When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.
The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.
“The problem is at the consumer level, confidence is low and that is because, as you showed, showed we had underemployment with one out of every six Americans. The worst element of that is that among the unemployed, against the American history, more than approaching half, have [been] unemployed for over six months. That is historically unprecedented in the United States. That is a phenomenon that is seen often in Europe, rarely seen here. In 2007 the average time to get a new job was five weeks. It’s now near six months. And that implies a whole segment of the population, the more elderly or the middle-aged who may never get employed again,” Charles Krauthammer said on FOX News this evening.
I owe a big thank you to Weiner for giving me the comic relief I’ve needed. Times are hard for so many of us and the daily (almost hourly) news is not good so, a little Weiner levity has been great. Everyone from Andrew Klavan to Andrew Breitbart provided some great laughs and one liners. I mean seriously, how can you pair any adjective with the name Wiener and it not be funny?
I also owe a thanks to the White House (and Drudge) for publishing the German state dinner menu:
STATE DINNER MENU DONE ON BUDGET:
White House Honey Gastrique
Tuna Tartare with Rye Crisps
Pickled Young Carrots and Mustard Oil
Spring Pea Salad
Shaved Ham and Ginger Snaps
Petite Filet
With Maryland Crab Ravioli
Wild Ramp Puree
Apple Strudel
Golden Raisins and Topfen
The One's state dinner place setting. Photo from CNN
I had to Wiki half this menu (or ask Jane who’s a food network fan) because I’m just not a cuisine expert. (She knew what Gastrique is. I thought it might be cow or sheep stomach. HA! Martha Stewart would be slapping me with her rubber spatula for that!)
Crock pot roast beef and baked potatoes is a fancy meal at our house. I have to wonder who’s budget this WH menu was based on. Petite filet (one thing on the menu I know about) is kinda pricey and a once a year treat for me. In fact, as a family tradition, we vote every year about our Christmas dinner and more times than not, we vote for steak (Porterhouse, T-bone or filet) because it’s such a rarity for us. And as a person with an Italian heritage, I can tell you crab ravioli is not something I’m familiar with. But it does sound good.
What is Wild Ramp Puree? It a “bed” of something from West Virginia, I do know that much.
All in all, this is not a menu that is friendly to MY budget. But it was semi-entertaining to discuss and research the menu items.
And again, all this frivolity in the news distracted me from some of the more unpleasant (1/3 of all employees will lose their employer-based health care) and scary (reports that Iran could have nukes in less than 6 months – what’s more scary than that?) news reports. Not that Weiner’s sexy (insert surprised emoticon here) online chat, isn’t news worthy – it is. But it was also the more fun times I’ve had reading online.
The surreal press conference that Weiner called on Monday when Brietbart upstaged him, was the BEST television since the debut of the trampoline bear on the Fox Report. It was stunningly hilarious and at the same time, made me feel proud of being a Breitbart fan. Seeing him at Weiner’s podium calling out the so-called “journalists” for being duplicitous and disingenuous (fancy words for being jerkweeds) was absolutely priceless!
I’ve been online for a long time and one thing I have learned is that there is only one type of man who posts penis pictures of himself: the kind of nerdy, inadequate, trying-to0-hard man that Weiner is. Don’t ask me how I know this because I’m not telling (insert red-faced emoticon here) and I’ve used no tax dollars in this research so I owe no one an explanation.
But in that regard, Weiner and his weiner are pathetic. I almost feel bad about laughing at his online sexcapades because I knew men (boys) like him in high school and college. He has some serious feelings of inadequacy that only his online braggadocio can seem to quash.
Sad.
But on the upside for me at least, we’ve not heard the last of Anthony’s Weinergate.
And okay, I admit it, my life is pretty dull.
I’ll leave you with Andrew Klavan’s description of Weiner – “Physically, he’s a dead ringer for a turtle that’s been pulled out of its shell.”
Two years ago Ray LaHood (Transportation Secretary) brought this idea up and now it’s seeing more light of day. With the Randian name Transportation Opportunities Act (TOA) they plan to tax how many miles we drive by installing an Orwellian-type electronic device in our cars.
1984 meets Atlas Shrugged all in one fell swoop.
Of course this is in addition to the national gas tax (average) of $.495 that we are already paying.
Take a look a these PDF maps (H/T Mark Levin’s website), here and here, to see how much you are now paying in state and federal taxes per gallon of gas. And those taxes won’t ever go away; they will be added to the VMT (vehicle mileage tax) that this regime wants to impose on us with this new TOA.
No one, it seems has considered how this will impact employment, or lack thereof. Take for instance the number of people who will stay home rather than take a family vacation. The impact on communities and states that rely on tourist dollars will surely feel it. And lets see — how will this impact state and national parks that rely on tourism dollars. Fewer people will be hired and more people will be laid off or not replaced should they have to quit their jobs.
Then there’s the more sinister side of this: controlling our movement and restricting relocation to other states. People are easier to control if they can’t move around much. Make it more expensive to travel and people do (and already have) cut back. That means less money spent in the retail sector, as well – again, a job killer.
This gives me a headache. This man and his regime HAVE GOT TO GO in 2012 or we are doomed.
As I posted yesterday, an additional 150 people are now unemployed in Las Vegas, primarily because charitable donations are down. Those wealthy individuals and corporations no longer have the tax breaks and just like the rest of us, they are feeling the hit of this horrible economy we are in.
The statist’s answer to our problems is to tax the rich MORE. But it should be now proven to every one that it has a devastating effect on the economy and the employment sector. When Boyd Gaming or Harrah’s stop donating a wing or a floor to institutions like Nevada Cancer Institute or Adleson Hospice, people start losing jobs and no one is being hired.
The wealthy are the job creators. Why is that so hard to understand? And how many more episodes like this one, nationwide, do the statists need to create before they get it? The less money the rich spend – or have to spend – the fewer cabbies, cooks and hotel housekeepers there are; the fewer nurses, back office people, lab techs and administrative assistants facilities like NCI employ.
What I find amazing is that the wealthy liberal left and right coasters – the elite, the ruling class, the academicians, the Hollywood “stars” – want more taxes on profitable (or once profitable) corporations, while at the same time, they are spending less and less money themselves.
This is why I believe that liberals suffer from mental illness: they keep doing the same things over and over, they keep doggedly following the same failed philosophy and never learn that it’s just NOT working.
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has run simulations using their Individual Income Tax Model comparing current law with President Obama’s most recent budget proposal which includes: 1) higher taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000; 2) higher taxes on capital gains; 3) higher taxes on dividends; and 4) the return of the death tax. The CDA found that the Obama tax hikes would:
Destroy an average of 693,000 jobs every year.
Drain $726 billion from disposal income, $38 billion from personal savings, and $33 billion from business investments.
Raise taxes on the 55% of all joint filers earning more than $250,000 who run small businesses that employ others.
Cost the average non-farm small-business owner $3,500 more in taxes.
Cost the 49% of all seniors with income below $250,000 $525 in additional dividend taxes.
Cost the 25% all seniors with income below $250,000 $742 in higher taxes.
The bottom line is clear: All Americans would suffer economic harm under the Obama tax hikes. There simply is no justification for raising taxes when the unemployment rate is already near 10%. The American people already know this, which is why the same independents who voted for President Obama by a 52% to 44% margin also oppose the Obama tax hikes. After polling these same independents, Independent Women’s Voice CEO Heather Higgins and former President Bill Clinton pollster Doug Schoen describe what these independents really want: “Decrease the size and scope of government, cut spending and taxes, balance the budget, reduce the federal debt, reduce the power of special interests and unions, repeal and replace the health-care legislation, and decrease partisanship.”
From the Heritage Foundation
This president will never do any of the things that Higgins and Schoen described. He is anti all those things and pro all of them. “Decrease the size of government?” In whose dreams? “Reduce the power of unions?” I don’t think so. “Repeal health care legislation?” HA! what color is the sky on your planet?
What economists know very well, but most of the rest of us do not is that the unemployment rate never hits 0%. Well duh! What a stupid statement! Of course it will never hit 0%. It never even gets close. It never even gets close? Read on: In fact, even in good times, the unemployment rate has been creeping up over time. During the 1960s, the unemployment rate was below 4% for nearly four years, going as low as 3.5%. During the amazing late-1990s-early-2000s economic boom, though, never got as low as that. The unemployment rate touched 4%, dipping below that only briefly for just a few months. I think that 3.5 or 4% or even 5% is pretty damned close to what we’d all like to see. Close enough for me, compared to almost 10% now, although many believe that number is much higher. In 2008, (still during the Bush administration) the rate dropped to around 4.5% and that was the best it got. The best it got??? How many Americans would like to see an unemployment rate like that right now? In fact, for most of the time during the housing market and credit boom that was the late 2000s, the unemployment rate stood at 5%-7%. Even this is better than what we are seeing now. Good Lord! How stupid do these people at Time think we are?
“Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,” 31-year-old Faisal Shahzad told a federal judge. “Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow.”
Stop Sharia in America
click image
Obamas Wisdom and Terror in the Street
"We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever...we absorbed it and we are stronger."
Diary of a Mad Conservative 