether, to which Obama jokingly replied:
“Shovel-ready was not as — uh — shovel-ready as we expected.”
This clever remark got some pretty good laughs, and I, for one, find it very amusing indeed that these left-wing elitist, among whom Barack Obama is top of the heap, regard their deadly economic philosophy as a kind of joke, which I suppose in one sense it actually is: a complete joke, as a matter of fact, a joke of staggering proportions, a joke about as funny as a cry for help — a joke, in short, that’s nearly as laughable as Obama’s boast that he now “has a better plane” than three years ago, and that he now travels “with a bigger entourage,” while the rest of us pay the price for it.
I imagine, though, that the people who have been out of work for months on end are not laughing nearly as hard as Obama and his clownish administration.
Recall also Barack Obama telling us that his so-called Stimulus had to be passed before it was read because “it would provide for hundreds of thousands of shovel-ready projects that will bring our unemployment rate below 8 percent.”
And yet $821 billion later: “Unemployment is now 25 percent higher than when [Obama] took office, the deficit is 35 percent higher, and gas prices have more than doubled”(source).
Moreover:
“Obama’s stimulus included $28 billion in new highway money, which he said would ‘create or save’ 150,000 jobs by the end of 2010. These are the quintessential ‘shovel-ready’ jobs that Obama jokes turned out to be not so shovel ready.”
A new study by economists Timothy Conley of the University of Western Ontario and Bill Dupor of Ohio State found that despite the influx of all that federal money, highway construction jobs actually plunged by nearly 70,000 between 2008 and 2010.
As these authors explain, many states simply took the free federal money and shifted their own highway funds to meet other needs. Examples:
Texas got $700 million in highway stimulus funds last year, but spent $560 million less on its roads in 2010 than it did in 2009.
New York’s highway spending was basically unchanged between 2009 and 2010, despite getting $522 million more in federal highway bucks.
Michigan boosted its highway spending just $17.4 million, far below the $189 million extra the feds handed the state for highway improvements.
When others, like yours truly, were telling you that MORE government spending on “shovel-ready” projects were not going to be the way to save this nation and grow our economy, you passed the gargantuan bill, continued to pass other bills (like ObamaCare) that increased the size of government and then refused to do anything to actually tackle our entitlement crisis.
According to government figures: When you add up all of the money that we owe in order to cover our future liabilities in entitlements, our country is now in worse financial shape than Greece. Greece! While Obama has nearly doubled our debt to $14.3 trillion, that doesn’t even compare to the $50 trillion that we owe when you include Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Funniest of all, though — at least in my opinion — is the fact that Barack Obama was voted into power by people who, like Obama himself, have no understanding of economics whatsoever but chose him simply because it was the hip trendy thing to do.
In addition to this awesomeness, Kiss star Gene Simmons — who was born and partially raised in Haifa, Israel, with the name Chaim Witz — recently contributed something equally excellent to the world:
JANE WELLS, CNBC: What do you think of President Obama’s suggestion that the borders be redrawn pre-67?
GENE SIMMONS, KISS: President Obama, I voted for an idea. What I didn’t realize what I was getting was an idealist. If you’ve never been to the moon, you can’t issue policy about the moon. You have no f—king idea what it’s like on the moon. For a president to be sitting in Washington, D.C., and saying, “Go back to your 67 borders in Israel,” how about you live there and try to defend an indefensible border nine miles wide? On one side you’ve got hundreds of millions of people who hate your guts, on the other side you’ve got the Mediterranean. Unless you control, in Israel, unless you control those Golan Heights, it’s an indefensible position….
“The most pathetic body on the face of the planet.” Simmons called the U.N. a “paper tiger” that allows dictators to spread propaganda.
Obama's "friend and mentor" Jeremia Wright“[My grandmother] is a typical white person.”
— Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama, 2008
Now that the American military has at long last killed Osama bin Laden, Obama’s sagging approval ratings have jumped some six points. Obama is riding pretty high, and so I think it’s important to remind folks once again who this fellow really is and what he represents: a liar and a race-obsessed socialist.
Obama in his own words:
“Just because you possess an individual right doesn’t mean local governments can’t constrain the exercise of that right” (Barack Obama, 2008, Philadelphia primary).
“I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites” (Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father, pg xiv).
“That’s just how white folks will do you. It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know that they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserving of their scorn” (Barack Obama, Ibid, pg. 80).
“Questions of competition, decisions forced by a market economy and majoritarian rule; issues of power. It was this unyielding reality-that whites were not only phantoms to be expunged from our dreams but were an active and varied fact of our everyday lives-that finally explained how nationalism could thrive as an emotion and flounder as a program” (Barack Obama, Ibid, Pg 202).
Here is Barack Obama’s admission that he’s not only a socialist, but a socialist of the black-nationalist variety:
Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people’s brutal experience in this country, served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them. Rid them from your mind and find your true power liberated. Rise up, ye mighty race! … In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential nationalists. The anger was there, bottled up and often turned inward. And as I thought about Ruby and her blue eyes, the teenagers calling each other ‘nigger’ and worse, I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage toward whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyalty above all else, was a politics inadequate to the the task.
It was a painful thought to consider, as painful now as it had been years ago. It contradicted the morality my mother had taught me, a morality of subtle distinctions — between individuals of goodwill and those wished me ill, between active malice and ignorance or indifference. I had a personal stake in that moral framework; I’d discovered that I couldn’t escape it if I tried…. And yet perhaps it was a framework that blacks in this country could no longer afford; perhaps it weakened black resolve, encouraged confusion within the ranks. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and for many blacks, time were chronically desperate. If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence…. If nationalism could deliver. As it turned out, questions of effectiveness, and not sentiment, caused most of my quarrels with Rafiq (Barack Obama, Ibid, Pg. 198-201, boldface mine).
Obama has also famously told us that Reverend Jeremiah Wright — the racist anti-American pastor whose church Obama attended for twenty years — was not only his pastor but also his “friend and mentor” and like a “member of the family.” Jeremiah Wright’s church, Obama once said, “helps me keep my moral compass straight and define my priorities.”
No signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law? (Obama Lies to Keep Czars).
No “boots” on the ground Libya. “Anyone that has worked with the AC-130 gunship can tell you, you need spotters to let aircraft know where the targets are. Usually it is Special Forces, Rangers etc trained for this mission” (it’s CIA Agents in Libya on the ground).
“Reform will also rein in the abuse and excess that nearly brought down our financial system. It will finally bring transparency to the kinds of complex, risky transactions that helped trigger the financial crisis (Obama Lies About Financial Reform Bill).
After adding more to America’s national debt in his first 19 months than all presidents from Washington through Reagan combined, Barack Obama on Wednesday, April 14th, 2011, in a nationally televised speech, said the following:
“This is my vision for America: A vision where we live within our means while still investing in our future”
He was not, I presume, referring to his jaw-droppingly profligate “stimulus package,” which he forced upon us before anyone had actually read what was inside the package — a partial listing of which runs something like this:
• $44 million for construction, repair and improvements at US Department of Agriculture facilities
• $209 million for work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities
• $245 million for maintaining and modernizing the IT system of the Farm Service Agency
• $175 million to buy and restore floodplain easements for flood prevention
• $50 million for “Watershed Rehab”
• $1.1 billion for rural community facilities direct loans
• $2 billion for rural business and industry guaranteed loans
• $2.7 billion for rural water and waste dispoal direct loans
• $22.1 billion for rural housing insurance fund loans
• $2.8 billion for loans to spur rural broadband
• $150 million for emergency food assistance
• $50 million for regional economic development commissions
• $1 billion for “Periodic Censuses and Programs”
• $350 million for State Broadband Data and Development Grants
• $1.8 billion for Rural Broadband Deployment Grants
• $1 billion for Rural Wireless Deployment Grants
• $650 million for Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Program
• $100 million for “Scientific and Technical Research and Services” at the National Institute of Standards And Technology
• $30 million for necessary expenses of the “Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership”
• $300 million for a competitive construction grant program for research science buildings
• $400 million for “habitat restoration and mitigation activities” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• $600 million for “accelerating satellite development and acquisition”
• $140 million for “climate data modeling”
• $3 billion for state and local law enforcement grants
• $1 billion for “Community Oriented Policing Services”
• $250 million for “accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey.”
• $50 million for repairs to NASA facilities from storm damage
• $300 million for “Major Research Insrumentation program” (science)
• $200 million for “academic research facilities modernization”
• $100 million for “Education and Human Resources”
• $400 million for “Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction”
• $4.5 billion to make military facilities more energy efficient
• $1.5 billion for Army Operation and Maintenance fund
• $624 million for Navy Operation and Maintenance
• $128 million for Marine Corps Operation and Maintenance
• $1.23 billion for Air Force Operation and Maintenance
• $454 million to “Defense Health Program”
• $110 million for Army Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $62 million for Navy Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $45 million for Marine Corps Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $14 million for Air Force Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $302 million for National Guard Operation and Maintenance
• $29 million for Air National Guard Operation and Maintenance
• $350 million for military energy research and development programs
• $2 billion for Army Corps of Engineers “Construction”
• $250 million for “Mississippi River and Tributaries”
• $2.2 billion for Army Corps “Operation and Maintenance”
• $25 million for an Army Corps “Regulatory Program”
• $126 million for Interior Department “water reclamation and reuse projects”
• $80 million for “rural water projects”
• $18.5 billion for “Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy” research in the Department of Energy. That money includes:
• $2 billion for development of advanced batteries
• $800 million of that is for biomass research and $400 million for geothermal technologies
• $1 billion in grants to “institutional entities for energy sustainability and efficiency”
• $6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
• $3.5 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants
• $3.4 billion for state energy programs
• $200 million for expenses to implement energy independence programs
• $300 million for expenses to implement Energy efficient appliance rebate programs including the Energy Star program
• $400 million for expenses to implement Alternative Fuel Vehicle and Infrastructure Grants to States and Local Governments
• $1 billion for expenses necessary for advanced battery manufacturing
• $4.5 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity grid
• $1 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee Program
• $2.4 billion to demonstrate “carbon capture and sequestration technologies”
• $400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Science)
• $500 million for “Defense Environmental Cleanup”
• $1 billion for construction and repair of border facilities and land ports of entry
• $6 billion for energy efficiency projects on government buildings
• $600 million to buy and lease government plug-in and alternative fuel vehicles
• $426 million in small business loans
• $100 million for “non-intrusive detection technology to be deployed at sea ports of entry
• $150 million for repair and construction at land border ports of entry
• $500 million for explosive detection systems for aviation security
• $150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges
• $200 million for FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter program
• $325 million for Interior Department road, bridge and trail repair projects
• $300 million for road and bridge work in Wildlife Refuges and Fish Hatcheries
• $1.7 billion for “critical deferred maintenance” in the National Park System
• $200 million to revitalize the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
• $100 million for National Park Service Centennial Challenge programs
• $200 million for repair of U.S. Geological Survey facilities
• $500 million for repair and replacement of schools, jails, roads, bridges, housing and more for Bureau of Indian Affairs
• $800 million for Superfund programs
• $200 million for leaking underground storage tank cleanup
• $8.4 billion in “State and Tribal Assistance Grants”
• $650 million in “Capital Improvement and Maintenance” at the Agriculture Dept.
• $850 million for “Wildland Fire Management”
• $550 million for Indian Health facilities
• $150 million for deferred maintenance at the Smithsonian museums
• $50 million in grants to fund “arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn” through the National Endowment for the Arts
• $1.2 billion in grants to states for youth summer jobs programs and other activities
• $1 billion for states in dislocated worker employment and training activities
• $500 million for the dislocated workers assistance national reserve
• $80 million for the enforcement of worker protection laws and regulations related to infrastructure and unemployment insurance investments
• $300 million for “construction, rehabilitation and acquisition of Job Corps Centers”
• $250 million for public health centers
• $1 billion for renovation and repair of health centers
• $600 million for nurse, physician and dentist training
• $462 million for renovation work at the Centers for Disease Control
• $1.5 billion for “National Center for Research Resources”
• $500 million for “Buildlings and Facilties” at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington, D.C.
• $700 million for “comparative effectiveness research” on prescription drugs
• $1 billion for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance
• $2 billion in Child Care and Development Block Grants for states
• $1 billion for Head Start programs
• $1.1 billion for Early Head Start programs
• $100 million for Social Security research programs
• $200 million for “Aging Services Programs”
• $2 billion for “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology”
• $430 million for public health/social services emergency funds
• $2.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control for a variety of programs
• $5.5 billion in targeted education grants
• $5.5 billion in “education finance incentive grants”
• $2 billion in “school improvement grants”
• $13.6 billion for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
• $250 million for statewide education data systems
• $14 billion for school modernization, renovation and repair
• $160 million for AmeriCorps grants
• $400 million for the construction and costs to establish a new “National Computer Center” for the Social Security Administration
• $500 million to improve processing of disability and retirement claims
• $920 million for Army housing and child development centers
• $350 million for Navy and Marine Corps housing and child development centers
• $280 million in Air Force housing and child development centers
• $3.75 billion in military hospital and surgery center construction
• $140 million in Army National Guard construction projects
• $70 million in Air National Guard construction projects
• $100 million in Army Reserve construction projects
• $30 million in Navy Reserve construction projects
• $60 million in Air Force Reserve construction projects
• $950 million for VA
It’s hard to believe that a mere two months ago, in his February budget, Obama was still denying that America even faced a fiscal crisis, and yet today (April 14th) he not only admitted it: he attempted to describe it. About which, Yuval Levin said this:
It is certainly unorthodox for a president to renounce his own budget two months after proposing it, but that is just what the president did—implicitly dismissing even the goals set out by his budget in its own terms (let alone its potential to achieve them, as measured by the Congressional Budget Office) as totally inadequate. In that sense, the only immediate practical implication of the speech is that it throws the 2012 budget process into disarray (Yuval Levin, “The President’s Speech”).
So banal and so full of easy platitudes was Obama’s speech that one hardly faults Joe Biden for falling asleep:
Obama did at least make one true statement:
“There will be those who vigorously disagree with my approach.”
Yes!
He continued:
“Some will argue, we should not even consider ever, ever raising taxes even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It’s just an article of faith to them.”
An article of faith, or a working knowledge of economics?
Because make no mistake: the only real article of faith before us here is Obama’s blind belief that a country can tax-and-spend its way to prosperity.
Just like the conservatives and their absolutely absurd “war on drugs,” Barack Obama and his clownish administration have caused much unnecessary destruction and death, which nobody, right, left, or middle, should sanction. This is a war which, unlike the conservatives, Obama initially claimed he was opposed to, but which he nevertheless has cravenly and predictably gone right along with, in order to fuel his popularity and the bureaucratic system he loves:
And then there’s this (watch it — it’s probably not what you think):
Barack Obama — who, in 2008, at the Philadelphia primary, shocked and sickened so many of us when he said (and I quote) “Just because you have an individual right does not mean that state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right” — has suddenly, it seems, developed an inexplicable regard for individual rights, stating publicly this morning:
“I don’t think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon.”
Presumably, he’s forgetting his aforementioned conviction that “state and local governments [may legitimately] constrain the exercise of rights” — an ignorant and extraordinarily dangerous conviction which statists of every stripe have unsuccessfully tried to defend since the dawn of humankind, with spectacularly devastating results, and yet for once I agree with him: it is not ever good when individual rights are infringed upon. The real question, of course, which he could never answer, is this:
Why is it then okay that my rights are infringed upon — when I am forced, in other words, under threat of fine or imprisonment, to subsidize these public employees whom you champion?
Why must I be forced by government to live for others?
Says who? And why?
No good answer has ever been given to that question because no good answer for it exists.
On a related note, Barack Obama disclosed in that same speech this morning his economic illiteracy once again, telling state governors:
“As the Recovery Act funds that saw through many states over the last two years are phasing out and it is undeniable that the Recovery Act helped every single state represented in this room manage your budgets, whether you admit it or not.”
The refutation of this is sometimes referred to as the Broken Window Fallacy, a term that comes to us from a parable coined by the great French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801 – 1850), which parable demonstrates that wealth cannot come from destruction, that money taken by force — i.e. TARP and the so-called stimulus package — necessarily siphons money which would otherwise have been spent voluntarily on other things, thereby wreaking havoc on economies in an unseen way (indeed, Bastiat himself called this principle “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen”).
Here’s a two-minute explanation of the Broken Window Fallacy, by an economist and philosopher whom I admire named Dr. Tom Palmer:
Sage Judge Henry HudsonIn the biggest blow yet to ObamaCare, Judge Henry E. Hudson (U.S. District Court of Virginia) recognized the obvious: namely, it is utterly unconstitutional for any government to force its citizens to carry insurance, or pay a penalty if they don’t. In the Judge’s wise words: “[It] exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”
And:
“[The individual mandate] would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers. At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance — or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage — it’s about an individual’s right to choose to participate.”
Indeed, indeed. This is a textbook example (one of an endless number) of how so-called progressive liberalism is, like all other forms of socialism, a philosophy of force — a philosophy that must resort to force in order to achieve its goals. So don’t be duped by all their peace-loving talky-talky. In actuality, these people worship at the shrine of authoritarianism, governmental power, and state coercion. Their ideology cannot succeed in any other way.
Though this ruling will be appealed, drug-out, and very possibly overturned, it is appropriate, I think, for us to take a moment to say, thank you, Judge Henry E. Hudson, for recognizing and codifying the painfully obvious.
This isn’t new: everyone knows and has always known that the best doctors and the best healthcare in the world are to be found in the United States. Which is why, when the chips are down, the United States is precisely where they all come for treatment.
No, the reason this particular story is a little more interesting than the usual traduce-America’s-health-care-system-until-you-get-seriously-sick scenario is that Saudi King Abdullah reportedly phoned Obama the day after Obamacare was forced through congress (via the unlawful use of the reconciliation process) and congratulated him on its passage.
As Doug Powers reports:
The day after the Obamacare law passed, Saudi King Abdullah reportedly called President Obama to congratulate him. The bill, it seems, was one more step toward the US embracing a superior universal health care system like that which can be found in Saudi Arabia, where treatments for medical problems such as, oh, say, blood clots, are fully covered.
Now, the king of the country with that health care system that gives the US something to strive for won’t be treated in that system, but will instead come to the US for treatment. He’s lucky the law that will make US health care system more closely resemble the Saudi system — the one that isn’t good enough for Saudi royalty — hasn’t kicked in yet:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia’s aged ruler will fly to the United States for medical tests over a blood clot, according to a Saudi official, in a development that would renew questions about succession in the oil-rich kingdom.
The 86-year-old King Abdullah is set to leave on Monday, three days after he was admitted to the hospital suffering from back pain due to a blood clot, the official said late Saturday. The official didn’t say which hospital would receive the king.
To paraphrase John McCain’s question, when Obamacare is fully implemented in America, where will rich Saudis go for health care?
Just recently, at a so-called CNBC Town Hall, a quondam Obot told Barack Obama to his face:
I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for.
My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?
Real Clear Politics hasn’t yet made the priceless video embeddable, but you can — and should — watch it here. It will make you laugh, or it will make you cry.
Just incidentally, if you want to get drunk while watching it, try this drinking game: take a guzzle of beer (or Evan Williams) every time she says “quite frankly,” and I virtually guarantee you that by the end of it, you’ll be shit-faced.
Just recently, Barack Obama said, for the five or sixth hundredth time in the last year and a half: “The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place.”
He was referring of course to the profligate policies instituted under George W. Bush — about whom I’ve written here — and yet the question remains: why then has Barack Obama, from the beginning of his term, “gone back to the very same policies” instituted by his favorite scapegoat, without whom he’d be lost?
Unfortunately, I have no good answer for that question, but here’s something everyone, including Barack Obama, should know:
The President of the United States can’t create budget deficits or budget surpluses.
All spending bills, without exception, are born in the House of Representatives, and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.
The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.
Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.
Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.
“The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said recently. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”
Another political fable is that the current economic downturn is due to not enough government regulation of the housing and financial markets. But it was precisely the government regulators, under pressure from politicians, who forced banks and other lending institutions to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.
These risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.
Was this due to George W. Bush and the Republicans? Only partly. Most of those who pushed the lowering of mortgage lending standards were Democrats– notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, though too many Republicans went along.
At the heart of these policies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought huge amounts of risky mortgages, passing the risk on from the banks that lent the money (and made the profits) to the taxpayers who were not even aware that they would end up paying in the end.
When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.
If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.
The current policies of the Obama administration are a continuation of the same reckless policies that brought on the current economic problems– all in the name of “change.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still sacred cows in Washington, even though they have already required the biggest bailouts of all.
Why? Because they allow politicians to direct vast sums of money where it will do politicians the most good, either personally or in terms of buying votes in the next election.
From a Providence newspaper, local fishermen are infuriated over the Obama administration’s junk science catch limits: “All these politicians scream about is jobs, jobs, jobs. Why are they putting us out of business?”
EDGARTOWN, Massachusetts – Aug 24, 2010 – The Northeast Seafood Coalition has taken out a full page ad in today’s Vineyard Gazette. The ad is an open letter to President Obama from Russell Sherman, captain of the Fishing Vessel Lade Jane of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The text follows:
“MR. PRESIDENT, WE NEED YOUR HELP”
Dear President Obama,
My name is Russell Sherman, and I am a life-long fisherman. Like New England fisherman before me have done for 387 years, I take my vessel, the 72-foot F/V Lady Jane from the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, into North Atlantic waters to bring back cod, haddock, flounder, and other groundfish for America’s table. I hope that while you’re in New England, you and your family are enjoying a few meals of our fresh catch – there’s none better tasting or healthier in the world.
Mr. President, my fellow fishermen and I need your leadership. We are small businessmen and women who want to continue the profession we love. We have worked hard over the past 16 years to rebuild groundfish stocks. Today, some stocks are fully rebuilt, and most others are expected to rebuild in three years, by 2014. According to federal forecasts, a fully rebuilt fishery will yield a sustainable catch nearly five times current landings.
At a time when we should be hopeful about the future of our businesses, we are desperate instead. We are being driven from our work and the fishery we have helped to rebuild. Ironically, what’s putting us out of work are the rules to rebuild the fishery. The most recent version of these rules – effective on May 1, 2010 – impose very low annual catch limits on stocks for the next three years, and at the same time institute a
“catch share” system.
Take my case. Under the 2010 rules, my permit allows an annual catch of only 60,000 lbs of groundfish. At an average price of $1.50 a pound, that’s an annual gross of $90,000, or about one-quarter of my business’ gross income last year. I simply cannot run my business and support my crew of four – each with a family – on only $90,000 a year.
My business is only one of hundreds facing extinction. While there will be a small handful of “winners” under these new rules, the vast majority of us will be losers. And when we “losers” are forced out, jobs will be lost, coastal communities gutted, and crucial commercial fishing infrastructure gone forever. Is this the way to rebuild our storied, centuries-old groundfish fishery?
I belong to an organization called the Northeast Seafood Coalition, a New England-wide organization of 255 small, entrepreneurial fishing businesses and allied support businesses that participates in the public process. The Coalition has tried to bring this matter to the attention of your Department of Commerce. We have tried to offer constructive solutions to the challenge of rebuilding fisheries without at the same time destroying them. But our efforts have fallen on deaf ears.
Mr. President, we desperately need your leadership. We ask that you please direct your Department of Commerce to listen to us and work with us. We know that we can meet this challenge by working together.
Sincerely yours,
Russell Sherman, Captain, F/V Lady Jane Port of Gloucester, Massachusetts
Not quite ten years ago, in May of 2001, Robert Tracinski wrote the following:
Past regulations have been imposed in the same manner that the new, less-restrictive process is being adopted: by executive-branch decree. The result of those decrees over the past three decades has been a vast environmentalist land grab, with millions of acres of land sealed off from logging, mining, grazing and even recreation. This is a basic technique used by the Left to achieve through the regulatory agencies what they could not achieve in an open vote. The technique is to introduce legislation to achieve some vague, positive-sounding generality, such as “worker safety” or “environmental protection” – things no politician will want to go on record voting against….
Consider that federal regulatory agencies make thousands of rulings each year, adding about 80,000 pages annually to the Federal Register. Do you think Congress can exercise “oversight” by debating all 80,000 pages of these regulations? Do you think the president, his advisors and his cabinet officers can consider and personally approve all of these decrees?
Of course not.
And the very process which Robert Tracinski describes above, far from diminishing, has suddenly accelerated. To wit:
On April 16th, 2010, Barack Obama released a so-called Presidential Memorandum, which he and his clownish administration termed “A 21st Century Strategy for America’s Great Outdoors.” Did you hear about it? You’re not alone. In fact, that’s part of the point: legislation by stealth.
Across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land. It’s another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life….
Take my home state of Colorado. The Obama administration is considering locking up some 380,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land and private land in Colorado under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Vermillion Basin and the Alpine Triangle would be shut off to mining, hunting, grazing, oil and gas development and recreational activities. Alan Foutz, president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, blasted the administration’s meddling: “Deer and elk populations are thriving, and we in Colorado don’t need help from the federal government in order to manage them effectively.”
The bureaucrats behind Obama’s “Great Outdoors Initiative” plan on wrapping up their public comment solicitation by November 15. The initiative’s taxpayer-funded website has been dominated by left-wing environmental activists proposing human population reduction, private property confiscation, and gun bans, hunting bans and vehicle bans in national parks.
Make no mistake: this issue is entirely about private property, which is the crux of freedom, and which the religion of environmentalism explicitly seeks to do away with.
FDRFranklin Delano Roosevelt is, along with Abraham Lincoln, one of Barack Obama’s heroes, as Barack Obama is among the first to point out. Accordingly, Obama is pursuing a number of the same disastrous economic policies that Franklin Roosevelt pursued, which policies only served to keep the United States depressed for years.
Yes, the truth about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which people on both sides of the political spectrum hate to hear, is that he not only did not bring this country out of the Great Depression: he prolonged it for well over a decade.
By the time FDR’s reign of destruction was through, the United States was still in a deep depression, and the interventionist precedents he established, which served only to keep the country depressed, haunts America to this very day.
Never again, until Barack, has an American president so brazenly and so consistently demonstrated this lack of regard for individual human beings; and never since Barack has a president stomped so savagely upon the unalienable right to life and property.
Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.
It was not until 1947, when wartime controls and government spending finally ended and free markets were at last allowed to operate somewhat freely – i.e. without the stranglehold of the federal government – that this country at last began to emerge from its eighteen-year depression.
That depression was much exacerbated by the interventionist Herbert Hoover, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt took interventionism to a whole new level.
Quoting FDR’s own economic adviser, Rexford Tugwell:
“The ideas embodied in the New Deal Legislation were a compilation of those which had come to maturity under Herbert Hoover’s aegis. We all of us owed much to Hoover” (Rexford Tugwell, 1946).
One of FDR’s first acts as President was to close down all banks, a maneuver he hoped would prevent scared depositors from withdrawing their savings.
What this maneuver actually did, however, was intensify the public’s panic. It didn’t improve banking at all, nor did it help in any way with the Great Depression.
Unemployment rates over the course of the Great Depression looked like this:
FDR averaged 17.7 percent unemployment, which is staggering: to be more precise, FDR’s unemployment average was more than five times the 1929 level.
Many FDR apologists like to cite the 1933 to 1940 drop in unemployment as the greatest drop, percentage-wise, in the unemployment rate ever by an American President. Of course, what this fails to take into account, among a litany of other things, is the fact that centralized banking, as opposed to privatized, through the artificial manipulation of interest rates, caused the problems to begin with, and the subsequent interventions, first by Herbert Hoover and then by FDR, exploded those problems astronomically, as testified by the unprecedented unemployment rates that decade saw: in other words, 14 percent unemployment, is, by any legitimate standard, ghastly, and only a lunatic or a fool would call it “a success.”
Quoting economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, who used statistical models to evaluate the results of FDR’s New Deal:
“The Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impacts of New Deal programs.”
As Ludwig von Mises correctly noted, in the absence of government intervention, unemployment is always voluntary. Yet over ten million Americans were unemployed in 1938.
Compare that to the eight million in 1931.
Fact: not until FDR conscripted millions of men and sent them off to war did unemployment levels truly come down to manageable levels. Which, however, was hardly the end of the Great Depression; for unemployment, as everyone knows, is only one of several components. Thus:
In terms of aggregate production, statistics show no recovery until after World War II ended, when the size of government was at long last reduced.
The gross national product (GNP) didn’t recover to 1929 levels until 1940.
Personal consumption was 8 percent lower in 1940 than in 1929.
Net private investment, the backbone of a healthy economy, from 1930 to 1940 was negative $3.1 billion, a breathtaking figure.
Because of FDR’s mind-spinning interventionist policies, European nations came out of the Great Depression years ahead of America.
FDR believed that the Great Depression was caused by low wages. That was his fatal flaw. Because, in fact, the truth was the diametric opposite, as we now know: low wages (and prices) were caused by the depression.
And yet based upon this stupendous misunderstanding of basic economics, FDR proceeded to mandate wage and price controls, which thus kept the American people in a state of poverty for well over a decade.
When prices and wages are forced by government, the demand for labor is necessarily reduced. Why? Because in order to stay in business, businesses must turn a profit; so that when wages and prices are forced, businesses must adjust their employment and spending accordingly, or they run out of money. They must therefore cut back on workforce, and they must decrease output. In this way, forced wages create unemployment. You see, not even FDR can subvert economic law.
This is the most basic cause and effect process you can imagine: employers simply cannot pay out money that they don’t have.
Production and production alone generates wealth. That’s another crux, and FDR’s interventionist policies crippled production.
By means of the National Industrial Relations Act (NIRA), FDR’s First New Deal sought to turn United States agriculture, and other industries, into a massive government cartel.
It was at this time also that FDR began restricting production, so that unemployment began increasing.
The NIRA failed spectacularly, but in the process, it gave birth to another disaster: the National Recovery Administration (NRA).
The NRA was bureaucratic up to the gills, and, among other things, it required every businessperson to sign a pledge to observe FDR’s job-destroying minimum-wage laws, his maximum-hour laws, and his prohibitions on “child labor” (i.e. teenage labor), and so on.
Prices were therefore not permitted to rise above or fall below “costs of production,” regardless of consumer demand.
Quoting historian John T. Flynn:
[Code-enforcement police] roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books at the instant. Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night (John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, 2007).
Countless people across America were arrested and sentenced to jail or prison for invented crimes like “pressing suits of clothes for thirty-five cents when the Tailors’ Code fixed the price at forty cents” (Ibid).
FDR also made the private ownership of gold illegal.
He nationalized gold stocks.
He created an abortion called the Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA), which implemented a government cartel on agriculture markets, and which quite literally paid millions and millions of dollars to farmers for slaughtering their livestock and burning their fields, while the rest of the country starved.
Under the AAA, one sugar refining business was paid $1 million to not refine sugar.
He made null and void all existing contracts that promised to pay in gold, which was an act of pure and simple theft, and which in any case did not inflate prices, as was his whole intention in making gold illegal in the first place.
In 1935, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Roosevelt’s NRA and AAA were unconstitutional.
It’s worth noting also, if only for posterity sake, that the NRA and the AAA were both explicitly modeled after Mussolini’s fascist system, of which FDR was an explicit admirer.
FDR also emulated Mussolini’s propaganda campaign against freedom and free-markets. Under the Second New Deal, Roosevelt’s AAA, which the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional, was, however, resurrected under the “soil conservation program.”
It too paid taxpayer money to farmers for not producing.
A number of other programs that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional were simply reenacted by FDR under different names as well.
Many of these unconstitutional programs, also modeled after European fascism, are still in place today.
The Second New Deal, announced on January 4, 1935, introduced a number of new programs, in addition to the renamed old, each one equally unconstitutional, though never, alas, brought before the court.
There was, for instance, the National Labor Relations Act.
There was the Fair Labor Standards Act, which amounted to more job-destroying minimum-wage laws.
There was the Works Progress Administration.
Of course too there was the egregious and now bankrupted Social Security Act, which, among other things, forgot to take into account increasing life expectancies, and so was doomed to fail from the start, a fact which, unfortunately, most Americans don’t realize even today.
Also, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which Herbert Hoover made into law in 1932, was much more stringently enforced under FDR’s authoritarian hand, thereby making it impossible to prosecute against labor union violence, of which the whole history of labor unions is largely composed.
Extortion by unions was under FDR legally permitted, as long as that extortion concerned “the payment of wages by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee” (Congressional Record 78th Congress, first Session, House, 1934).
There were in addition, of course, the interminable taxes imposed upon businesspeople, which taxes siphoned money out of the private sector and increased unemployment, as taxes against entrepreneurs always and inevitably will, since they take away the capital that is normally used to reinvest and thus produce.
Indeed, tax increases (much of which were used to pay FDR’s bureaucrats) were as responsible as anything else for annihilating the American economy.
Quoting FDR’s adviser Harry Hopkins:
“I’ve got four million at work [in federally created jobs], but for God’s sake, don’t ask me what they are doing.”
This same Harry Hopkins again: “We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”
Even prior to World War II, government spending under FDR doubled and then some.
Government spending went from $4.6 billion in 1932 to $9.1 billion in 1940.
Over $23 billion in deficits were accumulated.
Current profligacy makes these numbers look comical, and indeed in terms of sheer profligacy, Barack cannot be matched; but one must not fail to take into account the times.
Deficits annually during FDR’s reign averaged 42 percent of the federal budget, a truly incredible figure, especially considering that in 1932 FDR had the nerve to campaign against budget deficits, and he even vociferously denounced them.
The primary purpose of FDR’s preposterous New Deal spending – at least, according to many – was simply to ensure his reelection, because he, like his protégé, was another power-mad politician. Accordingly, he gave free money to hoards and hoards of poor people in exchange for the vote.
What follows is from the Official Report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Campaign Expenditures, 1938:
• In one Works Progress Administration (WPA) district in Kentucky, 349 WPA employees were put to work preparing forms listing the electoral preferences of every employee on work relief. Many of those who stated that they did not intend to vote for Roosevelt were laid off.
• In another Kentucky WPA district, government workers were required, as a condition of employment, to pledge to vote for the senior senator from Kentucky, who was an FDR supporter. If they refused, they were thrown off the relief rolls.
• Republicans in Kentucky were told that they would have to change party affiliations if they wanted to keep their WPA jobs.
• Letters were sent out to WPA employees in Kentucky instructing them to donate 2 percent of their salaries to the Roosevelt campaign if they wanted to keep their jobs.
• In Pennsylvania, businessmen who leased trucks to the WPA were solicited for $100 campaign contributions.
• As in Kentucky, Pennsylvania WPA workers were told to change their party affiliation if they wanted to keep their jobs. Many people refused and were fired.
• Government employment was increased dramatically right before the elections. In Pennsylvania, “employment cards” were distributed that entitled holders of the cards to “two to four weeks of employment around election time.”
• A Pennsylvania man who had been given a $60.50-per-month white-collar job was transferred to a pick-axe job in a limestone quarry after refusing to change his voter registration from Republican to Democrat.
• Tennessee WPA workers were also instructed to contribute 2 percent of their salaries to the Democratic Party as a condition of employment.
• In one congressional district in Cook County, Illinois, the WPA instructed 450 of its employees to canvass for (Democratic) votes around election time in 1938. The men were all laid off the day after the election.
(Cited in John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, and How Capitalism Saved America, by Thomas Dilorenzo.)
In the words of historian Stanley High:
“In states like Florida and Kentucky – where the New Deal’s big fight was in the primary elections – the rise of WPA employment has hurried along in order to synchronize with the primaries” (Stanley High, “The WPA: Politicians’ Playground,” Current History, 1939).
In 1969, when all this evidence about New Deal spending came into the light, FDR apologists (i.e. academics) immediately began making excuses and rationalizing FDR’s disgustingly biased spending – for instance, the fact that residents of western states received 60 percent more federal money than residents of southern states. All the excuses these academics have made are factually inaccurate and have been refuted, many times over, by people like Jim F. Couch and William F. Shugart, in their excellent book Political Economy of the New Deal.
Franklin Roosevelt was, to quote one David Gordon, “a vain, intellectually shallow person whose principal interest was to retain at all costs his personal power” – i.e. “total subordination of his country’s welfare to his personal ambition” (David Gordon, “Power Mad,” 1999).
FDR had no grasp of economics, and in fact was really just another garden-variety politician, much like today’s world leaders, but more so.
The dynamic Doctor Mariela Resendes (M.D.) is a private practitioner who spent her previous 5 years as the Managing Partner/CEO of the largest Radiology practice in the San Joaquin Valley of California, CMI Radiology Group. Just recently, she wrote an irrefutable and scathing essay on the coming healthcare disaster that Barack Obama and his clownish administration have just unleashed. I reprint it here in full:
As a practicing doctor in California it troubles me that those with the ability to influence health care legislation have either been politically motivated to remain silent, or strikingly inarticulate when it comes to voicing the major issues patients and taxpayers will face with the new health care bill. My own, long-held view has been that any reform should be of the free market variety.
In that sense, I’m increasingly scared as I learn more about what’s inside the health legislation passed by Congress not long ago. Despite the rising level of unhappiness with what has transpired, it dismays me that the general public, like me, is not fully aware of the financial tsunami that is on the way for patients, insurers and hospitals thanks to this legislation, not to mention the irregular way in which it was passed.
In the newspapers we all read that the legislation was passed via reconciliation. Most people do not understand what this represented. What Congress did was to pass this legislation under the Congressional Budget Act of 1984, which allows a loophole to avoid a 60 vote filibuster in laws which refer to changes in revenue and spending amounts; i.e. budgetary issues.
The legislation which Congress passed certainly does affect the budget, but clearly the bill’s intent wasn’t budgetary; rather it concerned dramatic changes for a large portion of our economy: health care. Given the bill’s intent, one can only hope that the upcoming elections bring greater ideological balance so that what promises to be damaging can at the very least be amended.
“Obamacare”, as it is colloquially termed, is financially a disaster for doctors, hospitals, insurers, and will ultimately be a disaster for our nation’s budget. It is also unfortunate for patients needing care.
Obamacare’s proponents tout the legislation’s cost controls, along with expansion of coverage for those who currently do not have insurance. The policy wonks seek cost containment and “efficient” use of resources. More realistically, cost containment could only be achieved if access to care were rationed.
Rationing in mind, Rahm Emmanuel’s brother published a very well received paper in the New England Journal Of Medicine about efficient or optimal deployment of resources in health care. The upshot is that a young man is worth spending a lot of money on, a young child much less, and for seniors, pretty much nothing; all in a calculated return on investment model.
For physicians, Obamacare initially offered promises of tort reform, as well as promises to reverse the Medicare cuts that made it so difficult for physicians to practice. Neither is in the final legislation. As a result, doctors will continue to practice defensive medicine, and for doing so will face 20%+ cuts in their Medicare payments.
Physicians in primary care will initially see an income boost from 2011-2014, thus encouraging them to take on indigent patients the system needs to absorb. Unfortunately, starting in 2014, the payments per patient will fall for primary care doctors too.
Specialists will receive a financial hit right from the beginning. The goal here is to have less in the way of specialists, and more general practitioners. On its face this will drive more doctors into early retirement.
As for the physicians that choose to continue practicing, they’ll have difficulty staying afloat financially, and many will seek employment opportunities similar to those of “foundation” practices (such as those seen in states like California where hospitals can’t employ physicians), or hospital owned practices in other states.
The explicit goal here is to slow the move toward private practice. Doctors in foundation types of practices act more like union or shift-workers, and less like professionals. Their productivity tends to be lower than in traditional private practices; ergo more doctors are needed for a similar number of patients. Considering a scenario of rising physician retirement alongside a large increase in the number of patients, it is unclear how treatment and diagnosis will occur in a timely fashion.
Hospitals are similarly not going to fare well, and many will simply go under. Previously, hospitals took in higher payments from privately insured patients in order to care for those who couldn’t pay, or for those covered by Medicaid. At the same time, hospitals which had a higher number of indigent patients also received what is called disproportionate share funds from state and federal governments. Rural hospitals in particular received extra funds.
But with Washington’s new mandate, the expectation is that all of the previous non-paying patients will now pay for themselves such that subsidies for indigent-care will be eliminated. Unfortunately, this will occur in concert with reduced inflows from privately insured patients whose costs will be reduced to Medicaid levels.
In short, the money from the increased volume of “paying” patients is not enough to counter the loss of disproportionate funds and decreased classic private insurance payments. The net result will be a deficit for many hospitals. They will not be able to keep their doors open if they sustain persistent losses, which is what is expected.
Many insurance companies will be squeezed out of existence thanks to rules that will bar them from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. And unlike the federal government they won’t be able to operate in the red forever. The end result points to a single-payer system run out of Washington.
Looking ahead, it is increasingly apparent that by 2020 we will have severe cuts in service thanks to rising retirement among doctors, a decrease in the number of private insurers, and a reduction in the number of hospitals due to federal mandates that fail to marry costs with services. The end result will be rationing and delay of elective procedures, denial of expensive but effective treatments a la England, and most likely a single-payer system the likes of which is seen in other, less advanced health care systems around the world.
