This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Economy

  • Refreshing short memories

    It’s obvious that the President is doing his best to deflect blame from his own failures in the economic arena. I got the following email this morning from my BFF, Barry;

    Jonn —

    Today I asked for a joint session of Congress where I will lay out a clear plan to get Americans back to work. Next week, I will deliver the details of the plan and call on lawmakers to pass it.

    Whether they will do the job they were elected to do is ultimately up to them.

    But both you and I can pressure them to do the right thing. We can send the message that the American people are playing by the rules and meeting their responsibilities — and it’s time for our leaders in Congress to meet theirs.

    And we must hold them accountable if they don’t.

    So I’m asking you to stand with me in calling on Congress to step up and take action on jobs:

    No matter how things go in the weeks and months ahead, this will be an important challenge for our organization.

    It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on.

    I know that you’re frustrated by that. I am, too.

    Yeah, it has been a long time since Congress focused on the issues important to us. But this Congress has been in session less than eight months. Where was the Congress when we needed them to head of the economic problems by reining in Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac? They were trying to defund the war no less than six times in 2007, completely ignoring the economy.

    And if the President’s proposals are going to be so effective, why has he waited until now to roll them out? People were losing their jobs while he was vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard. These can’t be new ideas – so why do they have to wait until next week? Unless, of course, politics matter more than jobs.

  • The magic bullet

    The president is working non-stop to put Americans back to work and end our financial crisis by taking another vacation later his month to Martha’s Vineyard. So we know where we stand in the order of priorities with this administration.

    So how would I end this fiscal mess? Easy. I’d open up our oil fields to exploration and drilling. And, oh, yeah, I’d take the common sense approach and help finish the Trans-Canada pipeline from Canada’s oil sands to Houston. Those two easy measures would put thousands, if not millions of Americans to work, the Left would finally get their grubby paws on those oil company “windfall profits” by way of the economy – who would have to hire all of those people and build a support network to those isolated oil fields?

    Yep, it’d be the magic bullet to put Americans back to work and rebuild our infrastructure. The president could do it himself by presidential proclamation and deal with Congress when they come back from vacation…you know, show some leadership for once. He could also rein in the job-killing decisions that EPA is famous for. Was Jimmy Carter just blowing smoke when he announced the formation of the Energy Department with these words;

    I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the redtape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

    We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

    Yeah we haven’t built a refinery or an oil pipeline since he said those words in July 1979 in his famous Malaise Speech. So if there are indeed any leaders left in Washington, this is the quickest way to get us out of this mess and it’s fairly easy and it won’t cost the tax payers a dime, no tax increases, no entitlement cuts…just simple economics.

  • Obama’s triple-A nation

    I actually sat through Obama’s last lecture to the nation and listened to him tell us how there’s nothing wrong with our economy. Quoting from the Associated Press;

    In his first public comments on the credit downgrade, which S&P announced late Friday, Obama said Washington had the power to fix its own political dysfunction.

    “Markets will rise and fall,” he said. “But this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country.”

    That’s the problem with Democrats…they make policy without understanding that what they do nullifies much of their policies. For example, they raise cigarette taxes thinking sales will continue at the same rate as before the tax was imposed. they don’t take into account that people will smuggle, cut back their smoking or even quit, thus cutting revenue.

    In the case of the current debate, they don’t recognize that raising taxes on the employers will hurt employment as well as how much employers will spend on new equipment thus impacting the whole economy. The only reason they want to raise taxes is to show the ignorant that they’re willing to “tax the rich” and make them “pay their fair share” while most of the country pays little or no taxes.

    The Standard & Poor people came out and said they downgraded our credit rating because of the partisan rancor in Washington and the only people playing politics with the economy are the Democrats. Republicans have presented rational plans that would actually cut government spending, which we can all agree is the problem, but the Democrats are that afraid buying into that would alienate the class which depends on government largesse – their constituency.

    Democrats talk about increasing revenue sources which is long hand for raising taxes. But after President Bush cut taxes, revenues were actually higher than under Clinton – because there was full employment mostly.

    Yes, President Obama, the US is a triple-A nation, but your policies don’t happen in a vacuum. Your policies have made us a double-A nation and all of the pretty rhetoric and incessant yammering about cutting payroll taxes and increasing unemployment eligibility is falling on deaf ears because we’re looking at becoming a single A nation in a few months. You have to cut the size of government and loosen regulations on businesses and quit threatening employers with higher taxes, that they’ll only pay with increased prices in the marketplace, which begins the ugly cycle we’ve been battling the last two years.

    And there’s more to cut than defense and nickel and diming retirees of all stripes to death. My 401k lost $13,000 in value last week – that’s what I planned to spend in a single year of my retirement – so that’s a year longer I’ll have to work if this gang doesn’t get it’s act together. And it’s not counting what I lost today. I haven’t moved a dime of my money because I still have faith in the US economy, but it’s time for the Democrats to do the right thing for the country for a change instead of their re-election efforts.

  • The “Tea Party Downgrade”

    So, I’m sitting watching the Democrats throw fingers everywhere but at each other for the Standard and Poor’s downgrade of our Treasury paper. John Kerry and David Axelrod use the phrase “Tea party downgrade” in separate interviews yesterday…as if it had been coordinated or something;

    “I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day that also saw mounting anxieties in world markets over the downgrade among myriad other economic woes worldwide. Some of the world’s top financial ministers issued a joint statement Sunday night committing themselves to preserve the stability of financial markets and their economies.

    David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, used the exact same phrase in dubbing the credit rating drop the “tea party downgrade,” as Democrats tried to position themselves as reasonable, pragmatic leaders and conservative Republicans as irresponsible ideologues who caused the downgrade by refusing to accept any new taxes.

    Meanwhile Barney Franks blames…who else…the military;

    Frank says the military establishment has always had this “great momentum” in politics, but says the credit reversal “could change our thinking.” Frank calls the military a logical target “if we’re looking for something that breaks the mold” on spending.

    I guess they couldn’t think of blaming the people who controlled government purse strings from 2007 until last January – the same people who couldn’t pass a budget despite being in the majority in both the House and the Senate. The people who passed the health care bill without reading it and used fuzzy math to justify doing the healythcare bill when we couldn’t afford it. The people who only now admit that the “shovel ready” jobs didn’t exist and they knew it when they were funding them.

    But it’s the tea party’s fault suddenly.

  • Damning With Faint Praise… Or Something?

    While not exactly new or directly probative it does offer some perspective.

    We are parasites:

    Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means “like a parasite” on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.

    I’ve read this bit several times today.

    The kicker? The dance in DC pleases him:

    The deal initially soothed anxieties and led Russian stocks to jump to three-month highs, but jitters remained over the possibility of a credit downgrade.

    “Thank god,” Putin said, “that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision.”

    Putin thanks God.

    I feel much better now.

     

  • Just in case…

    H/T Carrie.

    I missed this, maybe you did too?
    Banks Offering Emergency Plans for Debt Ceiling Crisis

    More banks are announcing plans to help in the event that the federal government debt ceiling crisis results in non-payment of pay for service members and other Department of Defense employees.

    USAA (my bank) appears to be on top of things, and my VA check went in so we can eat and keep our house for another month.

     

  • Motion to Amend?

    Yea it seems that this is the newest thing going around Facebook.

    We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

    Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
    Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our vote and participation count.
    Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments.

    Ok, so giving money to a cause you support is not freedom of speech by using money to buy fake awards and medals is. There is the question of human beings having right protected under the Constitution then who do they think makes up the different corporations? Participation count? Meaning what that your vote has a effect in a solid red or blue State like California or Texas? The last statement is advocating isolationism flat out. But this is something that you cannot put back into the bottle. But the comments about it are just odd.

    Reply 1The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did, they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres. –Gouverneur Morris (in a letter to James Madison)

    Reply 2: The monied corporations, banks and large businesses should not be allotted the same rights as individual citizens. This country was founded to protect the citizens from the abuses of a ruling aristocracy. Now we are busy giving that protection away in favor of a new aristocracy.

    Reply 3: The government of the people, by the people and for the people, means that we are all equal. The decision in Citizens United made some people (lobbyists, big money) more equal than the less affluent citizenry. Citizens United is a shameful power grab by the new aristocracy.

  • Rewriting history while it happens

    I’ve really tried to ignore this debate over the impending debt ceiling fix because it just pisses me off to no end. I know that no matter it turns out, we’re screwed. ROS has been sending me links steadily over the last few days and makes it hard to ignore. She sends this one from the Daily Press about the President’s press conference today (I turned the TV off when he came on);

    The White House has insisted that any deal include some mechanism for raising more revenue in order to significantly pay down the deficit, but congressional Republicans have balked at the prospect of tweaking the tax code for deficit reduction. That remains the largest stumbling block in negotiations.

    The GOP would instead prefer deep spending cuts past the $2.4 trillion amount by which the administration seeks to raise the debt ceiling. The House hopes to pass a plan next week that includes the cuts, along with a provision for a balanced-budget amendment.

    We’ve already established that raising taxes isn’t going to help settle the problem, but the Democrats can’t help themselves from calling for tax hikes. I think it’s in their extra-chromosome DNA. Nice touch, though, calling it “tweaking the tax code”. Maybe we can tweak ourselves out of this mess, huh?

    But, this is the line that got me;

    “This is not some abstract issue,” Obama said. “Congress has run up the credit card. We now have an obligation to pay our bills.”

    As if he had nothing to do with running up the credit card. Yeah, technically, it’s true that it’s largely Congress’ fault, but it was Obama’s glorious agenda that the Democrat Congress enacted – mostly without a single Republican vote in the House. Remember how the Washington Post used to remind of us of that fact after every budget-busting vote in Congress? I wonder why they don’t mention it these days?

    What “we” actually had an obligation to do was not enact some of this useless shit we’ve been saddled with over the last two years. There have been myriad examples of why we shouldn’t have written blank checks to employment schemes and turtle tunnels, but I guess Democrats don’t learn from history – history like how the Bush tax cuts actually increased tax revenues and lowered unemployment during his tenure. Just like it worked during the Reagan years.