Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Obama's 'Change' Is Capital On Strike
In the three months since the election, the broadest measure of the stock market's value, the Wilshire 5000 Index, has plunged more than 30%, slicing over $3 trillion from Americans' wealth. Investors have walked away from investing, while businesses shut down factories and offices and slash jobs.
This is both highly significant and dangerous. Capital, bluntly put, has gone on strike. Those who own wealth are pushing it to the sidelines, as a young and inexperienced president tries to jam through changes which radically alter our nation's economy. Entrepreneurs and CEOs who once created new products, new services, jobs and trillions in wealth for America now find themselves vilified and punished for their success.
ABC News reported this week that many upper-income taxpayers already are planning to cut back on work and investments to stay under $250,000 in income — the point where Obama's punitive taxes kick in. No one wins from this, yet Obama seems oblivious...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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The Obama Economy
As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997.
The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem...
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Uh oh — He Lost David Brooks
It’s not quite LBJ losing Walter Cronkite on the Vietnam War, but the president has lost David Brooks:
"Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice.
As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”
First Chris Buckley and now Brooks. Usually it takes more than a month for presidents to disappoint those they have bamboozled during the campaign. But, as Brooks points out, Obama threw caution to the winds when he unveiled his monstrous budget...
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No Offense
The administration, wavering, says it needs time to think it over, which is consistent with the "wait and see" approach that Obama espoused during the campaign. He said he will deploy missile defense (a) "only when the system works" and (b) only if it's "pragmatic and cost-effective." That sounds sensible enough.
Waiting and seeing are fine things to do, but a problem arises when the person doing the waiting keeps his eyes closed. Obama is willing to wait on missile defense, but he refuses to look at the evidence in its favor. And so there is little reason to think he will backpedal on his campaign pledge to "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems."
Obama, who promised to increase foreign aid and to "treat allies with respect," should be absolutely giddy about missile defense. Its purpose, after all, is to prevent Europeans from getting blown up by ballistic missiles. That certainly sounds like aiding foreigners.
At least it does to our NATO allies, the same ones Obama claims to care about. On December 3, every last one of them signed a statement saying that missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic would make a "substantial contribution" to keeping them alive, roughly speaking.
Why in the world is Obama dithering?
His queasiness stems from a simple fact: He really wants to be popular, a goal he openly admits. He aspires to be "respected and admired abroad," seeing himself as the successor to Bono rather than to Bush...
[Good points on Russia's embarrassment-driven machinations - Recommended > ]
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Russian President Won't ''Haggle'' Over US Missile Defense Plans
[HT:PL]
Russian President Medvedev has said he's willing to discuss the proposed US missile shield with Washington. But he added that any deal linking those talks with negotiations regarding Iran would not be productive. (Snip)
The Russian president welcomed the ''positive signals'' coming from the Obama administration with which he said he hoped to reach ''agreements.'' ''Haggling,'' however, was ''not productive,'' added Medvedev on Tuesday, March 3.
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100,000 foot soldiers in Mexican cartels
The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers - an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state."It's moving to crisis proportions,"
a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels' "foot soldiers" are on a par with Mexico's army of about 130,000.
The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border.
As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq...
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Israel files UN complaint on rocket-fire
Late Monday, Israel's UN envoy filed a letter of complaint about the continued rocket attacks from Gaza to the Secretary-General and the president of the Security Council, whose rotating chair is currently held by Libya. Ambassador Gabriela Shalev warned that the Hamas attacks would hinder efforts to reach a ''stable and durable cease-fire'' (Snip)
She specifically noted attacks on the South on Sunday, when a Kassam hit a school in Sderot...
[I.e., when Israel withdrew so did the world's attention - but the rockets continue to fly...]
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Liberal derangement
There has never been a situation like this.
‘Surreal’, as Daniel Pipes expostulates, just doesn’t begin to describe what America, Britain and Europe are doing in Gaza. America has pledged $900 million for the ‘rebuilding’ of Gaza; at the ‘donors’ conference at Sharm el Sheikh yesterday, pledges from more than 70 states including Europe and Britain swelled that total to more than $4.4 billion.
These governments all piously intone that the money will not end up in the hands of Hamas. This is utterly absurd. Hamas run Gaza. They control it. Nothing happens there without their say-so. UNRWA, which is apparently supposed to distribute the humanitarian aid, is riddled with Hamas operatives amongst its staff; Hamas won more than 80 percent of the vote in the last election -- for the UNRWA workers association and the UNRWA teachers association. [snip]
In no other global conflict do the nations of the world throw money at an area waging aggressive war, even while it is still lobbing missiles at its victims.
According to Israel’s ambassador to the UN, there have been nearly 100 rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip since the ’ceasefire’ on January 18. These have been increasing in number, with 12 rockets fired at Sderot on March 1 alone. On Saturday morning, two new and improved Grad rockets, capable of yet greater destruction than before, hit Ashkelon; one hit a school.
And for this Gaza is to be rewarded to the tune of $4.4 billion.
Even the Saudis seem to think this is mad...
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The Coming War on Sovereignty
Barack Obama’s nascent presidency has brought forth the customary flood of policy proposals from the great and good, all hoping to influence his administration. One noteworthy offering is a short report with a distinguished provenance entitled A Plan for Action,1 which features a revealingly immodest subtitle: A New Era of International Cooperation for a Changed World: 2009, 2010, and Beyond.
In presentation and tone, A Plan for Action is determinedly uncontroversial; indeed, it looks and reads more like a corporate brochure than a foreign-policy paper. The text is the work of three academics—Bruce Jones of NYU, Carlos Pascual of the Brookings Institution, and Stephen John Stedman of Stanford. Its findings and recommendations, they claim, rose from a series of meetings with foreign-policy eminences here and abroad. The participation of these notables is what gives A Plan for Action its bona fides, though one should doubt how much the document actually reflects their ideas. There is no question, however, that the ideas advanced in A Plan for Action have become mainstays in the liberal vision of the future of American foreign policy.
That is what makes A Plan for Action especially interesting, and especially worrisome. If it is what it appears to be—a blueprint for the Obama administration’s effort to construct a foreign policy different from George W. Bush’s—then the nation’s governing elite is in the process of taking a sharp, indeed radical, turn away from the principles and practices of representative self-government that have been at the core of the American experiment since the nation’s founding. The pivot point is a shifting understanding of American sovereignty. [snip]
“Sharing” sovereignty with someone or something else is thus not abstract for Americans. Doing so by definition will diminish the sovereign power of the American people over their government and their own lives, the very purpose for which the Constitution was written. This is something Americans have been reluctant to do. Now their reluctance may have to take the form of more concerted action against “responsible sovereignty” if its onward march is to be halted or reversed. Our Founders would clearly understand the need.
[Long. link & send home to yourself if you must, but MUST READ >]
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Byrd: Obama in power grab
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.
In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change...
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Is America Being Deliberately Destroyed?
As the Dow continues to plummet and President Obama’s approval rating continues to diminish, it is time to ask if all the programs being put forth by his administration are a deliberate effort to destroy the nation’s economy.
These mindless borrowing, spending and taxing programs can have no other rational purpose than the deliberate impoverishment of all Americans through joblessness, rising taxes, the debasing of the dollar’s value, and environmental regulations that will cripple industry and increase the cost of energy.
We have a runaway Congress which, with the exception of its Republican members, is utterly indifferent to the needs and wants of Americans in a headlong rush to impose still more socialism upon a nation that grew powerful and wealthy in the practice of free market capitalism.
What else could justify the obscene failure of Congress to hold a single hearing before passing a “stimulus” plan that apparently none of its members had read before voting on it.
If a foreign power had invaded our nation and imposed these measures we would be at war with it...
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Coming next year: Obama's inflation
In the last five months, according to the Federal Reserve Board, the money supply in the United States has increased by 271 percent. It has almost tripled.
Have car sales tripled? Home purchases? Consumer spending? Corporate investment? Not only have they not tripled, they have all declined more sharply than they have since at least the recession of 1981-82, and perhaps since the Great Depression.
So where is the money? If it isn’t being spent, where is it?
It is being parked, squirreled away. Consumers are using it to pay down their credit card balances, pay off their mortgages, reduce their student loans, make the payments on the car sitting in their driveway — not the one in the dealer’s lot. Businesspeople are buying T-bills, investing the money and saving it. They aren’t spending, either.
But one day this recession — despite Obama’s best efforts — will end and things will begin to look up again. Then we can expect all of this money to come out of its parking space and get back on the highway of commerce. All at once.
The inevitable result will be double-digit hyperinflation... [snip]
The point of this gloom and doom is that all this pain is entirely preventable. It will be caused by Obama’s excessive spending and trillion-dollar-plus deficits. This spending is so far out of line with what the economy can handle that it will do more harm than good when the inflation hits.
[The media mantra that 'no one knows' if Obama's policies will work is an insulting canard: history shows us what his policies will reap.]
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ARIZONA PUBLIC SCHOOLS RECEIVED THOUSANDS MORE THAN CHARTER SCHOOLS
Arizona's citizens have been subjected non-stop to the claim that Arizona's public schools are desperately underfunded. According to Matthew Ladner, vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute, the Superintendent of Public Instruction's finance report says otherwise.
On page six of that document, you will find a figure for all revenues collected by Arizona school districts from all sources. That number is $9,232,916,095. If you divide that figure by the enrollment number for districts on page nine of the same document, you get $9,707.45 in total revenue per pupil. For a bit of perspective:
- The average Arizona private school tuition in 2006 was $4,300 and the average total cost was $5,500.
- The same revenue per pupil calculation for Arizona charter schools is $7,800.
[And that's the scam: for all Obama's talk of increasing charter schools, seldom are we reminded that who they're often forced to 'charter' with is the public school system - which systematically sabotages their efforts. Hence my oft-repeated independent-universal vouchers plea.]
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California School Spends $10G a Year to Teach AP Spanish to Kids Who Speak Spanish
[HT:RT]
A middle school in Southern California is spending $10,000 a year to teach Advanced Placement Spanish to 35 of its 650 students -- and all but one of them are already fluent in Spanish. Thirty-four of the kids in the AP class are from Mexico or are the children of Mexican immigrants. They all grew up speaking Spanish at home.
[Language has become a multi-million dollar a year scam in this state. Where's 'Spanish' in the 3Rs?]
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James Hansen's Political Science
NASA's James Hansen leads a protest against a District of Columbia power plant in the middle of a snowstorm. Meanwhile, a scientist fired by Al Gore says we need to emit more carbon dioxide, not less.
Despite Dr. Hansen's hysterical animus toward carbon, the fact is that CO2 is still a mere 0.038% of the gaseous layer that surrounds the Earth, and only 3% of that thin slice is released by man. According to Dr. William Happer, a professor of physics at Princeton University, current atmospheric CO2 levels are inadequate in historical terms and even higher levels "will be good for mankind."
"Many people don't realize that over geological time, we're really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 . . . been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) — 280 (parts per million) — that's unheard of," said Happer. He notes the earth and humanity did just fine when CO2 levels were much higher.
"You know, we evolved as a species in those times, when CO2 levels were three to four times what they are now," Happer said. "And, the oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it's baffling to me that . . . we're so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started."
"Jim Hansen has gone off the deep end here," one of Hansen's former supervisors, Dr. John Theon, said. Theon, a former senior NASA atmospheric scientist, rebuked Hansen last month in a letter to EPW. "Why he has not been fired, I do not understand," Theon said.
Critics contend that Hansen's involvement in the protests is a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in partisan political activity. If he wants to agitate for policy changes, let him do it on his own time and on his own dime. The science can speak for itself.
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CARBON OFFSETS: NO SURE BET TO PREVENT CLIMATE CHANGE
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels. In 2005, the European Union implemented a "cap-and-trade" scheme that allows a country (or company) to meet its emission targets by paying others to reduce their emissions.
The problem is that these programs have not lowered overall emissions in developed countries:
- In the European Union (EU), emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have gone up, not down.
- By contrast, CO2 emissions in the United States, which did not ratify the Kyoto treaty, have grown much more slowly than in the EU.
- U.S. emissions even declined in 2006.
[But a lot of speculators {like a fellow named Gore} have made money speculating on their trading...]
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Obama’s Greenhouse Tax Gamble
In proposing mandatory caps on the greenhouse gases linked to global warming theory and a system for auctioning permits to companies that emit them, President Obama is taking on a huge economic risk.
Business lobbies and many Republicans raised loud objections to the cap-and-trade program Mr. Obama proposed as part of his budget this week, saying the plan amounted to a gigantic and permanent tax...
[Gingrich made a good point a CPAC, carried on CSPAN over the weekend, to the effect that Obama, were he truthful with the American people {or were the media, for that matter}, would amend his "tax reduction for 95% of Americans" to include the qualifier 'except those who use electricity, or buy gas for their cars, or heat their home with heating oil or natural gas'. Worse, being an energy tax, it hits literally every business in the nation.
I can't see how anyone can see his actions as consistent with the goal of stimulating the economy. Now if the goal is expanding the power of government, 'controlling' carbon is the brass ring...]
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Back to a future fit for a serf
Miss Crow only wanted to do something in a modest way to save trees, proposing that everyone get only "four squares" of toilet paper per visit to "the ladies" (and presumably "the gents" as well).
But now the greenies, determined to inflict on us lives that only serfs could endure, have something else afoot...
[Green: a religion to control all aspects of activity.]
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Bill to Preserve Secret Ballots in Union Organizing Introduced
Congressional Republicans led by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) announced Wednesday that they are sponsoring legislation to protect the right of workers to have a secret ballot when they are deciding whether they want a labor union to represent them.
The Secret Ballot Protection Act was introduced in both the House and Senate in an effort to preempt EFCA, which is expected to be introduced later this year.
The bill would prohibit a union from being recognized based solely on employees signing publicly signing union authorization cards at the public urging of union organizers. It would provide that a union may only be recognized by an employer, following certification by the National Labor Relations Board, if it has won majority support in a secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB.
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[Then > 
"SUPPORT Secret Ballot Protection Act "
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
and as always, pass it on...
.
image toon mny crpt - UNION thug sure we'll make right choice
Lesbian Batwoman takes over Gotham City
[HT:ST]
She first swung into action 50 years ago, helping her boyfriend Batman rid Gotham City of villains until she was killed off in 1979. Now Batwoman is making a comeback, replacing Batman - who is missing, presumed dead - in the popular DC Comics series.
And this time around the superheroine's alter ego, Kathy Kane, is a red-headed lesbian. Billed as a ''lesbian socialite by night and a crime-fighter by later in the night''
[I've nothing against alternative lifestyles for adults (and voted against prop. 8 the first time}, but what's this doing in a comic book? A: They target our children...]
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Rush Limbaugh A Weekend Cable Draw
When Rush Limbaugh speaks... Fox News and CNN each aired Limbaugh's keynote speech to the CPAC Saturday afternoon. It was the biggest draw all weekend on cable news.
• From 4:46pm-6:20pmET Fox News averaged 511,000 A25-54 demo viewers and 2.22M Total Viewers. The network peaked at 6pm with 602,000/2.73M. FNC also produced an hour Sunday night at 9pmET with speech highlights which drew 454,000/1.66M.
It was Sunday's most-watched cable news hour.
[Again; I'm not a fan of Rush, I dislike his style. The 'problem' with dismissing him is, he's usually-right to Obama's usually-wrong re: what will best serve this nation long term. And don't let the MSM's campaign against him fool you into thinking he attracts only a lunatic fringe; his radio show garners up to 30M listeners a day - far and away the nations largest audience.]
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California unemployment rate reaches 10.1%
Lackluster spending on clothes, cars, legal services and most everything else has left California's economy listless, just about guaranteeing that the state's 10.1% unemployment in January will march upward until at least the end of the year, economists predicted.
The Golden State lost 79,300 payroll jobs in January, pushing the monthly unemployment rate to its highest level since June 1983, when the country was starting to recover from a deep recession."California is hemorrhaging faster than the U.S. economy,"
said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Cal State Channel Islands. California consistently has ranked among a handful of states with the country's highest unemployment.
[And nowhere in the article does it make any mention of our politicians having spent the state into oblivion, this despite the highest tax rates in the nation, or the exodus of tax-paying Californian's from the state because of it.
No, it's all just a function of the big recession and not enough federal stimulus dollars to bail us out. No link to the chronic mismanagement of the state - that might appear partisan {given the one-party-lock of Sacramento}.
'Professional' reporting.]
DON'T BOTHER
ECO-FRIENDLY FUR
The invasive paihamu, a bushtail possum, now occupies more than 99 percent of New Zealand; at 70 million, there are 17 paihamu for every man, woman and child. It eats 20,000 tons of vegetation nightly and New Zealand pastoralists see it as a threat to their livestock since the animal can carry tuberculosis.
But rather than keep tossing dollars at trying to control this problem, a group of trappers, manufacturers and industry people have formed the New Zealand Fur Council with the goal of using the private market as a solution, says Chrys Hutchings, owner of Eco-Luxury Fur.
[free market to the rescue again {well, unless you're a paihamu}]
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A Focus on Facts
Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here.
The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent.
By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been wiped out, the economy had shrunk by one-third, thousands of banks had closed, a third of the money supply had vanished, and unemployment had reached 25 percent -- among heads of households. And in those days, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare.
FDR's answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes -- like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.
The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent [11 years]. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:
"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. ... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt, to boot."
Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR's landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.
Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the "stagflation" of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.
Reagan's answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent.
While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.
From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. "The Seven Fat Years," author Robert Bartley called them.
Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson's wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in "The Roaring '20s," a time of unrivaled prosperity.
The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.
Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.
Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.
In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.
Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama has added a $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit are twice as large as Reagan's largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.
And how is this Niagara of money to be spent?
Hundreds of billions will go out in checks of $500 to $1,000 to wage-earners and individuals who do not even pay taxes. This is much like the George McGovern "demogrant" program of 1972, where every man, woman and child, if memory serves, was to get a $1,000 check from the U.S. government.
Other hundreds of billions will go to shore up state and municipal spending. Other hundreds of billions will go for "infrastructure" projects, another name for earmarks, which is a synonym for pork.
Now, as Obama does not intend to raise taxes, at least now, he is going to have to borrow this near $2 trillion from foreigners or U.S. taxpayers, or the Fed will have to create the money. Undeniably, this will have an impact upon the economy. But what will that impact be?
Where in history, other than World War II, is there evidence that such a mass infusion of spending restored prosperity?
Obama and the Democrats are taking a historic gamble, not only with their careers but with the country. If this monstrous stimulus package, plus the trillions in hot money, do not work; if the two ignite rampant inflation, rather than real growth, we are all out of options. The toolbox is empty.
And what will follow may truly resemble the 1930s.
[didn't snip source URL, apologies]
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