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President Obama is the stock market's worst nightmare. A few weeks before the November 2008 election, when it became evident that Obama might win, big money began to leave the stock market in search of safer homes — such as gold or silver. Or Switzerland. The Dow lost 1,342 points between the November 4th election and November 13.* The investors on Wall Street know what socialism can do to large companies, and they expressed their disapproval. Obama's grandiose plans to spend trillions of dollars on laundry list of liberal politicians' projects has made the situation far worse. (See Pork products in the bailout bill and in the stimulus bill.) If Mr. Obama was in fact an enemy saboteur, trying to do everything possible to wreck America's economy, what would he be doing differently? Not much. This is even more disturbing because we know the Barack Obama is a man with a mysterious past, he used to be a "community organizer", that is, an anti-capitalist troublemaker, he apparently hates America, and he is gradually weakening America's defenses. Subsections on this page include: Obama's self-inflicted economic collapse Massive spending and the fast track to socialism Tea parties and other organized rejection of Obama's plans ... including town hall meetings ... where we are getting a taste of the Obama thugocracy. Which side is using "astroturf?" A few words about FDR's New Deal On other nearby pages: The use of the EPA as a weapon against the coal industry A few words about Obama's latest budget proposal A few words about last year's budget proposal Lies about job creation and stimulus money Nationalizing General Motors and Chrysler Obama studied Black Liberation Theology at the TUCC. Obama was seen as a big spender long before the presidential election. Obama spends our money on himself. Calls for Obama's impeachment. And now the destruction continues in Obama's third term. Obama's self-inflicted economic collapse No, Joe, there was no economic boom under Obama. The great Jackie Gleason once said, "The past remembers better than it lived." And so it is, apparently, with the Obama years. There was no economic "boom" as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are misremembering. This was an economy that skidded into a financial ditch and seemingly never pulled out of it and got back on the prosperity hot lanes until Donald Trump won the election in November 2016. You can mark the real recovery — an economic inflection point almost the day after that surprise election outcome. Every liberal forecaster and most academic economists had guaranteed America that, if Trump were elected, the stock market would crash; workers would be flattened; and, as New York Times economist Paul Krugman famously predicted, the economy would "never" recover. Instead, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared by 257 points the morning after the election (that's some crash), and it rose for the next three years, as it has again over the last several months. Liberals Still Think Obama Was the 'Best President Ever,' Here Are 14 Reasons Why That's Ridiculous. [#2] He presided over the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. There have been eleven recessions since World War II, each of which was followed by a recovery. Even Obama experienced an economic recovery... it just happens to be the worst one. All jobs lost in post-World War II recessions were recovered after about twenty-five months on average. But it took seventy-seven months for employment to return to pre-recession levels, making Obama's recovery the slowest recovery of them all — and by a wide margin. It really does take incredible leadership to achieve so many records during your time in office, and Obama has another one that he must be very proud of. Obama is the only president in U.S. history to have never had a single year of 3.0 percent or greater annual GDP growth. The only presidents to have had lower average growth rates during their presidencies were Herbert Hoover, Andrew Johnson, and Teddy Roosevelt. As Long As a Political Party Believes It Owns African-Americans, Blacks Will Not Be Free. If the worst blight of our modern era is the Obama Wasted Decade, do not doubt for one moment that Obama was our country's self-induced punishment for past wrongs, both real and those imagined. Had America not played host to slavery hundreds of years earlier, we would not have been blighted with Obama. No way that a majority of Americans would have elected such a Zero, with no record of achievement, no single accomplishment to point to, a phony who would put on a "Black accent" when speaking to Black audiences even though he grew up in Hawaii, reared by a White grandmother and sometimes by a White mother, while his Kenyan father abandoned him. Where did that occasional accent come from? Do Kenyans like the father he never really knew speak that way? Did he learn to "talk Black" — but only in front of carefully selected audiences — from his years on the mainland at Occidental College? At Columbia? (Uh, how did he get in?) At Harvard Law? (Uh, how did he get in?) How Obama/Biden Wrecked the U.S. Medical Device Industry. As lawmakers ponder ways to bring back U.S. manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, their raw materials, medical supplies, and devices, it must be remembered a major part of this problem which has come back to bite us was created by the Obama/Biden administration and the medical device tax that was included in ObamaCare that was supposed to defray the costs of this doomed-to-failure new entitlement program. As part of the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act, sales of medical devices from implants to MRIs, research equipment and surgical instruments were to bear a 2.3 percent tax. The tax would be on gross sales and not just profits. Even packaging, shipping, and warranties were included when calculating what was to be taxed. The Very Remarkable President Donald Trump. Years from now, history will note a major event that occurred in 2016, an event that significantly altered the course of the country and the world. At the time, the U.S. was in the last year of a 10-year economic slump. It was, in fact, the only 10-year period in history where the economy did not achieve 3 percent annual growth in any year. From 2007 to 2016 economic growth averaged about 2 percent. That subpar growth rate led to fewer opportunities for Americans. That led to poor employment prospects and stagnant wages. The Editor says... Trump, China Virus 19, and Biden. Through the Wasted Obama Decade we watched the economy sputter and barely move. Yes, some numbers got better under Obama, but anyone who understands anything about economics knows that, after a recession, there always is a recovery. It is basic. A country is in a recession, so everyone chooses not to buy a new car, a new laptop or smartphone, or new clothes at the moment. Then, after a few years, everyone's car starts breaking down beyond repair, everyone's technology is out of date, and everyone's clothes wear out, so everyone has to start buying again. And that, in two sentences, is why there always is a recovery after a recession. But somehow Obama managed to put a damper on the recovery. With all his welfare and food stamps and other "entitlements" inducing people not to return to work, all his anti-business regulations crippling entrepreneurs, all his anti-energy actions forcing us to rely on foreign oil from Arab Muslim dictatorships, and all his trade deals driving American manufacturing out of business — while shoveling our tax dollars into sweetheart deals with losers like Solyndra and into "shovel-ready" jobs that were never going to materialize but only would enrich and line the pockets of Obama friends and supporters — the Wasted Obama Decade managed to emerge with a dead economy. The Rebirth of Our Nation and the End of Globalism. [Scroll down] Under the watch of Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Hussein Obama, the outsourcing to China continued unabated. [...] Obama's philosophy was to "lead from behind," and behind we fell. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if one is behind, one is not in the lead, but Obama sold that unbelievable illogical slogan to millions of gullible empty heads. For eight long years under Obama, our GDP never grew beyond 2%, and he shamelessly warned that without a magic wand, manufacturing jobs were never going to come back. While cities throughout Asia and the Middle East were building new skyscrapers, our infrastructure was falling apart. Highways, bridges, and city streets were old and in need of repair. Many urban areas such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Los Angeles were rotting from within. Barack Obama: A Traitor for the Ages. During his eight years in office, Obama routinely exhibited contempt for America and its capitalist system. In referring to his "You didn't build that!" admonition directed at private sector job creators, The Wall Street Journal observed that "rarely do politicians so clearly reveal their core beliefs." In September 2011, Obama showed his full-throated support of the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street protests by announcing, "We are on their side." An influential group of hardened anti-capitalists known at the highest levels of the Democratic Party, OWS's behind-the-scenes leaders have long sought the total destruction of America's capitalist system. [...] Finally, five days before he was first elected, Obama made a statement that attracted little attention at the time, vowing to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." Caught up in the euphoria of Hope and Change, many who voted for him never thought to ask themselves, Transform it into what? Dems' New Talking Point on the Trump Economy: Obama Built It. Obama dealt with a severe economic downturn, as did President Ronald Reagan. Historically, the bigger the downturn, the bigger the economic bounce back. During the recession Obama faced, unemployment reached a high of 10%, while inflation and interest rates remained low. During the recession Reagan faced, unemployment reached 10.8%, prime interest rates rose to 20.5% and inflation hit 13.5%. Obama raised taxes, spent nearly $1 trillion on a so-called stimulus plan, increased regulations and signed a new entitlement program known as "Obamacare." Reagan did the opposite. He decreased taxes and continued deregulation. Differences in results were stark. Obama's recovery, according to the Joint Economic Committee, averaged an inflation-adjusted GDP growth of 2.2% over the next 25 quarters. The average recovery following post-1960 economic slowdowns, which lasted more than 12 months, is 3.9%. Under President Ronald Reagan it was 4.8%. Obama was the first president ever to preside over an economic recovery in which not a single year of the economy grew at least 3%. Obama's own economic team anticipated much higher growth. Critics Discount Too Much of Trump's Job Performance. Public boredom and exasperation were amplified by Barack Obama's flat-lined "new normal" of 2 percent economic growth, a shrinking workforce, middle- and lower-income stagnation of pay levels and substantial unemployment, 1 million illiterate peasants entering the country illegally every year, and a foreign policy of vanishing red lines. Obama's Midnight Regulations, Lawsuits Still Hamper The U.S. Economy. President Obama was a big fan of extending discrimination law as far as possible. Much anti-discrimination law is enforced by the Department of Labor (DOL), particularly against government contractors through the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which is supposed to promote affirmative action by government contractors. Obama's DOL left behind many last minute, "midnight" lawsuits against government contractors alleging discrimination in pay, promotions, raises, and hiring based on the statistical analysis of disparate impact, with no evidence of actual discrimination or discriminatory intent. Those included lawsuits against Big Tech firms such as Oracle, Google, and Palantir. But there is no statutory authority for lawsuits against federal contractors using the statistical analysis of disparate impact without any evidence of actual discrimination or discriminatory intent. Obama fundamentally transformed America. Trump's transforming it back. Obama transformed American in a way that stagnated the economy, reduced opportunities for the middle class, forced millions to become dependent on government and doused the flame that is normally ignited by the American spirit. [...] Obama had the worst record on the economy of any president in recorded history. In fact, he was the only president to serve a term in office without having at least one year where GDP growth was at least 3%. Growth averaged 1.5% annually during the Obama administration. That meant there weren't nearly enough good jobs created. That led to vast increases in underemployment and forced millions of able-bodied Americans to leave the workforce. The middle class shrank and the number of Americans living below the poverty line hit record highs. Five 'Gutsy Women' Who Didn't Make it into Hillary Clinton's Book. [#4] Ayn Rand was born in Russia and was an eyewitness to the horrors inflicted by the Bolshevik Revolution. By the time she emigrated to America in 1925, her core beliefs were established. [...] Her 1957 follow-up, Atlas Shrugged, portrayed a United States on the edge of collapse as a result of socialist and collectivist policies. The novel proved to be enormously influential and stunningly prescient. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the creeping socialist policies that followed caused the sales of Atlas Shrugged to spike. To anyone who had read the dystopian novel, it all seemed depressingly familiar. Feds open California land to oil, gas drilling, aiming to strengthen energy independence. The federal government has opened hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in California for oil and gas drilling as part of a broader effort to strengthen energy independence. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued its final decision Friday [10/4/2019], allowing oil and gas leases on plots mostly in the Central Valley and parts of the Central Coast. The 725,000 acres of public land in Central California had been off-limits to oil and gas drilling since 2013. The Editor says... Trump Economy Leaving Obama's in the Dust. Try to reconcile this contradiction. On the one hand, Barack Obama and his apologists claim that he deserves credit for halting an economic recession that actually bottomed out in the fall of 2008 before he was elected, and officially terminated less than five months into his tenure — long before any of his policies had taken effect, or in some cases had even been proposed. Yet on the other hand, we're told that in the third full year of the Trump presidency, Obama somehow deserves credit for the current economy, which has in many ways become the healthiest we've ever experienced? And while we're at it, ponder this dilemma: If Obama were such a splendid economic maestro, why were economic assessments so dour back in 2016 as his presidency finally came to an end?
The post-Obama economy is booming. Larry Kudlow fires back at Cory Booker's claim Obama deserves credit for economic recovery. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow denounced Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sunday [5/5/2019] after the 2020 White House candidate said President Trump was "taking credit for a recovery that started under [former President Barack] Obama." "What Mr. Booker and some others are saying is simply not true factually," Kudlow told Fox News' "America's News HQ". Kudlow spoke two days after the publication of the April jobs report, which showed that the American economy added 263,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest since 1969. Despite the rosy numbers, Booker insisted that the boom's effects were not being felt across all economic levels. The Editor says... Why Do Most People in This Country Work, while Others Never Will? President Obama's true legacy is that he directed a transformation of America that diminished economic opportunity for large segments our country. Under Obama, many American workers in this country suffered a permanent lowering of their standard of living, leading to a perceived future for them of limited prospects. The Obama Progressive policy-driven economic agenda was primarily responsible for this decline. Over his presidential term, Obama was the pessimistic messenger and leader of the decline of American prosperity and economic opportunity and freedom. Like many on the Left, he focused on what he believed were America's shortcomings and implemented policies dependent on the growth of government. He attempted to change the nature of our country by moving us closer to a socialist model and thereby accelerated our economic decline. The motivation behind many of these policies is lack of faith by people on the Left such as Obama in the promise of America and a lack of understanding of what is responsible for America's greatness. Study: Anti-Franchise Rules Killed 375K Jobs Since 2014. An industry study found that the Obama administration's crackdown on franchising has cut hundreds of thousands of job openings and dealt a $33.3 billion blow to the economy each year dating back to 2015. A report put out by the International Franchise Association and a Chamber of Commerce found that the Obama administration provoked an "existential threat" to the franchise model in which small business owners operate under the umbrella of a national corporate brand. The Obama administration departed from decades of precedent when the National Labor Relations Board held that parent companies could be held liable for labor violations committed by franchisees. The report estimated that the new joint employer standard set curtailed expansion in the industry, leading to between 142,000 and 376,000 lost job opportunities — a 2.55 to 5 percent reduction in the workforce. 312,000 Jobs Added In December, Manufacturing Growing 714% Faster Under Trump Than Obama. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its December jobs report Friday morning, showing nonfarm employment was up by 312,000, stronger than analysts expected. The impressive jobs number, along with the Fed signaling patience on rate hikes, shook the stock market loose from its doldrums, with the Dow posting a 747-point gain. With the December jobs number, President Trump now has two full years of economic performance to compare with his predecessor, President Obama. The Results of Obama's Presidency Still Don't Matter to Journalists. Obama's policies gave us the slowest economic recovery in seventy years despite almost zero interest rates, massive federal injection of funds, substantial government spending increases and an increase of around $10 trillion in debt. Trump has given us the fastest annual growth since 2005. Obama gave us the lowest labor participation rate in forty years. Trump has brought the unemployment for all races, all education levels and all sexes to record lows. Obama rewarded political bundlers with jobs and contracts. Trump has given almost 100% of U.S. taxpayers and businesses more money to improve the economy, whether they donated to him or supported him or not. [...] Obama used the EPA, CFPB and Justice Department to blackmail companies and set up slush funds for political purposes and to reward supporters. The slush funds are gone after Trump was elected. Who Are the Actual Adults, and Who Are the Adults Who Act and Govern as Children? For eight years we had children running the economic policy which gave us the slowest economic recovery in seventy years despite almost zero interest rates, a massive Federal Reserve infusion of money, massive increases in government spending and around a $10 trillion increase in federal debt. Today, we have an adult who learned from history that capitalism, the private sector, lower taxes and fewer regulations are the way to make the economy thrive. We currently have economic growth over three percent (much faster than the children said the economy could grow) and exceptionally low unemployment rates. The egotistical child, who said the economy couldn't grow this fast, is now out there taking credit for the growth, even though the policies are the opposite of his. How Barack Obama & Fellow Globalists Used Millennials To Hasten The Decline Of America. It's a debt bomb of epic proportions — nearly 1.5 trillion dollars and climbing fast which has enslaved an entire generation of Americans. Add credit card and auto loan debt and the total amount of that debt is nearly doubled. And you know who initiated this apocalyptic debt trend? None other than Barack Obama. You think it was all some sad mistake by a well-meaning president gone bad? Think again. The Nerve: Obama Takes Credit for America's Energy Independence. "Suddenly America is like the biggest oil producer, the biggest gas producer," said Barack Obama in an impromptu remark at Rice University on Tuesday [11/27/2018]. "That was me, people." After a minute of additional economic boasts, Obama instructed the audience, "Say 'thank you.'" Here was the essential Obama on display: smug, verbally maladroit, and shockingly dishonest. If America increased its energy production while Obama was in the White House, it was despite of his policies, not because of them. Thanks, oil companies! Barack Obama was dead wrong on a lot of subjects, but his dismissive attitude toward increasing oil production is one of his most consequential positions that was foolish, harmful to America, and logically impossible. New Report Shows How Incredibly Wrong Obama Was About Energy Independence. Has any politician ever been more wrong than Barack Obama was about U.S. oil production and energy independence? [...] Crude oil production in the U.S. has climbed more than 67% in just the past six years. And the Department of Energy expects it will climb an additional 11% next year. Earlier this year, U.S. production hit 11 million barrels a day, surpassing Russia as the world's largest oil producer, after having blown past Saudi Arabia in February. This explosion in domestic oil production is largely due to fracking, which has opened vast expanses of once-inaccessible crude oil. It was also never supposed to happen. At least not if you'd been listening to President Barack Obama. For eight years, Obama told the country over and over again that the U.S. would forever be dependent on foreign countries for oil. Obama Tripled the Deficit, Now Brags He Cut It in Half. Familiar is the parable of the boy who murders his parents, then seeks leniency because he is suddenly an orphan. When it comes to budget deficits, Barack Obama is more like the boy who knocks off his parents, then brags that he drove them to the morgue. While his public approval rating plummeted this week to a new low of 37%, here was Obama in a press conference rationalizing his refusal to even negotiate over the nation's debt limit: "Don't tell us that the government is going bankrupt, when the deficit has been cut in half!" The only problem is that Obama tripled the deficit before he cut it in half. As a result, he has only accelerated the government toward bankruptcy. Trump's reversal of failed Obama policies has created a booming economy. President Obama raised taxes on businesses and individuals. He expanded the federal government's size and power through dramatic increases in the number and scope of federal regulations. He discouraged domestic energy production — for example, refusing to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline and openly attempting to bankrupt the coal industry. The economy is now booming because President Trump took the opposite course. President Trump has dramatically cut both taxes and regulations — shrinking the government's size and power — while aggressively encouraging domestic energy production. Top 10 Reasons Why Today's Robust Economy Belongs to President Trump and Not to Obama. [#2] When Obama was elected President the already low stock market crashed. When Trump was elected the stock market skyrocketed. The markets are a gage of the economy and include expectations of the future. When Obama was elected President on November 4th, 2008, the DOW stood at 9,625. The DOW tanked and by March 9, 2009, the DOW could go down no further as it landed at 6,547 for a decrease of more than 30%. After President Trump was elected the DOW exploded. On November 8th, 2016, the DOW stood at 18,332. Since that date the DOW has soared reaching a new all-time high the day after the election on November 10th, 2016 and it has never looked back.
Reversing the damage of previous administrations. President Obama acted without legislative direction to create a whole class of legal rights — pertaining to residency, higher education and employment — for adults brought illegally into the United States as children — "Dreamers." Mr. Obama's EPA unilaterally set limits on greenhouse gas emissions — something he could not persuade Congress to authorize. And Mr. Obama went far beyond the authority in federal statutes and judicial precedents by imposing racial preferences in college admissions, and mocked the constitutional rights by encouraging limits on free speech and imposing rape tribunals at universities that violate established rules of evidence and protections for the accused. [...] Mr. Obama, reflecting the interests of anti-free market, increasingly socialist elements of the emerging Democratic Party, appointed left leaning judges to help impose a European-style regulatory order and constraints on civil liberties — consider the strict controls on academic freedom now imposed at many universities and what is acceptable speech among employees of businesses. Stupendously Annoying Hack Juan Williams Credits Obama with the Economy. Juan Williams is so far-left and such a hack that he cannot give the President any credit for the economic growth. He credited [the unspectacular performance by] Barack Obama with the economic growth. Williams is holding on to the now-old saw that the recession under Obama was the worst recession since the Great Depression. It never was but even if it were, why couldn't Obama get to 3 percent GDP, unlike every other modern day President who also suffered through recessions? We know why — his regulations, taxes, and no-growth policies. Six Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History. [#1] The largest deficits in history: When adjusted for inflation, Obama owns the seven highest deficits in history — surpassing the deficits incurred during World War II. Obama's smallest deficit was still higher than the last deficit before he took office. While many try to argue that 2009's spending should not count towards Obama's spending record, 2009 was not actually constrained by the budget approved by President Bush. In fact, only three of FY2009's 12 appropriations bills passed under Bush because the Democrats in Congress waited until Obama took office before going on a spending binge. So most of the spending that took place in 2009 was, in fact, approved by President Obama. This spending, which included Obama's failed stimulus and bailouts, resulted in a 17.9 percent increase in spending over FY2008 compared to the 3 percent increase proposed by George W. Bush. This increase in spending was the highest annual spending increase since the Korean War. Mind Blowing Cost of Illegals Is Highest Ever - Numbers Released Show Huge Burden To States. Every American taxpayer should be outraged at the numbers in the report below. Open borders under 8 years of Obama has cost American taxpayers a tremendous amount: more than ever before! Don't forget the thousands upon thousands of illegal alien minors who flooded the border during Obama's presidency. The bottom line is that open borders have consequences and the unfortunate consequence for taxpayers is we're footing the bill for illegals and THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE! Trump's burden: Cleaning up Obama's mess. [President] Trump is now reversing the negative Obama tide by simply implementing basic common[ ]sense economic policies. The combination of this common[ ]sense approach with tax cuts and the reversal of countless Obama executive order EPA regulations has resulted in a booming economy. Do you really think Obama cared about the middle class economically, or did he just take all of us for fools with his love of job-killing EPA regulations? These regulations did nothing but destroy American jobs and add costs to American-made products and U.S. private businesses. They had absolutely no real effect on the environment. America really did have a Manchurian Candidate in the White House. In the short year and a half that President Trump has been in office, he has put in place policy that has mitigated the damage that President Obama inflicted on our national security and on our allies. The speed with which Trump has been able to turn things around points to the diabolical depths the Obama administration went to in order to undermine our national strength and way of life. All Trump had to do was stop doing things that hurt America; America could then take care of itself. The results are plain as day. However, it will take decades for the Obama damage to be completely undone. Obama Created His 'Cartoon' President. First, it's telling that now out of office, Barack Obama's famous ego still has him buying into the narrative created by the liberal media, the Democratic Party and his aides that he was a "successful" and "brilliant" president. President Obama had, in reality, set up the economy to implode. He and his administration ignored endless "facts" and — thanks to their allies in the media, entertainment and academia — never faced any "consequences." More than that, Obama has parlayed his political Ponzi scheme into tens of millions of dollars for himself. How Obama became the first communist president. The use of the state to spy on and infiltrate the campaign of a political opponent is the final proof of the truth that we have averted our eyes from for the last 14 years. Barack Obama is a communist. Mild compared to Castro or Mao, but nevertheless a believer in state control of everything. Medicaid and the Democratic War on Work. And yet there can be little doubt that the Democratic Party has somehow morphed into the anti-employment party. The evidence for this is pretty difficult to miss. The Obama era, despite a deluge of disingenuous media reports about the allegedly heroic role our erstwhile president played in "saving" the economy, was characterized by countless initiatives clearly meant to reduce employment growth to the anemic level that Obama himself called the "new normal." A clear sign that he intended to take every action possible to render this sluggish job growth permanent was his disembowelment of Clinton-era work requirements for welfare recipients. And, in keeping with their war on work, the Democrats and the media produced the usual claims of racism and cruelty when President Trump reversed his predecessor's anti-employment and illegal changes to the 1996 welfare reform law. Lost amid all the 'noise' over Scott Pruitt is the very real damage Obama's EPA did to rural communities. My work takes me to small, energy-rich towns around the country. These are the places where America gets its power, where multiple generations of energy workers live and worship and raise their families. Places where the champions of the eco-left would not deign to visit. These towns survived dot.com bubbles and housing crashes because the majority had steady, good paying jobs in coal mines or oil fields. These proud towns went from prosperity to poverty during eight years of EPA regulatory action as unemployment became rampant, and with it, myriad hardships: shuttered stores on main street, depleted education funds, increased opioid use. Families broke apart as moms and dads moved from their beloved hometowns looking for work. The very fabric of their communities — neighbors, schools, churches, little league, diners, town squares — destroyed in less than a decade. EPA Administrator: Obama's Emissions Standards Forced Automakers to Make Cars People Won't Buy. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said the Obama administration's focus was on forcing car manufacturers to make cars that people won't buy when the focus should have been on making cars that people actually buy more efficient. Pruitt said the emissions standards for cars and light trucks set by the previous administration were "inappropriate and should be revised." His agency announced Monday [4/2/2018] that it planned to revise the standards, but did not specify what specific standards would be set going forward. Obama's Strategy: Planned Failure. Obama's attack on the energy sector was two-pronged. Part of it was planned failure. The other was basic corruption. [...] Obama actively worked to destabilize the Middle East throughout his presidency. You can see it in the hasty withdrawal from Iraq (that every single general opposed), the abandonment of allies in Egypt, the bombing campaign in Libya, the Iran nuclear deal and the indecision and inaction in Syria. Every one of these decisions was clearly aimed at destabilization. As many presidents before him, Obama's choices were motivated by oil. What separates him is that he wanted oil prices to skyrocket, and they did. I don't recall AP stories about Obama's disastrous policies imperiling global economic growth. During Obama's eight years of the slowest economic recovery in seventy years I do not recall the AP or other media outlets fret about the largest economy in the World stifling global economic growth. As Obama stacked regulation upon regulation, it was similar to adding tariffs to whatever the regulations applied to — and the media cheered. Obamacare also added many new taxes and mandates and each added costs (equivalent to tariffs) to the product. As prices went up, businesses had less money to hire more people and people had less money left over to buy other products or services or to invest and save — and not once do I recall the media worrying about the taxes and regulations slowing down the economy. Obama said we can't drill our way to energy independence. Actually, we did.. In 2012, no less an authority than Barack Obama told us that calling for increased production by increased drilling — "drill, baby, drill," he called it — was not a plan, but rather "a bumper sticker." Mr. Obama assured us, "You know, we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices," as if all the people who disagreed with him were simply refusing to admit that, deep down, they were wrong and he was right. The Editor says... Great News On Regulation from the Trump Administration. Many of the Obama administration's worst actions involved issuance of "guidance," i.e., a left-wing interpretation of federal law that was often tendentious if not outright untenable. Nevertheless, most companies, universities, etc., were cowed into complying with Obama's "guidances." [...] Rule making under the Administrative Procedure Act requires following an actual process, with public comment and opportunity for appeal. Thus it is inconvenient for leftists. Issuing "guidance" is an inappropriate shortcut that generally just means implementing the administration's political wish list. Obama never understood that America needed a good economy. To Obama, people didn't need money, they needed programs, with bureaucrats monitoring and administering the goodies, rewarding the 'good' and punishing the 'bad' (such as the tea parties). it's why he started so many of them. It's why he hired so many bureaucrats and took over so much — from health care to government land. All he refused to do was cut taxes. But by leaving tax cuts on the table, it was an easy thing for Trump to snap up the opportunity, work with Congress on a tax cut plan, and just run with it. In a nation pent-up with uncut taxes, the result has been absolutely stellar, just as it was in the 1980s, an era when Obama was out focused on one-way nuclear disarmament from the U.S. alone. He didn't think there was anything to a good economy. Was Mr. Obama intentionally weakening the economy, or was he just incompetent and obstinate? The economy began to recover as soon as Obama was gone. Obama tops 2017 biggest losers. While his name has rarely been in the news in 2017, Obama's policies were nearly always in the headlines — or at least behind them. The economy, for example. It's hard not to notice the stock market's performance since Trump's win: A 250-point jump the next day, and up more than 6,000 points (more than 30 percent!) since Election Day. Not Inauguration Day — the day Trump policies would begin. No, the markets merely needed to know that the Obama-era policies were ending for the rally to start. And they were right, too. The economy has grown twice as fast under Trump than it ever did during any year of the Obama administration. Obama had eight years in power, pushed through major legislation like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, doubled the national debt — and the economy grew at a pathetic 1.5 percent his last two years in office. Every day of over-the-top economic news in 2017 was a reminder of just how badly Obama under-performed as president. Trump's First Year vs. Obama's Eight Years. Here are President Obama's main accomplishments over eight years: [#4] Regulatory avalanche: Obama added tens of thousands of regulations and burdens to businesses and individuals as fast as he could. This certainly helped empower and enrich the D.C. suburbs but not the rest of us. I honestly can't think of any policies that Obama passed or implemented that had the effect to help the U.S. economy and the people as a whole. The result of Obama's high tax, high spending, high regulations was the slowest economic recovery in eight years and $10 Trillion more in debt along with more people being dependent on government. The results are in. Barack Obama was the roadblock to recovery. obama [sic] was bent on "spreading it around" and making so sure no one got a leg up on anyone else that he largely kept everyone down. He kept his jackboot on the throat of American business his entire tenure and tied the country in knots with regulations. [...] The truth obama [sic] cannot face is that he was responsible for his moribund economy and worst recovery almost ever. Trump's $33 Billion Tax Cut You Didn't Know You Just Got. In a recent editorial, we noted that President Trump's decision to get rid of President Obama's Clean Power Plan would be a major money-saver for companies and a deregulatory boost for the economy. Now, new data actually put a dollar figure on it. Senior Trump officials now estimate that the president's decision will save consumers some $33 billion [...] since they will avoid paying the much-higher costs that Obama had baked into the energy cake through his plan to cut CO2 emissions by 35% over the next 14 years. The U.S. Now Ranks 11th In Economic Freedom, Thanks To Obama. Each year, the Cato Institute puts out a comprehensive ranking of more than 150 countries based on five measures of economic freedom: the size of government, the legal system and property rights, sound money, trade policies, and regulation. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. ranked in the top 5. By 2008, the country had slipped into sixth place. But then came the Obama years. His big-spending, tax-hiking, regulating policies were, by his own estimation, supposed to quickly end the recession and drive annual economic growth up to 4%. Instead, it knocked the U.S. way down on the freedom ranking. In Obama's first year, the U.S. fell from sixth place to 10th. The next year it fell again, to 18th. No, Obama Didn't Prevent the Next Great Depression. "Saving the economy from a great depression." That was Barack Obama's response when asked by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace to identify his "biggest accomplishment." In Obama's defense, it's not as though he enjoys a Reaganesque litany of accomplishments from which to choose — winning the Cold War, reversing a decade of economic stagnation, restoring America's sense of pride and optimism, etc. With no significant part of the world better off today than when Obama entered office, any "accomplishment" he selected was going to be a stretch. Nevertheless, it's simply not true that Obama saved the economy from the next great depression. Quite the contrary, the federal government's own economic data shows that Obama actually inherited an emerging recovery. The American economy was already rebounding before he even officially became president. What he has done is impose policies that have resulted in the slowest decade of economic growth in recorded U.S. history. Obama Didn't Save the Economy, He Subdued It. But look at the bright side: At least Barack Obama managed to double the nation's debt in just seven years and ran up the worst deficits in history achieving it. Obama and his apologists habitually claim credit for revitalizing the economy and sparing us from the next Great Depression. It's closer to the truth, however, to say that he inherited an incipient recovery, not a recession. And his economic stewardship hasn't saved the nation's economy, he subdued it. The government's own numbers tell the ugly story. DHS: Obama Gave Work Permits to 2.3 Million Migrants for 2016. The Department of Homeland Security has released data showing how former President Barack Obama gave work permits to roughly 2.3 million migrants for U.S. jobs in 2016. The award of 2.3 million work permits was added to the 2016 inflow of roughly 1.1 million new legal immigrants and roughly 500,000 outsourcing visa workers, such as the H-1B white-collar workers. The combined inflow delivered 4 million legal foreign workers to Americans' economy in 2016, just as 4 million young Americans turned 18 and began looking for decently paid jobs. From 2012 to 2016, Obama boosted this little-recognized work-permit inflow by 73 percent, from 1.3 million to up 2.3 million. Trump axes 860 Obama regulations, 179 from 'secret' list. White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney accused the Obama administration Thursday of keeping a "secret list" of proposed regulations during Mr. Obama's eight-year regulatory onslaught against businesses, and touted President Trump's rollback of more than 800 Obama-era rules and proposals. Of the 860 rules or proposed rules that the Trump administration has killed, 179 came from what he called Mr. Obama's "secret" list. As Trump aides combed through the books, they found pending proposals that included rules on hardwood plywood research and new requirements for contamination control in cattle slaughter operations. Withdrawal from the Paris Accord is a Win for America. For starters, the Paris Agreement should have never legally been allowed to happen in the first place. Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution says, "[The President] shall have power, by and with the advice of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur..." The founding fathers incorporated this clause into the Constitution because international treaties are legally binding on our nation and future Presidents. No president should enjoy such a monarchical type power, but it seems that President Obama believed he alone should. President Obama ignored this constitutional requirement in an unsurprising move, and circumnavigated the Senate by writing the agreement into law through a series of executive actions. His administration knew that the agreement would not pass with a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Yes, President Trump Can Undo Controversial National Monuments. [Barack Obama] was the king of Antiquities Act abuse, designating more monuments covering more area than any prior president. He tripled the total area restricted, adding more than 500 million acres in new and expanded monuments. Most of this area was locked up during the last year of Obama's presidency, once he was no longer accountable to voters. There's a reason presidents designate "midnight" monuments at the end of their terms: they can be extremely controversial when people depend on the use of areas being closed off to support their families. Take Bears Ears National Monument. In the final weeks of his presidency, President Obama declared 1.35 million acres in Utah off-limits, over the objections of the governor, Utah's congressional delegation, and local governments. Shortly before, a poll found that only 19% of Utahans supported the monument. Trump is reviving the energy industry Obama tried to kill. Buried in an otherwise humdrum jobs report for March was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Labor Department that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016 and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs. What a turnaround. It comes at a time when liberals have been saying that Donald Trump has been lying to the American people when he has said that he can bring coal jobs back. Well, so far he has. Obama was terrible for economic growth. On Thursday we closed the book on the Obama economic "miracle" — and it's a miracle we are not in a recession. Last week the Commerce Department released its third revision for fourth-quarter 2016 gross domestic product. The number came in at a paltry 2.1 percent, meaning that growth during President Obama's final year in office — the end of an "Error of Hope" — landed with a big thud at just 1.6 percent. That low-water mark puts the Obama presidency in last place among all the post-World War II presidents when it comes to economic growth. New Analysis: Obamacare Regulations Drove Up Premium Costs by Up to 68%. Until recently, the House was scheduled to vote on the American Health Care Act, the GOP leadership's proposal to repeal and replace parts of Obamacare. That vote has been called off. While the American Health Care Act would have repealed some Obamacare regulations, the bill does not go far enough. Obamacare caused premiums to rise for various reasons, chief among them being the vast new regulations the law imposed on insurance markets. A new analysis from Milliman backs this up. The study provided estimates of the average impact that various Obamacare regulations had on premiums. A Surge In Optimism After 8 Years Of 'Hope-n-Change'. We've been cataloging the sharp upturn in optimism since Donald Trump won the November election, and the Business Roundtable has just added a new one to the pile. Not that you'd know about from the endless media dirge. The Business Roundtable survey of 141 CEOs — of some of the largest companies in the country — not only found these chief executives more optimistic, but made clear why: Trump's victory in November and the promise of relief from the anti-business agenda of the Obama years. Democrats need to help fix the Disastercare they created. Remember how for years after President Obama first got elected we had to hear all about how Republicans destroyed the economy? They had driven the car into the ditch, the president complained. Republicans were standing around, drinking their big Slurpee, Mr. Obama would add, laughing at his own unfunny joke. It was entirely up to him and the Democrats, he would say, to get America's car out of the ditch. And then Republicans had the audacity to want the keys back! As with just about every other thing the former president said, it was pretty much a complete lie. Obama, Organizing for Action, and the Death Throes of the Democratic Party. Obama is no fool and he understands — having encouraged Black Lives Matter and the war on police and law enforcement, having facilitated ballooning welfare rolls and doubling student debt to $1.35 trillion, having presided over a flood of immigrants illegally crossing the southern border, and having pushed unprecedented deficit spending that added nearly a trillion dollars annually to the federal debt and doubling that debt in eight years to $20 trillion — that the U.S. is nearer collapse than at any previous time. And every Marxist knows that socialist transformation first requires collapse of the old order. Obama has not only been trained in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, but he's familiar with the "crisis strategy theory" of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, two neo-Marxists who taught at Columbia University, where Obama later studied. Thank You, Obama: U.S. Steadily Lost Ground On Economic Freedom Over Past 8 Years. The U.S. currently ranks a dispiriting 17th on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. That's down from 6th when Obama took office in 2009. The question isn't whether President Trump can turn this dismal trend around, it's whether Democrats will let him. The Heritage Foundation has been publishing this index since 1995. It measures things like property rights, fiscal health, business freedom, tax burden, government spending, rule of law and other indicators of economic freedom in 186 countries. Based on these, each country gets an overall freedom index score, which then can be ranked against other countries. The Cost Of Regulatory Compliance: $20,000 For Every American Worker. [Scroll down] One direct implication from these soaring compliance costs and the heightened pace of government regulation, is that the US has become, in relative terms, a harder place to start a new business, which may also explain why the bulk of, if not all, job additions under Obama was in minimum-wage, part-time and other low-paid service jobs, leading to a record number of multiple jobholders in recent months. Obama pushed $157 billion in 'midnight regs,' a year's worth in two months. Former President Obama made good on his effort to tie President Trump's hands with new regulations, adding $157 billion in new rules from Election Day to Inauguration Day alone. A new report from American Action Forum, which charts regulations, said that the administration published a full year's worth of new rules in just two months. The Craziest Regulations in the Obama Era. The Obama administration set a record by issuing 97,110 pages of regulations for nearly 4,000 new federal rules, at an estimated cost of nearly $350 billion. Rules such as the Obamacare employer mandate and the Environmental Protection Agency's regulations over power plants and rivers, streams, and ponds are well known, and reflect the expansion of the federal bureaucracy. But lesser known rules shed light on the size and scope of the government, as well. The Case for Scott Pruitt to Serve as EPA Administrator. Of all the agencies that need to be reined in, the EPA is one of the more urgent cases. Founded in 1970, the EPA is relatively young but has already become one of the most burdensome agencies. In recent days, the EPA has lost cases in court and even turned the Animas River orange in a completely preventable incident where acid mine waste contaminated the water. The regulations the EPA places on American businesses means that companies are made to comply with esoteric, everchanging law. To stay afloat, companies need to spend money on lawyers who can help them navigate through the thicket of regulations. Combine this with a corporate tax and it becomes clear that America is not the most compelling place to have a flourishing business. Confronted with this fact, American businesses have a choice. They can stay and hemorrhage money in order to stay abreast the regulations; productivity will decrease as workers will be laid off so lawyers can be afforded. Or they can take the more rational approach and relocate their operations to other countries with little to no regulations of this sort. Putting An End To Obama's Economy-Destroying Regulatory Siege. Yes, Congress passes many of the laws that make these regulations possible. In 2016, Congress passed 211 laws, which is pretty impressive given that the House was only in session for about 111 days. Even so, Obama's bureaucracy in 2016 laid on another 3,852 new federal regulations, without any input from Congress, adding billions of dollars of cost to U.S. businesses and consumers. At year-end, the Federal Register totaled 97,110 pages — up from 80,260 just last year. It's a massive tidal wave of new regulation and, economists agree, a major reason why the economy continues to struggle. U.S. Debt Grows by a Trillion Dollars in 2016. The latest numbers from the U.S. Treasury say the United State's federal debt has risen by a trillion dollars in President Obama's final year in office, while Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. [...] To put the number in perspective, in order to spend one trillion dollars, you would have to spend ten million dollars a day, every day for 273 years. Obama Publishes $7.4 Billion Worth Of Regulations In One Night. The Obama administration is busy pushing out last-minute regulations, including releasing $7.4 billion worth of new rules in just one night. Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the right-leaning American Action Forum (AAF), compiled a list of regulations published Wednesday night [12/28/2016] in the Federal Register. Let's Send Him Out With a Laugh. There was the administration's wink-and-a-nod to an atrocious UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a betrayal of an ally which was sharply condemned on a bipartisan basis and repudiated almost immediately by our British friends. [...] More locally, there was the Bacchanal of regulations unleashed by the administration — the total for 2016 ended up being 3,853, which comes to an average of 18 for each of the 211 laws passed by Congress during the year, and an astonishing 97,000 pages added to the Federal Register. Estimates of the economic effect of those regulations run easily into the tens of billions of dollars. And naturally, there was the stuffing of the federal employment rolls with as many partisan hacks as possible in an effort to poison the incoming administration with hostile bureaucrats. Not to mention the last-minute lawsuits Obama is having his agencies cook up in order to punish businesses his administration disfavors. EPA targets key ingredient in pizza, bread in latest eleventh-hour rule. The Environmental Protection Agency is targeting a key ingredient for making pizza and bread in its latest last-minute regulation before President Obama steps down. The proposed regulation published Wednesday [12/28/2016] would make the emissions standards for industrial yeast makers much more strict. The EPA said beer, champagne and wine makers, all of whom use some form of yeast, are safe for now. The real targets are those who produce high levels of hazardous air pollutants. It's not the bread, bagel and pizza makers who are targeted under the rules, but the less than a dozen big plants that produce the yeast needed to produce the valuable bread-based products. Seven Ways Obama Is Trying to Sabotage the Trump Administration. [#3] Ban on oil drilling: An overt act of sabotage directed at the American economy itself, leaving an especially heavy bootprint on Alaska. Smug administration flacks spent the past couple of weeks assuring media talking heads that Obama's unprecedented abuse of an obscure law was impossible for his successor to reverse. It's like they stayed up all night, looking for executive actions that can't be undone by the new President four weeks later. Obama plots jobs killing 'midnight lawsuits'. The Obama administration, which is planning to unleash billions of dollars of new last minute regulations to shore up the president's legacy, is now also readying "midnight litigation" targeting businesses, lawsuits that are expected to kill jobs. In advance of that move, several pro-business and anti-tax groups are urging the incoming Trump administration to junk the lawsuits on Day One. In a letter to transition chief Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, the groups warned, "Should the Obama administration bring non-routine, last minute, legally unorthodox midnight litigation, your administration should not hesitate to withdraw immediately from that litigation." Obama unleashes 3,853 regs, 18 for every law, record 97,110 pages of red tape. President Obama's lame duck administration poured on thousands more new regulations in 2016 at a rate of 18 for every new law passed, according to a Friday analysis of his team's expansion of federal authority. While Congress passed just 211 laws, Obama's team issued an accompanying 3,852 new federal regulations, some costing billions of dollars. The 2016 total was the highest annual number of regulations under Obama. Former President Bush issued more in the wake of 9/11. Obama administration announces controversial Utah and Nevada national monuments. The Obama administration designated 1.6 million acres of Utah and Nevada as national monuments Wednesday, including one controversial area of Utah that is rankling congressional Republicans. The White House announced the 1.35 million-acre Bear Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah and the 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument just outside of Las Vegas. The two desert monuments have long been discussed as possible monument designations, and President Obama said it was time to protect important Native American spaces and natural wonders. He said the areas contain cultural artifacts, including rock art and archeological sites, and lands that Native Americans consider sacred. Obama's Last-Minute Offshore Drilling Ban Could Be Illegal. Outgoing President Barack Obama used his executive authority to "permanently" ban oil drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, but this move may be illegal, according to an industry group. Obama's administration used a legal strategy crafted by environmental activists to remove sections of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans from future offshore drilling lease sales, which they claim will be "permanent." "It is pretty clear that this is a hollow 11th hour action," Christopher Guith, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "In spite of the narrative that extreme interest groups who pushed the White House to do this, there's nothing about this that's permanent. The White House itself didn't use the phrase permanent, they said it was 'indefinite.'" Obama Oil Drilling Ban on Thin Ice. President Obama apparently wants his legacy to be one of energy starvation for the United States and dependence on foreign energy from friendly places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. His ban on offshore drilling in federally owned waters off our Atlantic and Arctic coasts makes no sense, either environmentally or economically. 'Legacy': 10 Ways Barack Obama Broke the American System. [#1] The stimulus. On the campaign trail, Obama promised a $50 billion stimulus and criticized George W. Bush for building up the national debt. In office, Obama passed a nearly $1 trillion stimulus, over Republican objections, that failed to keep unemployment from below 8% (as promised), and went largely to pet projects and state and local governments. The profligate spending shocked voters who feared that the country was now on an irreversible path to fiscal ruin. The Tea Party was born. Obama Administration Admits Paperwork Burdens At Record Levels. For the first time in more than two years, the administration released its count of the cumulative regulatory paperwork burden Americans must confront annually. Known as the "Information Collection Budget" (ICB), it includes a snapshot of the total paperwork burden, how that burden changed among agencies, and a list of agency violations of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). Something Wicked This Way Comes. A critical thinking individual may be wondering how retail spending could even be positive if real household income is still below 2008 levels. You can thank the Fed, your $800 billion TARP contribution to Wall Street bankers, and millions of delusional borrowers lured back into spending money they don't have for things they don't need. Credit card debt is now approaching $1 trillion again for the first time since 2008. At least the Wall Street banks have repaid the favor of TARP and 0% borrowing rates from the Fed, by only charging 14% on credit card balances and racking up billions in late fees if the bill is paid one day late. [...] The real reason for the 25% increase in credit card debt since 2010 is because a huge number of households are surviving on their credit cards. You now can pay your electric, gas, water, sewer, phone, real estate taxes, and Federal taxes with a credit card. Of course, there is a 3% to 5% "processing fee" for your friendly Wall Street banker. Jim Quinn Warns: Obama and the Democrats Have Strapped a Fiscal Suicide Belt to the Entire Country. Writing at The Burning Platform, econ blogger Jim Quinn offers a comprehensive summary of the fiscal time bomb that Barack Obama and the Democrat Party have bequeathed to this and future generations. On Oil, No Backsies! The president is relying on a novel — and imaginary, and dishonest — interpretation of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he says empowers him to make, by unilateral executive fiat, new drilling rules that cannot be undone by any successor president. Legally speaking this is, as Professor Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School wryly put it, "uncharted waters." The New York Times, acknowledging that President Obama is interpreting his powers in a way that is not obviously legal and is at the very least at odds with prior practice, concedes: "The declaration's fate will almost certainly be decided by the federal courts." We might hazard a guess about how that will happen, based on the example of the Obama administration. Obama urges Trump to resist executive action, then goes it alone on Arctic oil ban. During a Monday [12/19/2016] interview with NPR, President Obama urged his successor to avoid relying on executive action. The next day, he did the opposite, unilaterally closing millions of acres of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans to oil exploration. The episode offers a primer on the Left's double standard on presidential power. While Obama urges President-elect Trump to work with Congress, he's acknowledged another set of rules for his own actions. Whatever is not expressly forbidden — and more importantly whatever a Democrat president can get away with — is permissible. The drilling ban at once solidifies Obama's legacy as an environmentalist as well as an imaginative and overreaching executive. Obama legacy: $1 trillion in regs, 754,208,700 paperwork hours added. The Obama administration has greatly added to the regulatory burden on U.S. companies and citizens, approving rules that cost over $1 trillion and that add 754,208,700 hours of paperwork. And there are still 31 days left in his administration. Obama shock: Another $6 billion in 'midnight regulations'. President Obama, who this week has issued a flurry of environmental rules, is planning to unleash another set of "midnight regulations" right before he leaves office that will cost Americans $6 billion. Obama has already broken all past records on creating federal regulations and red tape, and his new adds will boost the overall price tag to over $1 trillion. The new regulations, according to the watchdog group American Action Forum, include four from the Environmental Protection Agency and one from Interior. President Obama's Last-Minute Monument Decision Is Wrong for Utah. Many of you have been fighting with me over the past six years to prevent President Barack Obama from designating additional national monuments in Utah. Now, unfortunately, we are hearing that the president is planning to follow through with the threat to designate the Bears Ears National Monument. In her confirmation hearings, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell committed to ensuring that there would be local support for a monument before recommending monument designation to the president. There is not nearly enough local support for the Bears Ears National Monument to justify designating it. Obama expected to bar drilling in swaths of Atlantic, Arctic. President Barack Obama is expected to order wide swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans placed permanently off-limits for oil drilling, people briefed on the administration's plan said, in an 11th-hour push for environmental protection before he leaves office. President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic ocean. President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling. Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them. Report: Obama Will Permanently Block Arctic Drilling Before Trump Takes Office. The Obama administration will use a legal strategy crafted by environmental activists to remove sections of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans from future offshore drilling lease sales, according to two sources familiar with the plan told Bloomberg. For months, environmentalists have been urging President Barack Obama to use Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a 1953 law governing offshore drilling, in a way it's never been used before — to block offshore drilling leases in the Atlantic Ocean and the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Mining companies scramble to fight burdensome new EPA rule. The proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) changes shift the burden of financing Superfund cleanups — which are also known as National Priority List, or NPL, sites — away from the federal government to the mining facilities, a move that would cost the industry $171 million a year and save the EPA $527 million over 34 years, according to the agency's Regulatory Impact Analysis. Companies see an added burden as much as 20 times higher from the insurance and bonds they would be required to get, and believe the change will have a devastating impact on the economy of states like Nevada, which leads the U.S. in gold production, and other metal-mining states, most of them in the western half of the country. Tax Code Compliance Costs Economy $1 Trillion Annually. The complexity of the tax code now costs the economy around $1 trillion per year, according to a report from the Tax Revolution Institute. Title 26 of the U.S. Code has 74,608 pages and 2.4 million words. The IRS recently added 7.7 million words of tax regulations to help clarify what the code means, as well as 60,000 pages of case law for accounts and tax lawyers. The report noted that the 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica is 44 million words in length, which means that the tax code is nearly one-fourth of its length. Why the Media Can't Tell the Truth about Trump. President Obama repeatedly trashed fossil fuel companies, banks, investment banks, insurance companies, drug companies, physicians, and others. He intentionally bankrupted coal companies and for-profit colleges. He and the Treasury Department unilaterally rewrote tax law to try to prevent companies from moving their headquarters. The media and Democrats never had a problem with any of this, but if Trump jawbones companies that is unheard of. Now that Trump has ripped into Boeing and Lockheed for costs, Democrats and the media all of a sudden care deeply about them. This is the first time I can recall that the media and Democrats are worried about government interference with corporations. Obama legacy: Most red tape in history, 35 days still left. The Obama administration has broken another White House record: publishing the most red tape ever. And with still 35 more days to go in the administration, during which departments are scrambling to implement more regulations that could tie the incoming Trump administration up for years, the red tape is expected go expand even further into uncharted territory. Trump Election Saves Us From the Evil Party. When the law is one man using "a pen and a phone," there is no foundation on which to build or expand a business. Instead entrepreneurs sit on a thin crust atop a pool of quicksand, afraid to move for fear of upsetting their precarious positions. Who would start a new bank, or make a loan to a small business, in the age of Dodd-Frank empowering hyperactive regulators to create and enforce any rule they like? Thanks to Democrats, the only people who can get loans in 2016 are those who don't really need them. Who would buy and develop land that has a semi-permanent puddle on it, knowing that Obama's EPA might classify it as a wetland to be protected at a greater cost than the homes you were thinking of building? Who, other than already-enormous companies, can navigate the FDA quagmire to gain the approval of a new life-saving drug — a drug which must then carry an exorbitant price tag to recover the regulatory costs of bringing it to market? East Coast fishermen file appeal over cost of government-required 'at-sea monitors'. David Goethel built his life off the profits of cod, trolling the waters of New England for 30 years netting the region's once-abundant signature fish. [...] But a controversial federal mandate is threatening to put him out of business, he claims. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, requires groundfishermen — those who catch cod, haddock and other common bottom-dwelling species — to carry on board "at-sea monitors." The observers, hired by three for-profit companies, are third-party workers whose task it is to observe fishermen's compliance with federal regulations and ensure annual quotas are not exceeded. Who do you trust on the economy: Obama or your own lying eyes? A new analysis by senior Gallup economists makes this contradictory, stark statement: "There is no recovery. Since 2007, U.S. GDP per capita growth has been 1%. The Great Recession may be over, but America is dangerously running on empty." A How-to Guide for Rolling Back Obama's Regulatory State. One of President-elect Trump's most encouraging campaign promises was his vow to tackle the regulatory state. For hard-working Americans, it's essential that he keeps this promise. The ever-growing regulatory state has harmed economic growth, job growth, and wage growth. Since 1980, regulations have cost the economy $4 trillion, or about $13,000 per American. During the Obama administration, over 600 major regulations have been issued, with a total cost exceeding $700 billion over his eight years. But unraveling these regulatory burdens is not as simple as waving a pen or picking up a telephone. That's why it's critical that Trump and Congress adopt a workable strategy to repeal harmful regulations from the Obama era. New EPA rules push regulatory costs past $1 trillion, $3,080 per person. The new implementation of EPA rules on heavy trucks has boosted the 10-year regulatory burden on America past $1 trillion, 75 percent of which have been imposed by the Obama administration. That amounts to a one-time charge of $3,080 per person, or an annual cost of $540, according to a new analysis from American Action Forum. Obama focusing on regulatory footprint before end of term. The Obama administration is introducing a last-minute barrage of costly environmental regulation pronouncements that Republicans have vowed to repeal as soon as possible after Donald Trump's January 20 presidential inauguration. [...] Case in point: an announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the administration's most energetic rule-makers, on Wednesday [11/30/2016] that after lengthy study, it would push ahead with tougher greenhouse gas emission standards, equivalent to 54.1 miles per gallon fuel efficiency, for passenger cars and light trucks for the years 2022-2025. Obama focusing on regulatory footprint before end of term. The Obama administration is introducing a last-minute barrage of costly environmental regulation pronouncements that Republicans have vowed to repeal as soon as possible after Donald Trump's January 20 presidential inauguration. The recent outpouring adds to the administration's dubious record of producing more than 600 major regulations — those estimated to cost more than $100 million each — during its tenure, according to a study by the American Action Forum, a Washington-based think tank. Obama to Push Nearly 100 New Regulations Before Leaving Office. The Obama administration is preparing to give the middle finger to the American electorate by ignoring the results of the recently held election and continuing with Obama's efforts to "transform" America. The president has been unable to effect much transformation via Congress, so he has once again picked up his pen and is readying a dizzying array of new regulations from a dozen different agencies that will massively increase the burden on American business. Seventeen of the planned regulations are classified as "economically significant," meaning their impact will be at least $100 million on business. Obama plans to push through last-minute 'midnight regulations' to limit Trump. Is it possible for Obama to ram through regulations to make it more difficult for Trump to fulfill his campaign promises? Apparently, yes. Yes he can. And you can bet your bottom dollar that he will do exactly that, given his not-so-secret dislike of the President-elect. It's just a coincidence so many of our regulations could come in just before we leave, claims Obama White House. The White House denied on Tuesday [11/29/2016] that President Barack Obama is planning to ram through last-minute regulations to cement his legacy. Any executive actions the president is planning to implement before Donald Trump takes office were already in the works, the president's spokesman said Tuesday. 'I'm not going to rule out additional executive actions that the administration may take between now and January 20. After all the President of the United States is the President of the United States until January 20,' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. Obama is set to ram through last-minute 'midnight regulations' to secure his legacy. Barack Obama is set to ram through last-minute law changes to try and cement his legacy, according to reports. 'Midnight regulations' are those introduced between November's election and January's inauguration of a new president. It is a last chance for an outgoing Commander-in-chief to put his stamp on the presidency and tie the hands of his successor. New overtime law goes into effect Dec. 1, affecting millions of workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act changes the threshold for overtime pay to $47,500. Salaried workers who make less than that amount will become eligible for overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week. Under current rules, companies can avoid paying overtime to full-time salaried employees if they make as little as $23,660 by classifying them as exempt. Those workers can't make overtime pay even if they work more than 40 hours a week. But with the Fair Labor Standards Act going into effect, those rules change. Not so fast! Judge blocks Obama's attempt to require overtime pay for millions of Americans. A Texas judge blocked President Obama's bid to expand overtime pay protections to millions of Americans on Tuesday, thwarting a key presidential priority just days before it was to take effect. The Labor Department rule doubles the salary level at which hourly workers must be paid extra for overtime pay, applying the requirement to anyone making up to $47,476 annually. U.S. District Court Judge Amos L. Mazzant III sided with Nevada and 20 other states in their bid to halt the rule, and he incorporated a similar legal challenge from a coalition of business groups including the Chamber of Commerce into his ruling. Texas court blocks overtime rule. In a stunning blow to the Obama administration's economic legacy, a federal judge in Texas granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday delaying implementation of a regulation that would extend overtime eligibility to an estimated 4.2 million workers. The ruling puts in serious jeopardy the most significant wage intervention by President Barack Obama, who has been unable to persuade Congress to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour. The Labor Department regulation, previously set to take effect Dec. 1, effectively restored overtime pay to the middle class after decades of erosion had reduced it to a benefit available only to low-wage workers. Federal Judge Just Delivered Devastating Blow to Barack Hussein Obama. We all know that to President Obama, big government is good government. Which also means that he thinks government knows best when it comes to all things... that are actually none of their business. For example, running small businesses. Just recently the man tried to ENFORCE small business owners to pay 'overtime' to particular workers, regardless of whether or not it was in the budget to do so. Of course this type of 'bullying' did not hit the masses very well, and one of them was a federal judge in Texas. So he decided to do something about it. Texas, thank you again. On his way out, Obama cedes Arctic energy control to Russia. This isn't really the same as prying the W's off the keyboards in the Oval Office, but Barack Obama seems determined to leave some unpleasant going away presents for his successor on the domestic energy front. Before leaving office, the President has modified the agreement for future oil exploration leases to eliminate nearly all Arctic sites. Needless to say, the energy industry isn't exactly ecstatic over this. Obama blocks new oil, gas drilling in Arctic Ocean. The Obama administration is blocking new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean, handing a victory to environmentalists who say industrial activity in the icy waters will harm whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbate global warming. The Editor says... Obama to block new Arctic drilling. President Obama is planning in the coming days to release an offshore oil and natural gas plan that blocks new drilling leases in the Arctic Ocean through 2022, people familiar with the plan said. The decision is part of the Interior Department's five-year plan for offshore drilling, which lays out all of the proposed auctions for drilling rights on the outer continental shelf. President Obama's UniParty Slush Fund. [Scroll down] The shovel ready jobs program was a ruse, as Obama later admitted there were no "shovel ready" jobs created. Instead the reality was the $1 trillion ["Stimulus"] entered the various cabinet offices at the discretion of the President. Initially Obama gave a big chuck to the Dept of Education to use as a subsidy for economic drops in state education funds. In essence Obama subsidized the teachers payrolls, and kept the teachers union happy. Other notable large expenditures went into crony capitalistic endeavors with the Dept of Energy and EPA (Solyndra etc.), along with the State Dept. The key point is the $1 trillion 2009 "stimulus" funds, became a tool for President Obama to use in whatever cabinet office need he saw. What Obama Just Did Exemplifies Why His Economy Continues To Stink On Ice. Uncertainty. Perhaps the worst of words for private sector investors. The free market is filled to the brim with it. One rarely if ever knows how things will transpire. You measure twice — if not three, four or five times. And then you cut your deal. Then you cross your fingers — and hope for the best. And with all of that — eight out ten businesses fail. Ouch. But that's the nature of the private sector. If you want a successful, vibrant economy — you have to acknowledge and accept this uncertainty as a part of the deal. What you don't need — is all sorts of additional, superfluous, ridiculous uncertainty piled on top of you by government. Obama Issued $596 Billions Worth Of Unfunded Mandates. The Obama Administration imposed a record number of 101 unfunded mandates, costing $596 billion and 101 million paperwork hours, according to a research paper released Friday [10/7/2016] by The American Action Forum (AAF). To put those figures in context, there were just 88 unfunded mandates between 1996 and 2008. Thus, Obama managed to trump 13 years worth of unfunded mandates in just two terms. The Bush Administration pushed 56 unfunded mandates, and the Clinton Administration imposed even less — 32. Debt Under Obama Up $9,000,000,000,000. The federal government passed a fiscal milestone on the first business day of fiscal 2017 — which was Monday, Oct. 3 — when the total federal debt accumulated during the presidency of Barack Obama topped $9,000,000,000,000 for the first time. Report: Obama Administration's Labor Regs Cost Economy $80 Billion, 150,000 Jobs. Labor regulations issued in the last year of the Obama presidency will cost the economy roughly $80 billion over the next 10 years and eliminate 150,000 jobs, according to a report from the National Association of Manufacturers. The report analyzed seven regulations from the Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Equal Opportunity Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board. The measures included the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, updated overtime rules, new silica standards, the Ambush Elections rule, reporting requirements for employment and wages, and reporting requirements for workplace injuries and illnesses. The National Association of Manufacturers found that these rules could cost the economy $81.6 billion, eliminate 155,700 jobs, and impose 411 million paperwork burden hours on companies. Other people may have helped get the ball rolling, but Obama has amplified their mistakes. How 2008 Changed Everything. [Scroll down] The search for prudent investment created the subprime crisis. The assumption was that housing was an absolutely safe investment. Home prices always rise. Investing in mortgages was a conservative investment, and investing in the more exotic derivatives of mortgages was prudent and produced a handsome return. The core assumption — that home prices would always rise — proved incorrect. But at its root was not the financial snake oil salesman, but conservative investors wanting a place to invest safely in an environment where safe investments had become hard to find. The snake oil salesman simply took advantage of the natural greed in us all, promising vast riches at no risk. Kerry to reach key milestone in air-conditioning phase-out. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to reach a milestone Thursday [9/22/2016] in finalizing a key part of President Obama's climate change agenda on phasing out refrigerants used in air conditioners that are blamed for raising the Earth's temperature. The White House said Kerry will meet with nearly 100 nations on Thursday to hash out an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, first created to fix the ozone layer in the 1980s, to phase out refrigerants to combat global warming. The deal would reduce the Earth's temperature by 0.5 degrees, Brian Deese, the president's climate change adviser, told reporters on a call Wednesday. Observers said the deal on Thursday is the prelude to a big push by the administration to finalize the deal on limiting hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, during an international gathering in Kigali, Rwanda, next month. The Editor says... Study: US Cost To Cut Emissions = $5+ Trillion. President Barack Obama's pledge to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 2005 levels by 2050 might cost more than $5 trillion over three decades, according to a new analysis. More than 190 countries announced similarly ambitious targets in Paris in December, but none included estimates of the costs. For the U.S., they're huge: up to $176 billion a year, or $5.28 trillion over 30, according to Columbia Business School economist Geoffrey Heal. His new paper breaks down the costs of the most important prerequisite for achieving the target: making electricity generation carbon-free. The costs aren't a line item in the federal budget, but would largely be picked up by utilities, which would pass on the capital costs to consumers. Obama Will Set Aside 5,000 Square Miles Off New England, Ban Commercial Fishing. The State Department is hosting a two-day conference on the world's oceans, beginning today [9/15/2016], and it's expected to produce a raft of announcements and initiatives, including new marine protected areas — one off the coast of New England — as well as a ban on single-use plastic bags. Ahead of the conference, press reports said President Obama on Thursday will establish the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean to permanently protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England. The White House said the designation will lead to a ban on commercial fishing — an industry that made New England famous — but a 7-year exception will be granted for the lobster and red crab industries. Recreational fishing will be allowed within the monument. Mining and drilling will be banned in the protected area. Obama to announce first Atlantic Ocean monument. President Obama on Thursday [9/15/2016] will designate the first national marine monument off the Atlantic Coast as part of a broad conservation push to fight the effects of climate change on sea life. The announcement comes just two weeks after he designated the largest marine national monument off the coast of Hawaii. Obama will make the announcement at the third annual Our Oceans Conference being held in Washington with leaders from around the world. Obama Will Set Aside 5,000 Square Miles Off New England, Ban Commercial Fishing. The State Department is hosting a two-day conference on the world's oceans, beginning today [9/15/2016], and it's expected to produce a raft of announcements and initiatives, including new marine protected areas — one off the coast of New England — as well as a ban on single-use plastic bags. Ahead of the conference, press reports said President Obama on Thursday will establish the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean to permanently protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England. The White House said the designation will lead to a ban on commercial fishing — an industry that made New England famous — but a 7-year exception will be granted for the lobster and red crab industries. Recreational fishing will be allowed within the monument. Mining and drilling will be banned in the protected area. Obama: Oceans key to protecting planet from climate change. Creating the Atlantic Ocean's first marine national monument is a needed response to dangerous climate change, oceanic dead zones and unsustainable fishing practices, President Barack Obama said Thursday [9/15/2016]. The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. It's the 27th time that Obama has created or enlarged a national monument. The Editor says... GOP Lawmaker Calls Obama's Climate Agreement A Work Of 'Science Fiction'. Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith told reporters that President Barack Obama's decision to ratify the climate agreement Saturday [9/3/2016] in China was a strategic move to stifle public scrutiny. The decision to join the climate agreement was based on "science fiction," not solid science, Smith said, adding that forging it without the consent of Congress is "all pain and no gain." "In committing the United States to the United Nations' Paris climate agreement, the president is wrongly trying to make law by his own executive action," Smith said. "His agreement bypasses Congress, puts our nation at an economic disadvantage and imposes undue and unsustainable burdens on American families." Mission Accomplished: Record Number of Tent Cities Springing Up Around the Country. It has been reported that that the number of homeless children in this country has risen by 60 percent since the last recession, and Poverty USA says that a total of 1.6 million children slept either in a homeless shelter or in some other form of emergency housing at some point last year. Yes, the stock market may have been experiencing a temporary boom for the last couple of years, but for those on the low end of the economic scale things have just continued to deteriorate. Tonight, countless numbers of homeless people will try to make it through another chilly night in large tent cities that have been established in the heart of major cities such as Seattle, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis. Homelessness has gotten so bad in California that the L.A. City Council has formally asked Governor Jerry Brown to officially declare a state of emergency. Obama administration kills ITT Tech, stranding 40,000 students and destroying 8,000 jobs. Tyrants throughout history have known that beheading their enemies and placing the heads on pikes at the gates of their capitals sends a powerful message to everyone else. Behave yourself as we dictate, and you may survive. Cross the king and you are dead man. Something very similar, but updated and taken to a vast financial level, happened to ITT tech, the privately owned trade school/university. Obama Celebrates Slave Labor Day in Red China. The old joke, "He'll do anything for the worker except become one," may apply to the Democratic Party and its modern-day leaders. The days when Democrats represented the working man are gone. Today, Democrats are more likely to preserve fish than jobs. A case in point is President Obama's unilateral designation of 600,000 square miles of water around Hawaii as a national monument. The rationale for destroying jobs and devastating fishing communities is global warming. "It's a good time to be a fish" says the website of Global Citizen. Human beings aren't faring so well. Here's One Promise President Obama Has Kept. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to "bankrupt" the coal industry. Since April of 2105, six major U.S. coal companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the subsequent loss of more than 80,000 jobs. Obama Kept His Promise, 83,000 Coal Jobs Lost And 400 Mines Shuttered. This Labor Day, America has 83,000 fewer coal jobs and 400 coal mines than it did when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, showing that the president has followed through on his pledge to "bankrupt" the coal industry. A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama's first term. During Obama's second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs, 10,900 of which occurred in the last year alone, according to federal data. Under Obama, National Deficit Skyrockets to Ludicrous Levels, Again. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just revealed that this year's federal budget deficit will rise to $590 billion, a depressing 35% increase over last year's already-high $438 billion: [...] As Barack Obama staggers toward the end of his failed presidency, that marks just the latest milestone in what is perhaps his worst legacy, one that remains grotesquely underreported by the "watchdog" mainstream media. Namely, he possesses what is by far the worst deficit record in U.S. history. Obama Bypasses Congress to Create 87,500 Acre National Monument in Maine. In a more than 3,900-word proclamation establishing 87,500 acres of the Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine a national monument, President Barack Obama bypassed Congress and its power to create national parks — a move that has made some in the state unhappy, including the state's governor, Republicans and an Independent lawmaker in the U.S. Congress. On the eve of the National Park Service's 100th anniversary on Aug. 24, Obama issued the lengthy proclamation that includes references to glaciers retreating 12,000 years ago, people living there for more than 11,000 years and the end of the logging livelihood there "based primarily on environmental concerns" in the 1970s. The Editor says... Regulators Are Running Amok. Late last week, the Transportation Department issued a proposed rule that would require new commercial trucks and buses to have speed-limiting devices installed in them. The government says the move is about increasing safety and reducing emissions, but what it's really about is showing how federal regulators can pretty much do whatever they want these days. Levin: No One Has Done More Damage to This Nation Than Barack Obama. On his show Wednesday, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin slammed Obama and his administration for the Iranian nuclear deal saying, no one has done more damage to this nation than Barack Obama. "No one, no human being has done more damage to the security of this nation, to the wellbeing of this nation, to future generations of this nation than Barack Obama," remarked Levin. "Nobody." Obama creates largest ocean reserve, takes heat for new federal decrees. President Obama, with the stroke of a pen, created the world's largest ocean reserve on Friday [8/26/2016] off Hawaii, days after designating a massive federal monument in Maine — moves that have angered local lawmakers who accuse the president of disregarding the impact on residents. Obama used a presidential proclamation to expand the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii by over 400,000 square miles. The preserve now stretches 582,578 square miles, the world's largest marine protected area. [...] But the decision drew sharp criticism from the fishing industry and even fellow Democrats, as it will drastically expand the area where commercial fishing and drilling is banned. Government wants to lower top speeds of tractor trailers and buses. A new proposal Friday [8/26/2016] would impose a nationwide limit by electronically capping speeds with a device on newly made U.S. vehicles that weigh more than 26,000 pounds. Regulators are considering a cap of 60, 65 or 68 mph, though that could change. Whatever the speed limit, drivers would be physically prevented from exceeding it. The proposal, which comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, does not force older heavy vehicles to add the speed-limiting technology, but the regulators are still considering it. Government: New 700,000-Word Regulation is Good for You. The nine-second video of two federal bureaucrats the White House posted on its blog last week was notable for something it omitted. That something was very big — and putting it on display might not have fit with the apparent propaganda purpose of the video. [...] The regulation is 1,690 pages long. Page 1,689 is the signature page for [Transportation] Secretary [Anthony] Foxx. Page 1,690 is the signature page for [EPA] Administrator [Gina] McCarthy. When Foxx and McCarthy signed the regulation — as recorded in the video on the White House website — they did not place the first 1,688 pages anywhere within view of the camera. Was that in deference to trees? Or did the Obama administration not want to show America that these two unelected bureaucrats were signing a 1,690-page regulation. Study: Obama Administration Imposes $743 Billion in Regulatory Costs On the Economy. President Obama has added a record number of major regulations, more than 600 major regulations imposing more than $743 billion upon the economy. A new report by the American Action Forum (AFA) shows, since President Obama took office in 2009, the federal government has issued 600 major regulations imposing more than $743 billion upon the economy. According to the AFA, the Obama administration issues an average of 81 major rules, regulations with an economic impact of at least $100 million, on a yearly basis, or approximately one major rule every three days the federal government is open. EPA's Absurd New Fuel Standards for Trucks Will Raise Upfront Costs. In a continued effort to address alleged man-made global warming, the Obama administration has finalized energy efficiency standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks. While the administration is pledging to reduce fuel use and cut greenhouse gas emissions, its stringent energy mandate will do nothing to affect climate change. What it will do, however, is take decisions away from the American individuals and businesses and consolidate more power in Washington. The regulation requires a wide variety of vehicles — from school buses and passenger vans, to garbage and delivery trucks and long-haul tractor-trailers — to improve fuel efficiency. 1,690-Page 'Climate Change' Reg Increases Cost of Tractor-Trailer Up to $15,119. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration jointly issued a new regulation last week that is meant to help protect the world from "climate change" by limiting "greenhouse gas emissions" and improving fuel efficiency in medium- and heavy-duty vehicles operated in the United States. The 1,690-page regulation is approximately 700,000 words long. A "regulatory impact analysis" published by EPA and NHTSA estimates the regulation will add an average of as much as $13,749 to the cost of a tractor truck and $1,370 to a trailer, making some tractor-trailer combinations $15,119 more expensive in 2027 than they would be under current regulations. Hillary Would Give Us a Disastrous Third Obama Term. No matter what he says now, President Obama promised his obscene $800 billion "stimulus" package would actually stimulate, and it did the opposite. But Clinton would continue the ruse, expecting us to believe four more years of this insanity will produce different results. Her five-part plan is more of the same nonsense: 1) Investing in infrastructure. 2) Make college available for all. 3) Make companies share more profits with their employees. (And these people claim they're not socialists). 4) Make corporations, the wealthy and Wall Street pay their fair share. 5) Create policies that "support 21st-century families" — equal pay, paid leave, reduced child care costs. Seriously, which of these strategies could conceivably unleash sustained economic growth? 600 Major Regulations. Since President Obama took office in 2009, the federal government has issued 600 major regulations totaling $743 billion, or about 1 major rule every four or five days. In more than six years in office, President Obama had imposed more regulations than President Bush did in eight years. The administration has issued a record-breaking figure 600 major regulations in roughly 7.5 years, 20 percent more than the previous president did in eight years, for a combined economic burden on the economy of at least $743 billion, larger than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Norway and Israel combined, amounting to $2,294 regulatory costs on every person in the United States. Obama: 'One of the Most Urgent Challenges of Our Time is Climate Change'. President Barack Obama picked one of the hottest weekends in the Northeastern U.S. to discuss climate change. "One of the most urgent challenges of our time is climate change," the vacationing president said in his Saturday radio address. He touted his efforts to cut pollution, including from cars and trucks, assuring Americans, "we're not done yet." The Clintons' Hatred of For-Profit Colleges Magically Melted Away After Receiving $18 Million From One Such Insitution. Hey, remember the good old days when Barack Obama attacked for-profit colleges with his traditional balanced aplomb? [...] The result — like all of Mr. Obama's initiatives — is to eradicate consumer choice and put ever more control in the hands of government. And his relentless, destructive efforts have been successful. In 2015, the Government Employed Over 277,000 Regulators. Want to work in a field that has more than quadrupled in size since 1960? Consider being a regulator for the federal government. Even during the last recession, the regulatory agencies were hiring. In 2015, the U.S. government employed more than 277,000 regulators. To put that number in perspective, it's 50,000 more workers than General Motors Co. employs throughout the entire world. We've all heard of the regulatory agencies that constitute the "fourth branch" of government. It has cost our economy over $100 billion during the Obama administration. But it wasn't always like this. We haven't always lived in a world where unelected bureaucrats could fine a man $55,000 for taking photos of his friend's art project. Obama's rules have drained small business. The Obama administration is responsible for six of the top seven all-time highest total number of pages of rules and regulations published in a given year in the Federal Register. Obama has added an average of 78,785 pages annually, up more than 2,000 a year from the 76,783 pages issued annually by his predecessor. While all these new rules are well-intentioned and have a purpose, they are killing smaller businesses, such as community banks, independent health care providers, manufacturers and service providers. More, these rules give bigger companies a competitive advantage, because they can afford the lawyers necessary to stay compliant with federal law. Obama's Regulatory Onslaught Totals $743 Billion, And Counting. President Obama is fond of saying that it's a myth that tax cuts and deregulation will produce economic growth. "It doesn't work. It has never worked," he said a few years ago. Last June, he reprised this meme, saying that "the primary story that Republicans have been telling about the economy is not supported by the facts. It's just not." Record 600 Major Regulations Imposed Under Obama. The federal government has imposed a new major regulation every three days since President Barack Obama took office, as the administration has shattered the record for implementing regulations costing the economy $100 million or more. The Obama administration has now issued 600 major regulations, the center-right policy institute the American Action Forum noted in a recent report. "One year ago, the American Action Forum (AAF) celebrated a regulatory milestone, of sorts: 500 major regulations," wrote Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy. "A major regulation has an economic impact of $100 million or more and can significantly affect prices for consumers." Obama has exceeded the 426 regulations introduced under eight years of George W. Bush despite serving less time in office so far. Obama's Historically Bad Economy. The recent release of anemic quarterly economic-growth numbers for 2016 has revived the debate over the Obama economy. Some say it has been okay; some say it has been lousy. In truth, the economy under President Barack Obama has been historically bad. How bad? Adjusted for inflation, average yearly GDP growth under President Obama has been less than half of what it was under President Jimmy Carter, 1.5 percent to 3.3 percent. Study: Obama issued $743B in regs. Since President Obama took office in 2009, the federal government has issued 600 major regulations totaling $743 billion, according to a new study from the conservative American Action Forum. The Obama administration issues an average of 81 major rules, those with an economic impact of at least $100 million, on a yearly basis, the study found. That's about one major rule every four to five days, or, as the American Action Forum puts it, one rule for every three days that the federal government is open. Obama issues guidance making it tougher to build roads, bridges in name of climate change. Building that bridge or expanding that highway just became more difficult under a rigorous standard issued Tuesday by the Obama administration that will make it easier to block a wide range of projects in the name of climate change. The final guidance broadens the National Environmental Policy Act by requiring agencies to quantify the impact of activities that require federal permits not just on the environment but also on "projected direct and indirect GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions." The Editor says... WH wants all agencies to consider climate change. The White House said Tuesday [8/2/2016] it wants all agencies to consider climate change when conducting environmental reviews for energy projects, or anything else, that require such a review. The White House Council on Environmental Quality issued its final guidance Tuesday, setting new standards for agencies to include climate change impacts in environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act. "The final guidance is another big step in the administration's effort to consider how all types of federal actions will impact climate change and identify opportunities to build climate resilience," the White House environment office said. Obama Didn't Save the Economy, He Subdued It. Obama and his apologists habitually claim credit for revitalizing the economy and sparing us from the next Great Depression. It's closer to the truth, however, to say that he inherited an incipient recovery, not a recession. And his economic stewardship hasn't saved the nation's economy, he subdued it. The government's own numbers tell the ugly story. The Obama economy is trouble for Hillary Clinton. A slew of bad economic headlines last week made it official: The Obama economy has failed. As noted in the Wall Street Journal, "Even seven years after the recession ended ... in terms of average annual growth, the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949." The economy has grown at an annual rate of only 2.1 percent since the recession ended in June 2009, compared with annual growth of 4.3 percent during the economic expansion from 1982 to 1990. Report: Worst economic recovery since 1930s, salaries fall $17,000 short. The sputtering economic recovering under President Obama, the last to follow a major recession, has fallen way short of the average recovery and ranks as the worst since the 1930s Great Depression, according to a new report. Had the recovery under Obama been the average of the 11 since the Depression, according to the report, family incomes would be $17,000 higher, six million fewer Americans would be in poverty, and there would be six million more jobs. "Obama's economic policies," said the report from the Heartland Institute, "produced the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression, worse than what every other president faced with a recession has achieved since the 1930s." Under Barack Obama, National Debt Increases $100 Million Every Hour of Every Day. What took other presidents more than 200 years to do, Barack Obama has done in one year, and he continues doing it year in, year out. During the Barack Obama administration, $1.1 trillion dollars has been added every year to the national debt. This is not exactly the legacy one would expect from a man who, as a senator in 2006 said that "increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren." Ironcially [sic], as president, Barack Obama has laid upon the backs of those very children and grandchildren a debt that increases by about $100 million every hour, every day. We Have Added 1.1 Trillion Dollars A Year To The National Debt Under Obama. We have added an average of 1.1 trillion dollars a year to the national debt under Obama, and we still have about six more months to go. In 2006, U.S. Senator Barack Obama's voice thundered across the Senate floor as he boldly declared that "increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren." That was one of the truest things that he ever said, but just a couple of years later he won the 2008 election and he turned his back on those principles. National Debt On Track To Hit 141% Of GDP As Outlook Worsens — CBO. The nation's long-term fiscal picture has grown considerably more dire over the past year, according to the latest forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, driven mainly by out-of-control spending. The CBO now expects federal debt held by the public to reach 141% of the nation's GDP by 2046, assuming that current policies remain in place. EPA Tops Record for Regulatory Burden. The Environmental Protection Agency now imposes nearly 200 million hours of paperwork to comply with its regulations, as new rules have skyrocketed under the Obama administration. A new report released by the American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute, found complying with the agency's rules now requires 188 million paperwork hours, the equivalent of 95,000 Americans working full time for a year. "Years of regulatory accumulation, especially under the Obama administration have pushed EPA's paperwork burden to its highest level in history," the report, written by Sam Batkins, said. "Year after year of new regulatory costs have not only translated into shuttered power plants, but also new reporting and recordkeeping requirements. EPA's paperwork burden now stands at 188 million hours." Unleash the Producers, Not the Parasites. A simple count of U.S. patent awards confirms that the Obama era has not been good for innovation and exchange. The percentage of U.S.-based patent awards is now at an all-time low, having continued its decades-long decline during Obama's presidency. Instead of "saving the middle class," as he often boasts of doing, Obama has overseen further erosion of national innovation and prestige. As for prosperity, recent data for U.S. family income has been dismal. Median household income has never recovered the high of the Bush years, when it reached $57,357 in 2007. In 2015, according to the U.S. census, it was $52,250. And for workers in the lowest quintile, the very ones Obama and Hillary Clinton claim to champion, it was $11,676 (2014 figure). One fifth of American families are living on less than $12,000 per year. That is the shameful truth of the Obama years. Yet in February, Hillary Clinton told voters that Obama hasn't received "the credit he deserves." New Rules Expected to Curtail Gulf Oil Production. The Obama administration finalized new rules it says will improve drilling safety in the Gulf of Mexico, but some experts are saying the regulations will undermine safety. The Interior Department, which is responsible for licensing and regulating oil and gas production on the U.S. outer-continental shelf, unveiled the sweeping new regulations on April 14, 2016. The centerpiece of the new regulations is a plan to monitor the safety of offshore wells. Under the regulations, monitoring of well safety would shift from being located on-site — at the offshore drilling platform — to being stationed at onshore electronic observation centers. America In Free Fall. President Obama, in response to attacks on his record by Trump-and by Bill Clinton, who has spoken of "the awful legacy of the last eight years"-is entering the campaign to brag about the current economy. But to do so, President Obama must ignore a number of liabilities that are soon coming due. Under his tenure, he did not address the unsustainable actuarial realities of Social Security and Medicare. The federal debt doubled in a manner never seen prior and can be now serviced only through de facto zero-interest rates, which in turn ossify economic growth. Due to tax hikes, new financial and business regulations, and the socialization of the health care system, per annum GDP growth under the President's tenure will go down in history as the worst since the Great Depression. He ignored the Clinton-Gingrich compromise formula of a quarter-century ago of balancing budgets by cutting defense, capping spending, and raising taxes. Instead, Obama slashed defense spending and hiked a number of taxes, but ignored entitlements, ensuring $500 billion annual deficits-deemed successful because they were less than his first-term normal of $1 trillion annual shortfalls. The President points to the 5 percent unemployment as proof of his success, but that figure reflects Obama-era methodologies of not counting all those who have given up looking for jobs. In May 2016, a record 94,708,000 Americans were no longer in the labor force-the highest percentage of non-working Americans since the Great Depression. Obama's Hidden Tax Hikes. Red tape is as old as the government itself. And like federal spending, the number and the cost of regulations tend to rise over time regardless of which party controls the White House. But critics contend that Obama has taken it to a new level. "It does go up almost every year," said James Gattuso, senior research fellow for regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation. "But this is different, the last few years, in terms of scale." The Obama administration added 43 new major regulations — defined as having an annu[a]l cost of at least $100 million — totaling $22.9 billion, a report co-authored by Gattuso last month for the Washington-based think tank calculated. The total number of new rules imposed in 2015 was 2,353, raising the count to 20,642 since 2009. The annual cost of all those regulations is $112 billion. The Red Guards Are Green. In Venezuela, which is admittedly ruled by a socialist regime, an iconic firm called Empresas Polar, which provides everything from pasta to beer, is suffering under government price controls and regulations, and has been declared an enemy of the state. The Wall Street Journal has been covering the fate of this firm in detail in a dramatic series of articles. Here, the problem is actually worse. Rather than targeting just one firm, the Obama administration has been seeking to destroy the entire coal industry, along with the jobs of tens of thousands of workers that the old-style Marxists used to claim to represent. In their latest move, "the Obama Administration is giving the industry its last rites by halting new coal leases on federal lands where mining is still profitable," the Journal noted. This is not just Obama's policy. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that if she became president, "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." How Obama Has Made It Harder for Companies to Hire. Government data released on Wednesday [6/8/2016] shows the number of private-sector job openings was at an all-time high in April. Companies, however, hired the fewest number of people on a seasonally adjusted basis in nine months. Why the disparity? The JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) data the government released show there were 5,289,000 private-sector job openings in April — 114,000 more than in March. The government report also shows that private-sector hires declined by 169,000 compared to March. With private companies advertising so many job openings, why are they not filling them? Keyword: Cloward-Piven strategy.
It's Boomtime For Regulators Under Obama, While Economy Flatlines. The economy might be tepid under President Obama, but there is one part that has been thriving. Since Obama took office, the federal regulatory economy has never been better, with solid growth in spending and employment. That's according to a new report that tracks how much the government spends on federal regulatory activity. That is, how many people work at regulatory agencies, and how much money those agencies spend. The numbers are staggering. Obama's Paris Agreement: A Precursor To Increased Government Control And Regulation. June marks just the second month since President Obama committed the U.S. to the Paris Climate Agreement, but already concerns over the potential for success are starting to pile up. Government reports and policy experts increasingly point to mounting evidence that Obama's pledge under the Paris Agreement is simply unachievable, leading to the conclusion that the Agreement could be the precursor for even more job killing and economically disastrous regulations. Thanks to EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, American farmers are a newly endangered species. It is getting harder and harder, and in legal terms more dangerous, to be an American farmer these days, thanks to the aggressive behavior of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I know, because I'm paid as a consultant to advise farmers in California on how best to comply with federal regulations under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Increasingly, those regulations are changing at the arbitrary say-so of the Corps regulators who implement the EPA's regulations on the ground, even though most practices followed by American farmers have been exempted from CWA prohibitions since it was written in 1977. In the past few years, those regulators — many of whom admit that they know very little about farming or agricultural practices — are radically reinterpreting the rules to limit what farmers do, even on land where they have done similar things for decades. U.S. drops from first to third in global competitiveness ranking. The U.S. economy is no longer the most competitive and pro-business in the world, after holding the top spot for the previous three years, according to a comprehensive new survey. The Switzerland-based IMD World Competitiveness Center in its 2016 ranking puts the U.S. third behind China's Hong Kong region and Switzerland. Hong Kong was praised for its low tax base, lack of capital controls and its position as a gateway for investment into the Chinese mainland. Under Obamacare, Small Business Owner Forced to Get Rid of Health Care Benefits or Face Fine Up to $500K. Prior to the Obama administration's announcement, many small business owner were under the impression the Affordable Care Act would have little to no impact on them, especially because the law's employer mandate created requirements for businesses with more than 50 employees. However, small businesses are now faced with having to do away with a vital tool used for their employees or face hefty fines. Seven Giant Scandals That Barack Obama Just Couldn't Keep Undercover! [#2] The Affordable Care Act: The dreaded Obamacare. This was just a horrible, horrible lie perpetrated upon the American people. "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan!" He was so adamant about it. Well, really good liars usually are. With thousands of peoples healthcare plans dropped, and premiums gone through the roof, it is by far the biggest job-killer today. For Harried Assistants, Overtime Rule May Have Its Downside. In the eyes of those who have survived the gantlet of midday coffee runs and late-night emails, the administration's overtime regulation represents nothing less than the beginnings of a cultural shift, and not necessarily a welcome one. Our part-time jobs president. Although a sitting president can exercise a great deal of influence in trying to shape his "legacy," in the end it is always history that makes the final call. From a job creation perspective, it is highly likely that President Barack Obama will be remembered as the "part-time jobs president." Despite campaign and media claims of helping the "low-income working people," probably no other president in history has directed federal agencies under the control of the executive branch to pursue economic and fiscal policies that have created a boom in part-time, low paying jobs. The creation of these is mostly at the expense of full-time, better paying jobs. Obama Has 3,260 Rules In The Regulatory Pipeline. The Obama administration's got more than 3,200 regulations at various stages of completion, including 2,239 active rules agencies are working to finish before President Barack Obama leaves office. The White House's Office of Management and Budget released its spring 2016 "Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions," which lists 3,260 regulations at various stages in the regulatory pipeline. The vast majority of these regulations — 2,239 — are considered "active" rules, meaning regulators are still working on them. 20,642 New Regulations Added in the Obama Presidency. The tide of red tape that threatens to drown U.S. consumers and businesses surged yet again in 2015, according to a Heritage Foundation study we released on Monday [5/23/2016]. More than $22 billion per year in new regulatory costs were imposed on Americans last year, pushing the total burden for the Obama years to exceed $100 billion annually. That's a dollar for every star in the galaxy, or one for every second in 32 years. Overbama — an interfering president on overtime. Let's say you just realized that you'll need to leave work an hour early on Friday to have time to get to your son's school play. No worries, your boss is reasonable, so you approach him with a plan: You'll make up the hour by staying later than usual on the first of the month, the next day you have a free evening. "Sure," he says. And everyone lives happily ever after. But wait, the federal government is on the line. Some busybody from the Department of Labor is telling you that you and your boss aren't allowed to come to this agreement. Marxist Economics 101: Obama Explains It All for You. The Obama administration now controls how much you can earn. Not just inclined to meddle in the ongoing "minimum wage" argument — the minimum wage must always and everywhere be $0.00, which is what unpaid interns work for — the Emperor Hussein II has now decreed that private employers must provide overtime pay to salaried employees who work more than 40 hours a week. Doubling the Washington-ordained salary threshold from $23,600 to $47,500, the "progressives" take one more step toward disabling the private market economy and replacing it with the Marxist "labor theory of value," all in the guise of doing good, of course. Ryan: Overtime rule is 'absolute disaster'. House Republican leaders are slamming the Obama administration for expanding overtime pay to some 4 million Americans. In a statement, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the overtime rule an "absolute disaster" for the economy. "This regulation hurts the very people it alleges to help," he said. "Who is hurt most? Students, nonprofit employees, and people starting a new career. By mandating overtime pay at a much higher salary threshold, many small businesses and nonprofits will be unable to afford skilled workers and be forced to eliminate salaried positions, complete with benefits, altogether." The rule released late Tuesday [5/17/2016] makes anyone earning up to $47,476 a year, or roughly $913 a week, eligible for overtime pay. Obama's New Overtime Rule Turns Salaried Employees Into Hourly Workers. Juggling work and family life is hard. On Wednesday the Labor Department made it even harder for millions of salaried workers. The administration's new overtime regulations will effectively turn them into hourly employees. The regulation won't increase their earnings, but it will greatly reduce their control over their schedules. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay hourly workers overtime for working over 40 hours a week. But the Fair Labor Standards Act regulations exempt many salaried employees. This makes sense: Salaried employees get paid to do a particular job, not work particular hours. They also generally have more control over when and where they work. Surprise, surprise, Obama's new overtime rule was never intended to raise your wages. Technically, the overtime rule greatly increases the number of salaried workers who qualify for overtime pay, raising the salary threshold from $23,660 to $47,476. That amount will rise every three years to match the 40th percentile of salaried employees in the lowest income region, normally the southeast. The administration projects 4.2 million employees will become newly qualified for overtime pay. Obama Explains Administration's New Rule That Businesses Must Pay Salaried Workers Overtime. In his weekly address released today, President Barack Obama explained a new federal regulation finalized this week by the Department of Labor that will required employers to pay overtime to salaried workers who make less than $47,500 per year. The federal-regulation-mandated overtime will kick in once the salaried worker has worked more than 40 hours in a week. "It's a move that will boost wages for working Americans by $12 billion over the next 10 years," Obama argued. Obama Address on Overtime Rule Shows He Doesn't Understand Economy. We've already seen the news that Team Obama plans on changing OT rules for salaried private sector employees, utterly failing to understand that things do not stay the same in response to government regulations. Obama extends overtime pay to millions. The Obama administration late Tuesday unveiled a final rule extending overtime pay to millions of workers. [...] The rule is one of the most significant regulatory initiatives of President Obama's second term, and has drawn fierce opposition from industry groups. With the Republican Congress standing firm against a minimum wage increase and other economic proposals from Democrats, the president has exerted the power of the executive branch to try and burnish his legacy. U.S. Has Lost 191,000 Mining Industry Jobs Since September 2014. The United States has lost approximately 191,000 jobs in the mining industry since September 2014 including approximately 7,000 that were lost in April, according to data published today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The coal mining industry alone has lost approximately 10,900 jobs since April of last year. "Mining employment continued to decline in April (-7,000)," the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its employment release this morning. "Since reaching a peak in September 2014, employment in mining has decreased by 191,000, with more than three-quarters of the loss in support activities for mining." Obama's Economy Is Bad; Clinton's Would Be Worse. On Thursday [4/28/2016] we learned the American economy expanded at an anemic rate of just 0.5 percent in the first three months of the year. It was the worst showing in two years and the third straight quarterly decline in economic growth. The millions of Americans who continue to struggle in the Obama economy have been held hostage by this persistently weak growth. In fact, not only is the so-called "recovery" the weakest since the 1930s, Obama is on pace to become the first U.S. president in history to have never presided over a full year of growth averaging at least 3 percent. Add in the fact that the middle class continues to shrink while wages continue to stagnate, and Obama will likely leave office with one of the worst economic records of any president. As GDP Flatlines, Obama Brags About His Economic Record. Obama talks about 14.4 million new jobs since 2010, without noting that working age population grew by 15.8 million over those same months. He touts the 5% unemployment rate, but fails to mention that it would be more like 10% if millions of Americans hadn't given up looking for work altogether. Obama does admit the recovery has been sluggish, but when he isn't blaming Republicans he says blames the "wrenching financial crises," saying it inevitably lead to unusually slow growth. Obama might think that, but a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta analysis concluded that "U.S. history provides no support" for such a claim. Even Sorkin, who is clearly trying to help Obama burnish his economic legacy, notes out that Obama's two biggest legislative achievements — ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank — hurt economic growth. Obama's lame economy limps along. When President Obama was asked recently what he wants to be remembered for, he quickly answered that it would be as the savior of the American and global economies. "There are things I'm proud of," he said, citing Obamacare, then added, "Saving the world economy from a Great Depression, that was pretty good." The economy was in free fall when he took office, and he's been boasting for seven years that it isn't any more. But no one worried that free fall would last forever. The real question was how long it would take before it bottomed out and bounced back. The American economy grew at an annualized rate of only half a percentage point in the first quarter of this year, it was announced Thursday [4/28/2016]. This is bad news for Obama's legacy and for Hillary Clinton, running for her former boss's third term. It is certainly a strain to see it as vindication of Obamanomics after six years of stimulus, pump-priming and stagnation. Of course: Obama pitches release of prisoners as economic stimulus. The Keystone pipeline will destroy the planet, but the prison-to-federal-job pipeline is vital to our economic progress. Obama should set an example by hiring released convicted felons to work at his presidential library as well as his personal post-presidency security detail. Obama Boasts In Britain: I Saved The World Economy As President. President Barack Obama boasted of his legacy during a town hall in Britain, asserting that he single-handedly saved the world during his presidency. "Saving the world economy from a Great Depression — that was pretty good," Obama bragged when asked by a student in London what he wanted his legacy to be.
Obama's Killer Economy. Middle-aged people laid off and unable to find work are taking another way out. They're killing themselves. Suicide rates are soaring, according to federal data released last week. Especially in economically depressed states and job-starved regions like upstate New York. People in need of work are twice as likely to take their own lives as employed people, and people fired in their forties and fifties find it hardest to get hired again. Are You Ready for $5 Gas? In a version of "hit 'em while they're down,' the Obama administration has unleashed a slew of new regulations targeting U.S. oil and gas production. These include costly methane emission rules on all new and existing wells, reversals of promised offshore acreage leasing, a de facto freeze of leasing on federal lands, and burdensome EPA restrictions of fracking. Then there is Obama's recent budget proposal of a $10-per-barrel surtax on top of the high taxes and royalties already paid by oil companies. Just as low oil prices are driving hundreds of oil companies out of business, Obama is piling on in an apparent effort to drive even more into bankruptcy. Barry the Cable Guy. Barack Obama exhibits a pattern of behavior Americans should recognize by now. Whenever this president starts talking about "loosening the grip" of corporations, increasing competition, and opening markets to ensure lower prices it's a sure sign that the noose of government is about to become tighter around America's neck. For nearly eight years, under the guise of shielding the American people from harm, Obama has methodically shifted power away from the private sector toward the most powerful and corrupt conglomerate on the face of the planet — the U.S. federal government. Let's not beat around the bush; the prospect of thwarting corporate America gets the president all excited. Obama executive order to open up competition in set-top cable TV boxes. The President has unveiled a new executive order which — if all this goes as planned — will open up the cable television industry to competition in the field of set-top control boxes. [...] After describing how competition in the once Ma Bell dominated phone business led to more innovation and a wider range of choices for consumers, the President describes his plans to do the same for cable TV. Promise Kept: Barack Obama Breaks the Coal Industry. President Obama's war on coal has bagged its biggest trophy to date: the bankruptcy filing by the largest U.S. coal company, Peabody Energy. Make no mistake about it, though, Peabody's management and that of the rest of coal industry bears much of the blame for its own demise. It ought to serve as a lesson for everyone else targeted by take-no-prisoners progressives. Obama Escalates His War On Prosperity. Not since the New Deal's heyday in the 1930s has Washington waged such an unrelenting assault against the private sector. [...] Banks have been reduced to the role of utilities. One group victimized has been small and new businesses, which have been starved of reasonable and reliable lines of credit since Obama took office. Hospitals and health insurers know who their real customer is these days — Big Government, not the patient. The EPA's jihad against fossil fuels is well-known. Even the Internet hasn't been spared, as the FCC, a supposedly independent agency, has meekly followed White House orders to hit the Net with 1930s' rotary-phone-style regulations. This maneuver was illegal and will continue to suffocate new investment until the courts can adjudicate the matter. Largely unremarked upon has been the Federal Reserve's extraordinary usurpation of power, notably its seizure of nearly $4 trillion in financial assets. Run Against Obama. Obama has put the private sector in a half nelson. More businesses are dying than being born. Business startups are the source of 20 percent of new job creation, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. While a significant number of new businesses fail within five years, the successful ones tend to grow faster than older, established firms and thereby create more net new jobs. The Obama administration has thrown sand in the gears of the U.S. economy through excessive regulation, taxes and restricting access to capital (see Dodd-Frank). Some 80 percent of small-business owners cite Washington policies for the poor climate. Under this administration, corporate taxes are the highest in the world. Will the last company in America please turn off the lights? On Tuesday Pfizer Inc., one of America's iconic pharmaceutical companies, announced that it is dropping it's bid to merge with Dublin-based Allergan. The $150 billion deal was killed apparently by changes in tax laws announced by the Obama administration a few hours before. Pfizer must now pay up to $400 million to Allergan for expenses associated with the cancelled wedding. Shareholders in both companies are the big losers. So are patients hoping for new miracle cures for diseases. Team Obama is setting us up for another housing-market collapse. The Obama administration is doing its best to give the nation another mortgage meltdown. As Paul Sperry recently noted in The [New York] Post, Team Obama has pushed mortgage lenders to offer home loans to folks with shaky credit, setting up conditions for another housing-market collapse. Wasn't the last one bad enough? Credit scores of approved borrowers, for example, have been trending down, even as their debt levels have grown. The Federal Housing Administration and government-sponsored "independent" lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been demanding lower credit standards — just as the feds did starting under President Bill Clinton, in pursuit of the same "affordable housing" goal. Chart: Power Is A Lot More Expensive Under Obama. [Scroll down] "President Obama openly ran in 2008 on a platform of making electricity rates 'skyrocket' and bankrupting anyone who dared to build a coal plant in the United States," Travis Fisher, an economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "Now, more than seven years into his presidency, it should come as no surprise that his efforts have taken a widespread toll in the form of higher electricity rates for nearly every state in the union." Despite falling generation costs, electrical utilities are being forced by the government to pay for billions of dollars of government-mandated "improvements" and taxpayer support for new wind and solar power systems. Obama's Abusing His Authority to Try and Stop American Tax Inversions. The U.S. tax system makes it extremely difficult for international businesses to compete in the global market. A prominent and recent example of the lengths American businesses will go to escape our anticompetitive system is Pfizer, a large U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturer. Pfizer recently tried to merge with Allergan and locate the newly formed business's headquarters in Allergan's home country of Ireland. This is known as an inversion. By doing this, Pfizer would've escaped from the onerous U.S. tax system that taxes the company on all the income it earns around the world, rather than only the income it earns domestically. Only six other countries in the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tax companies' income earned outside their borders. Of these, all of them have much lower tax rates than the U.S., which makes that extra taxation less relevant for their businesses. The U.S. is an outlier. Auditor: Government Will Owe More Money Than Entire Economy Produces. An auditor for the Government Accountability Office told lawmakers Wednesday [4/6/2016] that in the next few years the federal government will owe more than our entire economy produces. Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general for the Government Accountability Office, testified at the Senate Budget Committee to provide the results of its audit on the government's financial books. "We're very heavily leveraged in debt," Dodaro said. "The historical average post-World War II of how much debt we held as a percent of gross domestic product was 43 percent on average; right now we're at 74 percent." Dodaro says that under current law, debt held by the public will hit a historic high. Tax Reform Won't Happen Until We Have A President Who Understands Economics. On CNBC's Squawk Box today [4/6/2016], ATR President Grover Norquist ripped the Obama administration for its latest attack on American competitiveness. [Video clip] GOP's message to voters should be this: Supreme Court fight is about Obama's abuse of power. This isn't about Judge Robert Bork, or the "Biden Rule" — this is a fight about President Obama undermining the checks and balances established in the Constitution. For instance, President Obama has tried to essentially shut down our coal industry through new EPA regulations limiting carbon emissions. These rules would create a massive dislocation to our economy, which has long benefited from cheap energy, including abundant coal. That there is a significant cost to the economy is clear; Hillary Clinton recently said "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." How right, and how cruelly nonchalant that statement is. Obama to Energy Producers: Drop Dead. You know, I'm starting to think the Obama Administration really doesn't like old-fashioned hydrocarbon energy. And since when has the Federal government worried about "adverse effects on landowners"?? Well, at least the Obama Administration is going to carry through on allowing new offshore oil drilling. What's that? ["]Obama Rejects New Atlantic Ocean Oil Drilling["] Obama to kill off Arctic oil drilling. The Obama administration promised to protect Atlantic waters for future generations on Tuesday, raising expectations that waters off the US east coast and Alaska would be protected from oil and gas drilling. The expected decision reverses Barack Obama's move just last year to open up a vast swath of the Atlantic coast to drilling — and consolidates the president's efforts to protect the Arctic and fight climate change during his final months in the White House. The five-year drilling plan, which will be formally announced by the Interior Department, was expected to block immediate prospects of hunting for oil in the Arctic and much of the Atlantic, according to those familiar with the proposals. Clean power, dirty results. If President Obama were to demand that more than two-thirds of U.S. thread and cloth manufacturing be replaced by massing together spinning wheels and hand looms, most Americans would openly mock it. Yet, he is doing just that with electricity production. The U.S. Supreme Court recently placed Obama's Clean Power Plan (CPP) on hold while 27 states challenge it through the federal courts to better evaluate the plan's potential economic and social damage. However much the plan might reduce potential dangers of climate change, it will cause much more harm to middle-class and poor Americans if it is implemented. Obama: 'The Plans We Have Put in Place to Grow the Economy Have Worked'. With a smiling Vice President Joe Biden sitting beside him, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the White House today [3/4/2016] declaring that "the facts don't lie" and that the American economy "is pretty darn good right now." The president took credit for what he says is the excellent state of the economy, attributing it to his plans. Obama's Clean Power Plan: How Much Staying Power? The CPP is the newest set of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that, as the Atlantic states, "anchors the Obama administration's climate-change policy. It seeks to guide local utilities away from coal-fired electricity generation, and toward renewable energy and natural gas" — with a goal of reducing CO2 emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. [...] Immediately following the rule's publication, a coalition of 24 states and a coal mining company, led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), filed a lawsuit to challenge the CPP. Morrisey called it "flatly illegal and one of the most aggressive executive branch power grabs we've seen in a long time." The Editor says... The EPA's Clean Power Plan: America's Energy Outlook Is Bright — and Obama Hates It. Most importantly, Obama's outlook ignores market realities and assumes that governments can force their way on acquiescent populations. It doesn't seem to occur to the president that the world's seven billion people might not wish to pay double for their energy needs. That is one reason China and India and the rest of the developing nations refused to accept a binding agreement in Paris. Even developed nations in Europe and Asia were secretly relieved at the non-binding result. That leaves the Obama administration on its own, driving energy producers in the U.S. out of business while the rest of the world continues on a path to a more prosperous 2040. New regulations restricting methane release at drill sites will make U.S. oil production just that much less competitive. Not just oil and gas, but coal in particular has been a target. The administration's latest decision to suspend coal leasing on federal lands is one more blow against this once great industry — and one more impediment on the nation's economy. The Enemy Within. [Scroll down] One of the best examples of this is the proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP) that's being pushed by the Obama administration. Overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, CPP aims to reduce carbon emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. It will grossly impact fixed-income seniors, potentially gut millions of jobs from black and Hispanic communities, and has coal-producing states scratching their heads, as the new regulations would devastate their local economies. It's part of another area of Washington overreach — Obama's war on coal — which if successful, would kill over 125,000 jobs, along with a net loss of $650 billion in GDP over the next decade. Obama orders creation of new national monuments in California. President Barack Obama on Friday [2/12/2016] set aside 1.8 million acres of Southern California desert for protection, using his sometimes controversial executive power to designate three new national monuments. In a long-anticipated decision, Obama designated the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains national monuments in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. "The California desert is a cherished and irreplaceable resource for the people of Southern California," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said. The federal government already owns the affected lands, and Jewell noted that "valid existing" uses, including by the U.S. military, can continue. The Editor says... The Power Grid and the Presidency. Yesterday [2/9/2016], in a ruling that surprised many legal experts, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay that blocked the federal government from implementing a series of far-reaching environmental regulations that effectively crippled the coal industry. The new rules were issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last summer as part of President Obama's attempt to unilaterally force America's energy sector to conform to the administration's demands that it act to reduce carbon emissions. Why Won't Anyone But Rubio and Cruz Say Obama Is Destroying the Country on Purpose? [Scroll down] This is really, really important. There are only two people that I'm aware of that are making a consistent point of this. Rubio, actually, is atop of this. Rubio and Cruz are the only two in the entire Republican field. Carly Fiorina may have said something like this occasionally. With Rubio, it's a theme. With Cruz, it's close to a theme. And the real question is: Why do the other Republicans in the field disagree? Why do they not say it themselves, that Obama is doing what he's doing on purpose and by design? That is a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed plan to transform America into something it was not founded to be. This is something crucially important to Republican voters. To people inside the Beltway, it's kind of a chuckle. Obama wants to buy a green legacy with taxpayer money. Beware of politicians looking for a legacy — especially when they try to buy it with your tax dollars. President Obama will soon head to Paris for a climate change confab, where he hopes to get a standing ovation for leading the fight against fossil fuels — and he might just get it. He will argue that he has imposed countless new regulations to handcuff the energy industry — "regulations" instead of new laws because he has little congressional support for his environmental agenda, even among Democrats. New Obama regulation: White males lose, lawyers and Democrats win. Last Friday [1/29/2016], a new regulation was proposed by the Obama administration that will make it harder and more expensive for employers to hire and promote white males, enrich class action lawyers, and do absolutely nothing to accomplish the ostensible goal of raising the pay of women relative to men. [...] Just another way of making it more difficult and expensive to run an organization with employees. Is it any wonder that job creation has stalled? Obama's 'diversity' diktat is a giant gift to lawyers. If you're a white male looking for a job, your search just got harder. Claiming women aren't getting paid enough, President Obama wants to make it easier to accuse employers of gender discrimination and hit them with class-action lawsuits. A new regulation proposed on Friday [1/29/2016] will require all employers with 100 or more workers to report how much their workforce is paid, broken down by race and gender. The rule, slated to go into effect in September 2017, will cause headaches for employers and anyone — man or woman — who works hard and expects to get ahead based on merit. The winners are federal bean counters, class-action lawyers and the Democratic Party, which is playing up the gender "wage gap" as usual during this election year. Never mind that the gap is largely fiction. Under Obama: U.S. Has Dropped from No. 6 in Economic Freedom to No. 11. Millions of people around the world are emerging from poverty thanks to rising economic freedom. But by sharp contrast, America's economic freedom has been on a declining path over the past decade. America's declining score in the index is closely related to rapidly rising government spending, subsidies, and bailouts. According to the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, an annual publication by The Heritage Foundation, America's economic freedom has tumbled. With losses of economic freedom in eight of the past nine years, the U.S. has tied its worst score ever, wiping out a decade of progress. National debt hits $19 trillion. The national debt hit $19 trillion for the first time ever on Friday [1/29/2016], and came in at $19.012 trillion. It took a little more than 13 months for the debt to climb by $1 trillion. The national debt hit $18 trillion on Dec. 15, 2014. Another Bogus Effort To Bridge The Phony Gender Pay Gap. Using executive orders, President Obama has placed an intrusive new requirement on private employers to provide data about employee wages, gender and ethnicity to "help" enforcers of pay equity and spy on business. This is not about equality, it's about making big government even bigger. White House demands corporate data on women, minority pay. The Obama administration is proposing a new rule that would require companies with more than 100 workers to annually report pay information to the government for employees broken down by gender, race and ethnicity. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Labor Department published the rule in the Federal Register on Friday [1/29/2016], the seventh anniversary of the signing of President Obama's first law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. A Retrospective on the Obama Years. One of the weakest recoveries in the post-war period (labor participation remains historically low), a "shovel-less", oversold stimulus, massive tax hikes, and explosive spending define the Obama economic record. The result is a federal debt soaring toward $20 trillion, $9 trillion of which will have been added during Obama's tenure. Remember when Senator Obama labeled George Bush's $4 trillion debt "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic"? Well, apparently, neither does he. Obama's Legacy: Runaway Deficits, Debt And Health Costs. When President Obama released his first budget plan in 2009, he called it a "New Era of Responsibility." What he produced was irresponsibility on a historic scale. [...] Seven years later, a new Congressional Budget Office report reveals that Obama will bequeath chronic and rising deficits, rapidly expanding debt, and exploding health care costs to his successors. First, there's the deficit, which the CBO says will top $1 trillion in six years, and continue climbing. Over the next decade, deficits will total more than $9 trillion. The CBO's outlook has worsened significantly since its last forecast, mainly because it expects the economy to grow more slowly. DOE Enacts Expensive Commercial Air Conditioner Standards. As part of the Obama administration's ongoing efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from energy use in its battle against global warming, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced new energy efficiency standards for commercial air conditioners and furnaces in mid-December. The Energy Department says the new rules will "save more energy than any other standard issued by the department to date." Over the course of the next 30 years, the administration say the new standards will result in businesses saving $167 billion on utility bills and prevent the emission 885 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, and when combined with 40 previous energy efficiency regulations on consumer and commercial products the DOE has passed under Obama's presidency it will reduce emissions by 2 billion metric tons through 2030. The new standards take effect in 2018, requiring manufacturers build air conditioners and furnaces 13 percent more energy efficient than at present, with the standards requiring another 15 percent in effciency improvements by 2023. The Editor says... The Administration Is Ruling by Decree. [Scroll down] Under the new interpretation, thousands of businesses will now be found responsible for the working conditions of employees of other firms they do business with. They will be liable for breaches of the Fair Labor Standards Act. For example, if you contract out a service to a staffing company and that company is found to be not paying enough overtime, your business will be liable for that as well. The administrator of the DoL's Wages and Hours Division, David Weil, is very clear that he will be looking to ensure that big businesses are on the hook for the decisions of smaller businesses. The inevitable result of this will be the bringing of more jobs back within corporations, with job losses at the margins. Small service companies and entrepreneurs will suffer. Labor unions will benefit. Coal-Killing Job Killers. Since moving into the White House, Obama has used bureaucratic weapons and administrative agencies to assault America's coal industry. Between 2008 and 2012, the Wall Street Journal reports, 50,000 coal jobs were lost — that number would certainly be much greater today. West Virginia has been hit particularly hard with unemployment rates in double digits. Addressing the job losses, the Charleston Gazette-Mail blames the "liberal environmental policies that have accelerated coal's decline" — which it says have left "hard working men and women" jobless. In addition to the job losses, Obama's policies — such as the Regional Haze rule, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule, and the Clean Power Plan — have "helped spur the closing of dozens of coal plants across the country," according to Politico. The November 2015 report states: "More than one in five coal-related jobs have disappeared during Obama's presidency, and several major U.S. coal mining companies have announced this year that they would or may soon seek bankruptcy protection." President Obama's Methane Rule Threatens to Stymie U.S. Energy Growth and Innovation. In 2015 President Obama and his EPA cronies unveiled a plethora of new regulations that will surely send energy costs skyrocketing and stymie the ongoing renaissance in U.S. energy development. Regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, Ozone Standard, and the Waters of the U.S. Rule all pose a threat to efficient and affordable energy. On top of these costly new rules, President Obama will use the EPA in 2016 to once again impose his regulatory agenda on the American consumer and energy industry. For 2016 the EPA is set to push new regulations to cut methane emissions once again targeting the already overregulated energy industry. According to the EPA's own estimates, this new rule will cost $180 to $200 million in 2020, with costs possibly reaching $500 million in 2025. Republicans furious over Obama move on coal leases. Congressional Republicans are slamming the Obama administration's decision to halt new coal mining leases on federal land. Administration officials said Friday [1/15/2016] they would hold off on new lease sales while overhauling the coal leasing program to account for climate change costs. Republicans, who have badgered Obama for energy and environment policies they say constitute a "war on coal," let loose on the decision Friday. Obama halts new federal coal mining. The Obama administration is halting major new leases to mine coal on federal land for about three years as it works to reform the controversial program. Obama officials want to hold off on the new sales while they figure out how to account for climate change caused when the coal mined on federal land is burned, which could include higher fees and royalties for the private companies that extract the coal. In Climate Move, Obama to Halt New Coal Mining Leases on Public Lands. The Obama administration will announce on Friday [1/15/2016] a halt to new coal mining leases on public lands as it considers an overhaul of the program that could lead to increased costs for energy companies and a slowdown in extraction, according to an administration official. The move would represent a significant setback for the coal industry, effectively freezing new coal production on federal lands and sending a signal to energy markets that could turn investors away from an already flailing industry. At What Point Do Obama Loyalists Begin Asking 'Why'? Obama is the most economy and job-killing president in U.S. history. He has implemented (oppressive) federal regulations 153% higher in his first five years than under Bush; blacks were hardest hit. A National Association of Manufacturers study estimates Obama's latest assault will be the most expensive in U.S. History, costing 1.4 million jobs and $1.7 trillion in productivity. With a third of the country unemployed and 47 million on food stamps, shouldn't you Obamaites question why he constantly seeks to punish, ridicule and undermine employers (small business owners)? Obamacare Tightens the Yoke on Small Business. One of the worst of Obamacare's ill-conceived provisions went quietly into effect on January 1. The employer mandate, previously inflicted only on businesses with 100 or more employees, will now be imposed on those with as few as 50. This mandate will prevent countless small employers from hiring workers they would otherwise have hired and incentivize many others to replace full-time employees with part-timers. It is such an obvious job killer that the Obama administration delayed enforcement until after the 2014 midterms, the liberal Urban Institute has called for its repeal, and it has even been obliquely criticized by Hillary Clinton. Obama pushing thousands of new regulations in Year 8. Nearly 4,000 regulations are squirming their way through the federal bureaucracy in the last year of Barack Obama's presidency — many costing industry more than $100 million — in a mad dash by the White House to push through government actions affecting everything from furnaces to gun sales to Guantánamo. That means a full court press at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to reduce exposure limits for silica, a chemical used widely in construction and fracking that can cause cancer when inhaled; at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to require more small-scale gun sellers to perform background checks; and at the Food and Drug Administration, to make food manufacturers disclose on product labels how much sugar they add to cranberry juice. Now EPA Looking to Regulate 'Light Pollution'. For thousands of years, man has sought to ward off the dark by using light to illuminate the night. Now, EPA chief Gina McCarthy and celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson want to take us back a few thousand years by giving the agency the ability to deal with "light pollution." The only way to deal with light pollution is to, well, turn off the lights. This will be a boon to astronomers like Tyson who will be able to see the stars and planets a lot better. But for the rest of us, not so good. Crime will rise, accidents will increase, and more people will die just so that Tyson can study the heavens. The Editor says... EPA chief: Light pollution 'in our portfolio'. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy [...], who has led the EPA in its recent campaigns to put strict regulations on power plants and U.S. waterways, was asked by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson if he could suggest a new mission for the agency. "So is there a day, is there some occasion, where I can add light pollution to your portfolio," he asked McCarthy during a segment released for Sunday's [1/3/2016] episode of "Star Talk," a weekly late-night talk show he hosts on National Geographic. "Well, this is another thing that's been called to our attention for satellites," McCarthy answered. "The imagery of the United States at night shows all those flares from oil and gas in places that are in the middle of nowhere. It is startling to me, to see the change in the night sky." Minimum Wage Increases Spell Disaster for America's Retail Companies. [A recent] report finds that its not just Walmart who would be negatively affected, but many of the other big retail companies too — including McDonald's, Starbucks, Target, and Walgreens. A wage increase from $7.25 to $9 an hour would increase the profit per-employee by over 40%. Sounds great for employees, right? Not exactly. The increase makes those jobs far less valuable to the company and often leads executives to eliminate those positions. EPA: Coal [is] Not Marketable. Coal, oil and natural gas are unpopular at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris -- so much so that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said she and her associates are "pumped up about the work we're doing." Answering questions Thursday [12/10/2015] while in Paris, McCarthy said the EPA is doing as much as it can to limit not just CO2 and mercury pollution from power plants that burn coal, but also methane emissions associated with the oil and natural gas industries. "The Clean Power Plan is one of the keystones of President Obama's Climate Action Plan. It has changed everything in the U.S.," McCarthy said. "It is riding the wave of new solutions and technologies. We are going to show that utilities can do it. We don't need to make a choice between the environment and the economy. We can build a growing economy, as we have in the U.S., by actually focusing on green, clean solutions." Federal Fumbles 2015. While certain regulations are important to keep us safe, the current Administration has churned out new regulations at a pace that exceeds 3,500 per year. To put that into perspective, last year, the President signed 224 bills into law but published 3,554 final rules. This means that for every law passed by Congress, the federal government created 16 new rules. These 3,554 regulations impose significant costs on the American economy. The National Association of Manufacturers calculated the total cost of federal regulations in 2012 to be a staggering $2.028 trillion. [...] The federal government collected $1.234 trillion in individual income taxes in 2013 but cost individuals and businesses more than $2 trillion in federal regulations. In 2014 the federal government published 80 "major" final regulations that were "economically significant," or regulations that "will cost more than $100 million a year." The Growing Threat Of "Dark Matter" Regulations. In his seven years in office, President Obama has signed 895 bills into law. Over the same period, federal regulators issued 24,478 rules. If you want an example of how unaccountable the federal government has become, it doesn't get much better than that. The regulatory state is so massive that the government doesn't even know how many regulatory agencies there are. Counts range from a low of 60 to a high of 438. But this is just the tip of the regulatory iceberg, according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute titled "Mapping Washington's Lawlessness." Mapping Washington's Lawlessness: CEI Releases Inventory of How the Federal Government Interferes in Americans' Lives. CEI's Vice President for Policy Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., the author of the report, calls this phenomenon "regulatory dark matter," and describes it as executive branch lawmaking by guidance documents, memoranda, bulletins, manuals, circulars, public notices and other agency proclamations. [...] For example, Crews finds that 524,251 "public notices" have appeared in the Federal Register since 1994, dwarfing the 777 executive orders published during that same time. It is unknown which of these public notices are significant or trivial. "Dark matter is dangerous for democratic accountability because such proclamations are not supposed to be legally binding," said Crews. "However, if you're a small business person awaiting a permit or approval, they're hard to ignore — assuming you can find where they're published. Many small business owners agree that regulations are one of the biggest problems they face today." Money and Power Drive Obama's Climate Agenda. Obama's green energy plan put the coal industry on life-support, targeted oil and gas as the enemy and sought to impose restrictions on power plants that generate electricity to homes and businesses. What the president reportedly hides behind the curtain is his alliances with international green elites, a select group of political and Wall Street cronies, and energy regulatory czars who have orchestrated a CO2 carbon-taxing scheme that would put billions of dollars into their own pockets. [...] The media neglect the real reason Barack Obama wants your hard-earned dollars to flow into a global green machine. Barack Obama continues to push, at the expense of America and beyond all logic and recent scientific data, for a long-term and massive financial commitment to global warming.<>/p> Obama's Real Legacy: Ten Ticking Time Bombs. [#5] Higher energy costs. On its way out the door, the Obama EPA has finalized an ambitious trio of massive environmental regulations aimed at winning its war on coal, war on carbon, and war on ponds and ditches. If the costly new rules aren't stopped, U.S. coal-fired power plants, and affordable energy prices, can be expected to undergo manmade extinction. Obama Says a New Tax Is 'The Most Elegant Way' to Stop Climate Change. At news conference in Paris on Tuesday [12/1/2015], President Obama said "the most elegant way" to reduce carbon emissions is "to put a price on it." He was responding to a reporter who asked Obama, "I wonder if you see any political path back home toward putting a price on carbon?" "I have long believed that the most elegant way to drive innovation and to reduce carbon emissions is to put a price on it. This is a classic market failure," Obama replied. The Editor says... Regulation
is bad for jobs, good for cronies. The cost of government regulation: Obama Makes an Announcement Right Before Thanksgiving. Obama is doubling and tripling down on regulations that will oppress Americans even more. And guess what? He did it just before Thanksgiving. He always does this just before a holiday, so people will be too busy to notice until it's too late. This set of regulations breaks records and the bank at the same time. Over 2,000 new regulations alone are in this batch. 144 are deemed 'significant' as they will each cost $100 million and up. Obama had 136 of these 'significant' regulations last spring. He's spending as fast as he can to drive us off the fiscal cliff and into the abyss before he leaves. Cruz Blitzes EPA Emissions Plan: "Our founders would have recognized [this] as tyranny". Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton denounced a new federal emissions regulation as illegal, expensive and pointless Thursday [11/19/2015] during an energy conference organized by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The Environmental Protection Agency's new regulation, known as the Clean Power Plan, was finalized last month and immediately challenged in court by 26 states and an array of companies and associations in the energy industry. "The regulation is neither clean nor does it have anything to do with power, other than the Obama Administration's power to harm our energy production," Cruz, a Republican, said in a taped message. Congress Can Cool Off Obama's Climate Plans. When the U.N. climate-change talks convene in Paris next week, the risks will be high for American taxpayers. President Obama wants a climate deal and is willing to pay dearly to get it. The inevitable outcome is a plan with unproven benefits and unreachable goals, but very real costs. It will be up to Congress to check the president's ambition of committing the U.S. to an international green scheme that will produce little or no return. Democrats rise in opposition to Obama's climate change agenda. Hundreds of Democrats from 32 states are aligning against the centerpiece of President Obama's climate change agenda, the Clean Power Plan, which they say will cause unnecessary economic harm from increased reliance on renewable energy. "As Democrats committed to a prosperous America and a healthy environment, we believe the United States has a unique opportunity to lead the world in addressing the global climate challenge, and yet do so, as we must, without unduly burdening the American economy or the American people," the Democratic coalition called CoalBlue said in a letter sent Tuesday [11/24/2015] to Obama. Obama's Disastrous Clean Power Plan. The president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce lately has taken heat from liberals for opposing Obama's Clean Power Plan. The Left finds it inappropriate that a black man, who represents 2.4 million black-owned businesses, would dare to criticize Obama's latest bid to foil so-called "global warming." This regulation spans 1,560 confounding pages and gargles 76 different acronyms. "The proposed Clean Power Plan would impose severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities," Alford told the Senate Judiciary Committee's Oversight Subcommittee on Tuesday [10/6/2015]. "The EPA's regressive energy tax threatens to push minorities and low-income Americans even further into poverty." Obama Administration Publishes Alien Welcome Guide Offering Welfare in 14 Different Languages. Through most of American history, immigrants were required to prove they were in a state of sound health and would not become a burden on the state. In fact, the official history of Ellis Island describes the immigration process in no uncertain terms. [...] Today things are very different. The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state" and the Obama administration is doing its level best to prove him right. The national debt stands at $18.5 trillion, more than double the amount when Obama took office. Democrats' massive expansion of the welfare state — from food stamps, to Social Security Disability fraud, to benefits packages for illegal aliens — is a primary reason. Public debt doubles under Obama. Obama made his first presidential impression on federal spending in mid-March, 2009, less than two months after entering office. When he signed an omnibus spending bill into law that boosted federal agency budgets by double digits in some cases, the debt held by the public sat at $6.662 trillion. Late last week, just days after Obama signed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling, total public debt rose to $13.378 trillion, doubling in just short of seven years. Lifting the (Oil) Ban on Economic Prosperity. Lifting the crude oil export ban would enable American producers to take advantage of huge opportunities for significant world-market share. Domestic petroleum companies would prosper even at current oil prices. In turn, this would power substantial economic growth — including a manufacturing renaissance — and help reestablish U.S. geopolitical influence. Thousands and eventually millions of jobs would be created throughout the economy. Oddly (or some would say, predictably) President Barack Obama opposes lifting the export ban for U.S. companies yet supports lifting the same ban on Iran, which is part of the nuclear deal. Great news: the EPA's new smog rules will only cost 40 times as much as they said. So we'll be sucking well over $50B a year out of the economy to achieve a reduction in ozone levels from 75 parts per billion to... 70 parts per billion. That's a pretty steep price for what is likely barely measurable change. Trying to determine the effectiveness of such a change, even if it's achieved is a challenge. The EPA's own information on the subject doesn't go much further than saying that more ground level ozone is bad and less is better. EPA's Smog Regulation Will Cost 40x More Than It Predicted. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated its stricter smog limits would only cost Americans $1.4 billion a year, but a new report argues the total cost to the economy is likely 40 times higher than agency estimates. The right-leaning American Action Forum says EPA's updated smog, or ground-level ozone, rule could cost $56.5 billion in lost wages based on economic losses from counties that couldn't comply with the agency's 2008 rule. Obama Unleashes His Pro-Criminal Agenda. The most radical left-wing American president in history is defining deviancy down by attempting to de-stigmatize criminality. The Left views criminals — especially minorities — as victims of society, oppressed for mere nonconformism. Because it needs their votes, the Left is pressing for the restoration of felons' voting rights. Of course, a criminal record carries with it a degree of social stigma, as it should. Removing or watering down that socially beneficial stigma reduces disincentives to commit crimes and hinders the marginalization of the antisocial. Without stigma and social ostracism, society would eventually collapse. This is fine by our malignantly narcissistic Marxist president who, seeing the law in capitalist America largely as an instrument of oppression, seeks to blunt and retrofit it. Obama's Secret Destruction of Our Immigration System. [Scroll down] If these initiatives are successful, the impact on American workers would border on catastrophic, especially for college graduates. American universities churn out approximately 800,000 graduates per year with degrees in medicine and business, as well as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These graduates are already having trouble finding jobs in their respective fields, and Obama's agenda would add the insult to injury, forcing them to compete with foreign workers willing to accept lower wages. Obama orders federal employers to 'ban the box'. Among a series of initiatives meant to help promote the reintegration of former prisoners, President Obama on Monday [11/2/2015] is expected to announce an executive order to prevent federal employers from asking about a potential employee's criminal history. Obama intends to order the Office of Personnel Management to change its rules to delay asking job seekers about their criminal post until later in the hiring process. Now Background Checks Are Racist? Obama Steps Up Hug-A-Thug Crusade. Seeing bigotry even in checkboxes, President Obama has issued an order banning employers from asking applicants for federal jobs if they have a criminal record. His "Ban the Box" initiative bans common sense. $20 trillion man: National debt nearly doubles during Obama presidency. When President Obama signs into law the new two-year budget deal Monday [11/2/2015], his action will bring into sharper focus a part of his legacy that he doesn't like to talk about: He is the $20 trillion man. Mr. Obama's spending agreement with Congress will suspend the nation's debt limit and allow the Treasury to borrow another $1.5 trillion or so by the end of his presidency in 2017. Added to the current total national debt of more than $18.15 trillion, the red ink will likely be crowding the $20 trillion mark right around the time Mr. Obama leaves the White House. America's Soft Tyranny is
Hardening. No matter how much Hillary, Sanders, and the rest of the Left rant and rave about the "rich need to pay
their fair share," they pay more than their fair share already. It is the middle class that pays the most for the government
programs that subsidize those who pay nothing and receive so much without earning it. Our safety net for the truly indigent
has become a cushion for millions who do not, will not, or cannot find work. The Obama economy is a wholesale disaster:
92 million out of the labor force; 51% earning only $30k a year or less! This is a sabotaged economy, not
a recovering economy. Obama's Weaponized Justice Department. In the last presidential debate, Governor Chris Christie asserted that the Obama administration was running a "political Justice Department," basing its prosecutorial decisions on political preferences. But politicization in the traditional sense — hiring only committed leftists to civil-service jobs, or using the IRS to go after political enemies — is just half the problem. The current DOJ is also using law enforcement to advance President Obama's vision of industrial policy. Under policies implemented over the last several years, businessmen can be jailed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Fed's Counterfeit Prosperity. [Scroll down] This small sliver of both personal and law enforcement history I present here underscore the irony of former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "How the Fed Saved the Economy." While Bernanke states that he agrees "at least on one level" with Fed critics who argue you can't "print your way to prosperity," he then goes on to defend Fed policies which attempted to "print prosperity." How else can one explain away the Federal Reserve's commitment to the quantitative easing program, which he vigorously defends, that allowed the Fed to essentially print over 3 trillion dollars to use for purchasing financial assets? Obama's Disastrous Clean Power Plan. Harry Alford is right. The president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce lately has taken heat from liberals for opposing Obama's Clean Power Plan. The Left finds it inappropriate that a black man, who represents 2.4 million black-owned businesses, would dare to criticize Obama's latest bid to foil so-called "global warming." This regulation spans 1,560 confounding pages and gargles 76 different acronyms. "The proposed Clean Power Plan would impose severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities," Alford told the Senate Judiciary Committee's Oversight Subcommittee on Tuesday [10/27/2015]. "The EPA's regressive energy tax threatens to push minorities and low-income Americans even further into poverty." 3 days plus 3 EPA regs equals $6 billion in new
costs. The dollar figures coming from the Environmental Protection Agency this week are staggering. The Fed's next move? Negative interest rates. Seven years of extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimuli are proving ineffective towards achieving the growth and inflation targets laid out by the Federal Reserve. The consumer-price index, the producer-price index and gross domestic product have all failed to grow over 2 percent. This is because stock prices, at these unjustified and unsustainable levels, need massive and ever increasing amounts of quantitative easing (new money creation) to stave off the gravitational forces of deflation. Fittingly, it isn't much of a mystery that the major U.S. stock averages have gone nowhere since QE officially ended in October of 2014. DHS Incentivizes Employers to Hire Alien College Grads Over Native Grads. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expanding a program that awards businesses bonuses when they hire alien college graduates over native-born graduates, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies. The optional practical training program (OPT) awards alien college graduates a work permit to stay in the United States for 12 months. If these graduates have majored in science, technology, engineering, or math, also known as STEM fields, the graduates get an additional 17 months of work. This means alien college graduates who graduated in STEM fields would be able to stay in the United States for a total of 29 months. Feds dangle $12,000 bonus to firms that hire foreign students. The Department of Homeland Security is readying a plan to expand a program that pays U.S. employers to hire foreign STEM students taught in America, a move that could end up punishing American college grads and even the elderly, according to an immigration think tank. In pushing to allow more foreign students into the so-called "optional practical training program," DHS said that it will help businesses and colleges by keeping those foreign students in the U.S. following their American-taught science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, curriculum. Federal Government Bribes Employers to Hire Foreigners Instead of Americans. The idea is to make sure foreigners stay after entering the country on temporary visas, as part of the systematic displacement of the American population. That's how the bureaurats in the Department of Homeland Security keep themselves occupied in Orwellian America. What did you think they were going to do, keep the homeland secure? Will the Senate let Obama bypass it on Paris climate deal? Remember that part of the Constitution that gives the executive branch of government the authority to make a commitment with foreign powers to cap carbon emissions levels and then enforce that commitment domestically with onerous environmental regulations? Me neither. But that's exactly what President Obama plans to do in Paris later this year, where he will agree to a new international compact limiting how America uses energy. California's Paid Family Leave Mandate Hurting Small Business, State. Hillary Clinton claimed that California's paid family leave mandate hasn't hurt business and job growth, and ought to be expanded nationwide. But a recent study shows that she's living in a statist dream world. Clinton made the ill-informed remark at Tuesday's [10/13/2015] Democratic presidential debate during an exchange with CNN's Dana Bash. Federal Debt Held by Public Has More Than Doubled Under Obama; Up $57,431.65 Per Household. Since [President] Obama's inauguration, the Treasury has increased the federal government's debt held by the public by $6,739,201,661,284.21 — or about $57,431.65 for each household in the United States. When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the total debt of the federal government was $10,626,877,048,913.08. But the Treasury divides this total debt into two main components: debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt. EPA Ignores Science to Propose Most Expensive Regulation in History. Next month, the Obama administration may roll out the most expensive regulation in history, ignoring scientific data that cutting ozone rates will not improve public health. In the name of fighting asthma, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested permission to decrease the ozone standard — the amount of ozone allowed in the atmosphere — to a level some scientists say is physically impossible to achieve. One organization estimates the cost to implement these new rules will be $1.1 trillion. Even worse, data shows that as ozone levels in the U.S. have decreased, asthma cases have increased. This regulation may be the most expensive in history, and bring absolutely no health benefits. None Dare Call It Conspiracy: Obama's Coordinated Climate Campaign. This massive effort is laid out in a new report — "Private Interests and Public Office" — by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. For the past year, E&E Legal used state and federal public-records requests to uncover whom the White House worked with to promote its environmental agenda, especially its newly unveiled "Clean Power Plan." Unveiled in August, this sweeping regulation will force states to slash their carbon dioxide emissions by between 7% and 48%, potentially costing families and businesses some $366 billion in higher electricity costs over the next 15 years. Yet EPA-funded models show that it will have no detectable impact on climate, if it has any impact at all. E&E Legal unearthed documents showing systemic collusion to promote this scheme. The coordination involves the White House, state governors and attorneys general, and a host of nongovernmental organizations affiliated with "major environmental donors" — especially billionaire Tom Steyer. Obama's Job Killing Gift to Big Labor. The Obama administration rewarded its union allies last month with a decision that threatens millions of jobs and thousands of businesses, from staffing agencies to cleaning services and auto-repair shops to construction companies. In a case involving Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decided to unilaterally redefine the concept of joint employment — when more than one business is responsible for an employee or group of employees — and made it easier to unionize large corporations. This ruling could have a devastating effect on small businesses, job creation, and the U.S. economy. Is Obamism Correctable? We will reach $20 trillion in debt on Obama's watch. He ran on the issue of national debt, blasting George W. Bush for using a "Bank of China" credit card "by his lonesome" to bankrupt the country. Indeed, a penny-pinching Senator Obama had voted to shut down the government rather than raise the debt ceiling. But as president, Obama may well accrue more debt than all previous presidents combined. His legacy will be that he made George W. Bush's budgetary indulgence look sober and judicious compared with his own. Only the Federal Reserve's near-zero interest rates for seven years — along with the low energy prices that came despite, not because of, his efforts — have saved Obama, and staved off the stagnation of having well over 90 million able-bodied Americans permanently out of the work force. When interest rates climb to 4 or 5 percent, the next president will face a budgetary crisis, augmented by Obama's failure to address entitlement spending. We are in for rough times; whether Obama will get out ahead of the reckoning is unknown. Obama's House of Cards. Obama's war on coal is progressing. Following his presidential directive of 2013, EPA has now issued its "Clean Power Plan" (CPP). As an example, I choose North Dakota, where I have some family connections. Grand Forks (ND)-based Minnkota, burning cheap lignite, produces some of the lowest-cost US electricity at about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kwh), selling it to small municipal co-ops in eastern ND and western MN — an obvious benefit to the whole region. According to the current Minnkota Messenger, the final EPA rule unfairly targets ND — a steep increase from an 11% reduction in CO2, proposed initially in July 2014, to 45 %(!) reduction by 2030 — all to make the US goal look good in Paris — yet with no measurable impact on average global temperature. To satisfy the EPA quotas, coal-fired plants must shut down and be replaced with unreliable solar and wind. The Institute for Energy Research mocks Obama's claim that CPP's annual compliance cost will be "only" $8.4 billion by 2030 and will save consumers $155 billion from 2020 to 2030. IER notes, it is difficult to believe that any plan that requires construction of new utility plants, and prematurely retires existing plants could actually save money for consumers. Feds Regulate Away Airboat Jobs in Florida. Earlier this month, the AP reported that over a dozen years' worth of negotiation, deliberation, and compromise has culminated in the implementation of a new series of rules governing the commercial airboat industry in the Florida Everglades. Regulators have officially won the battle to implement rules written into a 1989 congressional act that expanded the Everglades national park areas to include 1.5 million acres of wetlands commonly used by both commercial and private airboat operators. After the passage of that act, Congress wanted the area managed as a protected wetland preserve, but airboat operators went to war over the classification, saying that the changes would destroy the businesses that have been around longer than the federally-mandated park. The president's decarbonization fantasy. Last month, President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administered what they hope will be the coup de grace to America's coal industry. They unveiled a new "Clean Power Plan" (CPP) with much fanfare and red-hot rhetoric, most of it faithfully echoed by the Washington press corps and the world's news media. National Public Radio, CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC and German television believe our grandchildren are likely to perish unless we reduce global temperatures in 2030 by 0.02 percent — the goal of EPA's misaligned plan to shut down more U.S. fossil fuel-powered plants. What Has America Accomplished After Two-Terms Of A Barack Obama Presidency? If one was to take a step back and objectively examine where the world finds itself today after only two-terms of an Obama presidency, logical thinking would say that all of this must in some way have been planned! That the possibility at least exists that Barack Obama is the Manchurian President who has systematically and methodically tried to bring the US to its knees and now, with tens of thousands of non-vetted Syrian refugees about to arrive here, may be getting closer to his endgame! EPA Targets Fracking With New Global Warming Rules. The Obama administration has released new regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas drilling as part of the president's effort to show the U.S. is serious about tackling global warming ahead of the United Nations climate summit this year. The EPA has proposed rules for oil and gas wells that will cut 340,000 to 400,000 short tons of methane emissions in 2025. The agency is also proposing methane rules for hydraulically fractured, or fracked, wells along with gas "transmission" equipment in the downstream sector of the energy industry. An Arrogant, Ragingly Partisan EPA. The EPA claims that both science and economics support its global campaign to force U.S. states into halting carbon dioxide emissions. EPA's Administrator Gina McCarthy says the EPA's Clean Power Plan authority calls for an end to debate on climate change and emissions control: "people overwhelmingly consider climate change to be a problem — and they want action, not more debate or discussion." Unfortunately, McCarthy's policies are at odds with economics, law, and science. [...] The EPA's unshakable confidence in its cause and the legality of its regulations collides with law in some courts and the EPA is losing. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled "that the EPA unreasonably interpreted the Clean Air Act when it decided to set limits on the emissions of toxic pollutants from power plants without first considering the costs on the industry to do so." You're Killing Me: Regulations, Government Unions, And Taxes Quash Small Business. Since our founding, the American Dream has been entwined with self-employment — whether as a farmer, a shopkeeper, a doctor, or an inventor — Americans have been at home in our "commercial republic." The mounting tide of often opaque federal and state rules is making it tough for small business. Look Who's Bashing Obama's Economy Now. [Scroll down] Naturally, neither Biden, Clinton nor Sanders mentioned Obama, much less blamed him for the current state of affairs. But lest they forget, it was Obama who presided over the largest Keynesian stimulus in history and signed the job-killing ObamaCare law. And it was Obama who succeeded in getting multiple tax hikes on the "rich." And it was his administration that has imposed massive regulations on banking, health care, energy suppliers, employers and just about every other corner of the private economy. Still, give these Democrats credit for recognizing what's going on, and acknowledging that voters aren't happy about it. That's more than the mainstream press has been willing to admit. It's just too bad Obama's would-be successors are all proposing to prescribe more of the same. Obama's Persistent Economic Malaise. Good jobs are not being created because economic expansion has stalled. And expansion has stalled because Obama has presided over the greatest assault on free enterprise in our nation's history. It didn't have to be this way. Obama's punitive tax and regulatory policies have caused businesses to rein in capital investment and have all but killed small business creation. As two major economists recently pointed out, capital investment is "historically weak." In fact, capital investment net of depreciation for 2013 was just 60% of what it was in 2006. A recent survey found that only 35% of small business owners were optimistic about the U.S. economy. American businesses are choosing not to invest because they have no confidence in Obama's policies, and barring new investment, the economy does not grow. This is what's known as a costly unfunded mandate. President Obama observes Labor Day with a new executive order giving federal employees paid sick leave. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up. Hidden Emails Reveal a Secret Anti-Fossil Fuel Network. Those of us involved in fighting the bad energy policies coming out of Washington have a similar feeling: the second term of the Obama Administration seems to be throwing much more at us and at such speed that we can barely keep up. Likewise, they are. We knew that President Obama was planning to fundamentally transform America, but even many of his initial supporters have been shocked as his true intentions have been revealed. Following his November 2012 reelection, his administration has removed any pretense of representing the majority of Americans and has pursued his ideological agenda with wild abandon — leaving many of us feeling incapacitated; thrown to the curb as it speeds by. His legacy climate-change agenda is at the core of the rapid-fire regulations and the disregard for any speed bump the courts may place in front of the administration. Alaska's Biggest Economic Threat Isn't Climate Change, It's President Obama. Alaska is a remarkable place of immense, even breathtaking, natural beauty. But it has always been a land of changes. The hubris of the White House and its fellow travelers in the environmental movement is to assume that Alaska's retreating glaciers and the fluctuations in its Arctic coastline are caused by man-made climate change. Even worse is the view that we need to ratchet down oil and gas development along the Arctic coast (despite the go-ahead for Shell), forbid drilling in the vast unpeopled plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and effectively deprive Alaskans of their major industries. It wouldn't be so bad if all the president wanted to do was come to Alaska, hang out on a glacier with his celebrity friends and rename the big mountain. But that's not why he's up there, and Alaskans who rely on the industries he's implicitly targeting with his climate-change rhetoric know it. DOJ Accuses U.S. Biz of Discrimination for Requiring Proof of Work Eligibility. In its crusade to protect and assist illegal immigrants, the Obama administration has accused an American company of discrimination for requiring employees to furnish proof that they are eligible to work legally in the United States. You know the nation is in trouble when a U.S. business gets investigated by its own government for following the law. The case involves a Nebraska meat packing company that demanded workers to furnish proof of immigration status for the federal employment eligibility verification process. The Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) went after the company, accusing it of engaging in employment discrimination. Obama's 'extreme climate-change agenda' blasted. Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, threw cold water Wednesday [9/2/2015] on President Obama's Alaska climate-change tour, saying the president's proposed regulatory fixes have put him on "thin ice." "The president is on thin ice to claim his costly plan will address climate change or benefit Americans," said the Texas Republican in a statement. [...] "The president and his EPA have become traveling salesmen, touring the world to push their extreme climate change agenda," Mr. Smith said. "But the science doesn't support the president's exaggerated claims linking climate change to severe weather events." Nine Signs of the Impending American Collapse. [Scroll down] Anyone who doubts that Barack Hussein Obama, to quote James Lewis once again, is a "false messiah" and "a cancer on the body politic," a Marxist-trained and Alinsky-inspired radical, an Islamic sympathizer, a nuclearizing agent for Iran (thus fulfilling Carter's legacy), a congenital liar and frivolous narcissist, a contemptible dispenser of apologies for a country that has been — or had been — a force for good in a maleficent world, and the worst and most dangerous president in American history by an order of magnitude — anyone who doubts this has not been listening or looking or is himself dedicated to America's destruction. Obama Fixates On Climate, Ignores Faltering Economy. Obama's in Alaska for three days not to celebrate the state's massive storehouse of vital energy resources but to close them off and shut them down. He's there for a cynical photo op in front of massive and magnificent glaciers that he claims are melting due to greenhouse gas emissions. Could his timing possibly be worse? In the midst of a financial minipanic of recent weeks with wild stock market fluctuations, huge losses in retirement savings and an economy that continues to underperform, Obama's message is that climate change is destroying the planet. Only Obama would go to one of the most frigid places in the world, where temperatures can reach minus 50 degrees, to complain about too much warming. Barack Obama Orders Energy Companies, Conservatives to Fall in Line. Having just suggested that Obama may be deliberately antagonizing conservatives by sounding completely arrogant, let me now hasten to add that there is no doubt that the President is the incarnation of arrogance and self-worship. How else could a man with his track record demand submission from energy companies and conservatives? How could he not realize how stupid he sounds? Yet here is the headline from The Hill: "Obama to traditional energy producers: Get with the program." Median income falls to a 20-year low. When Obama leaves office he is going to leave behind a legacy of failure. Not only with Iran possess nuclear weapons and our alliances be in tatters, but he has carried out a vicious, no-holds-barred war on the national economy and the American middle class. The left is pushing the concept of "income inequality" attempting to ignite class warfare. They are doing this not out any particular solidarity with the poor but to create a piñata to divert popular attention from the way the American family has been crushed under Obama. EPA, Obama administration going full speed ahead on environmental regulations. With just 17 months left in his final term, President Obama seems more determined than ever to have the Environmental Protection Agency put in place a slew of the country's most ambitious environmental standards. But critics from the business community say the new rules will come at a hefty cost for consumers and argue some of the regulations aren't even necessary. Obama's Carbon Mandate: An Account of Collusion, Cutting Corners, and Costing Americans Billions. It is also clear from the documents that the EPA policy makers and environmental activists involved had cozy relationships with each other on not only a personal level but through like-minded activism from years of working together. Indeed, the revolving door has swung freely between the Obama Administration and the environmental activist community. Although documents suggest EPA and the environmental activists may have not always agreed on tactics, they worked incessantly over the years to develop a unified public message in support of these rules. Such efforts included coordination on press responses and sessions with the White House to discuss messaging. Further, this Report describes efforts to shift the public debate away from using cap-and-trade to fight climate change to touting these rules as needed to limit carbon emissions from power plants to ostensibly improve public health. Climate Scientists Rip Apart EPA's Global Warming Rule. The Obama administration recently unveiled regulations further limiting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and some climate scientists are criticizing the rules for doing virtually nothing to reduce global temperature rises — the whole point of reducing CO2. "Well the one thing you don't hear President [Barack] Obama mention is how much his proposed emissions reductions will reduce global warming," wrote Dr. Judith Curry, a climatologist at Georgia Tech. "It has been estimated that the U.S. [climate plan] of 28% emissions reduction by 2025 will prevent 0.03 [degrees Celsius] in warming by 2100." "And these estimates assume that climate model projections are correct," Curry wrote, "if the climate models are over-sensitive to CO2, the amount of warming prevented will be even smaller." Obama's energy plan — It's all about power. [I]t is difficult not to notice that most of the negative parts of Obamacare are not slated to go into effect until after Obama leaves office. This is not an insular event. Just this week, President Obama revealed a plan to reduce power plant emissions that will largely not go into effect until 2017. Let's hope that all the presidential candidates are familiar with his policies, because whoever wins will be left to deal with the consequences. Major coal companies saw their stocks plummet after the announcement, but the timeline of implementation makes it clear that this is all about power and elections. EPA's Price Tag for Carbon Regulations: 34,000 Jobs. EPA's Clean Power Plan isn't so much a "War on Coal," as it is a war on coal workers. [...] Because of previous EPA regulation states in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic have already witnessed thousands of coal-realted jobs cut. "Combine coal extraction losses with coal generation declines nationwide and the coal industry has lost more than 47,500 jobs already, with the promise of more to come by 2030," [Sam] Batkins writes. In Kentucky 37% of coal mining jobs have vanished since 2008. EPA distorts health benefits of mega-costly clean-air rule. The Environmental Protection Agency is exaggerating the potential health benefits — especially for children — it says result from a new rule that will set sharply lower ozone levels across the U.S., according to a detailed study of the EPA model. The study concludes many of the supposed benefits may already exist under current EPA standards. The ozone rule, slated for publication in October is billed by its critics as the most expensive regulatory change in American history. Estimates of the cost of compliance, for industries and all levels of government, run as high as $1.1 trillion, and the negative impact on U.S. Gross Domestic Product is estimated to run even higher. The folly of Obama's Clean Power Plan. Before any rational discussion of the economic or scientific merits of President Obama's Clean Power Plan can begin (it will be announced Monday), it is necessary to take his rhetoric about its benefits off the table. The president stated Sunday that his plan is "protecting the world we leave to our children." To be generous to the president, that is a gross exaggeration. By the Environmental Protection Agency's own calculations, the plan will reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide by about 10% from what they are now projected to be in 2030. Since by that time the U.S. will be producing less than 20 percent of global CO2 emissions, the result is at most 2 percent less growth in global emissions. Obama's Policies Have Hurt Factory Jobs Comeback. [Scroll down] Take just two recent examples. New Environmental Protection Agency regulations to slash carbon emissions 30% by 2030 will have a devastating effect on factory jobs. A study by the Heritage Foundation found that this regulation by itself would cost each American $7,000 in income while killing 500,000 factory jobs and 45% of all coal-industry jobs. Then there's the just-released ozone standards, also from the EPA's job-killing policy shop. A study by NERA Economic Consulting for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) estimated a $140 billion hit to GDP and as many as 1.4 million jobs lost each year. EPA Targets Methane Emissions, Provokes Ire From Congressional Republicans. The Obama administration made major waves on Tuesday [8/18/2015] when it proposed the first ever federal regulations that would require the nation's oil and gas industry to cut emissions of methane. Congressional Republicans contend it's further proof of the administration's collusion with environmental lobbyists to advance its climate-change agenda despite the lack of science to support it and regardless of the significant economic impact it is expected to have. The proposal aims to cut methane by 40 to 45 percent by 2025 and would require drillers to stop leaks and capture lost gas in wells intended to extract only oil, as part of a larger push by the Obama administration to cut emissions. Earlier this month, Obama unveiled the Clean Power Plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent by 2030 and increase the proportion of the nation's electricity generated by renewable sources to 28 percent. According to The Hill, that regulation is "one of the most expensive EPA regulations ever," as states will have no choice but to implement a carbon tax, cap-and-trade, or dramatic energy efficiency mandates in order to achieve this target. Industry braces for EPA regulatory 'tidal wave'. The methane restrictions for oil and gas companies proposed by the Obama administration Tuesday [8/18/2015] are just the beginning of a regulatory "tidal wave" that the industry is bracing for this fall. The new rules for oil and gas wells proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would limit methane from fracking sites, creating new costs that the industry says are "unnecessary." The industry says it has reduced methane voluntarily, so why bother with regulations that would only be duplicative. The EPA estimates the cost of the proposed rule to be $170 to $180 million in 2020 and $280 to $330 million in 2025. New ozone rules would undermine economic and environmental progress. The Environmental Protection Agency is about to impose new rules for ground-level ozone that would have little benefit to air quality, but a very significant and negative effect on economic growth and the creation of jobs we need. Lies Progressives Tell Us: Climate Change. [T]he Obama administration has issued through the EPA the Clean Power Plan, which will force restrictions on coal-fired electric plants. These onerous regulations will drive up electricity costs and damage the economy, all to reduce over the next 15 years CO2 emissions by 32% from 2005 levels. The greater purpose is to slow down the alleged apocalyptic effects of global warming. Yet even if fully implemented, the EPA's plan would reduce global temperatures by a scant 0.018 degrees Celsius by 2100, a statistical rounding error. But by dint of magical thinking, the EPA assures us that despite the negligible effect on warming, our noble example of damaging our economy for symbolic value will motivate China and India, the current drivers of CO2 increases, to follow our lead and damage their national and economic interests. The Tragic and Complete Collapse of Racial Relations. Overregulating and overtaxing are fine for elites, who have enough money to either pay or find ways to avoid higher taxes. They don't care much if their power, gas, or health costs go up — at least if they are led to believe that is the proper green atonement to pay for cooling the planet, putting a bait fish back into a delta, or shutting down a coal plant. Obama's Climate Plan and Poverty. President Obama says that critics of his plan to decarbonize the economy are "the special interests and their allies in Congress" repeating "the same stale arguments" about "killing jobs and businesses and freedom." He adds that "even more cynical, we've got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities." Study: Obama rule gives workers paltry raise, costs companies billions. President Obama's proposed new overtime rule would benefit fewer than 1 million workers by giving them a raise of less than $20 a week, according to a new analysis from a right-of-center think tank. At the same time, the rule would cost businesses $2.5 billion in compliance costs over the next 10 years, the American Action Forum found. "This rule provides a pretty minimal benefit to workers while imposing a pretty large cost on employers," said Ben Gitis, the report's author. Obama Administration About to Tell Private Business What an 'Employer' Is. The Obama administration is going to redefine the word "employer" which will end up giving more jobs to labor lawyers than to less-skilled workers. It will destroy or damage some private businesses. Thousands of companies will be exposed to new liabilities because of this new ruling. Private Businesses will be held responsible for how subcontractors and temporary agencies treat their employees. Industries will have to change dramatically to avoid the damage this ruling will inflict. Obama Targets GOP States With Costly CO2 Regulations. "Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction," Obama said in one of his multiple speeches on global warming. And cutting carbon dioxide emissions is "exactly the kind of challenge that's big enough to remind us that we're all in this together." Yet Obama's "clean power plan" — which the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled last week — lets some states largely off the hook while imposing deep cuts on others. And three states — Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska — are exempt. Government contractor groups ask Obama to lay off the executive orders already. The President has probably significantly expanded the Oval Office budget just in the cost of pens with all of the new executive orders he's been signing. One thing most of them have in common is that as soon as Barack Obama puts down the pen, somebody is going to be paying more money for something. This has not gone unnoticed by the various contracting groups which provide services to the federal government and now four major industry associations have broken out their own pens and sent a letter to Valerie Jarrett and Denis McDonough. Crushing the Poor & Middle Class with the EPA. President Obama is surreptitiously colluding with radical anti-growth environmentalists to force ideologically driven carbon-emission controls on the energy industry that will devastate the U.S. economy, congressional investigators have discovered. As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drew up rules aimed at limiting carbon emissions from power-generation plants, "key stakeholders — including the American public — had little to no influence over the debate while powerful environmental activist groups were given unprecedented access to and influence over administration officials," the Washington Times reported yesterday [8/4/2015]. Burning the Constitution: Obama's 'clean power' plan. President Obama is hailing his Clean Power Plan as "the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change." Obama is posing as the environment's savior, just as he did in 2008, when he promised his presidency would mark "the moment when ... the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Seven years later, that messianic claim is unmet, and Obama is scrambling for an environmental legacy. Obama's Clean Power Plan never had legislative support, even when his own party controlled both houses of Congress. Now he's trying to impose it without Congress, an audacious ploy his old Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe condemns as "burning the Constitution."
The new climate plan and China. President Barack Obama has announced more regulation in the name of climate, requiring a 32% reduction in carbon emissions from power plants by 2030. Economic conservatives and those who believe in separation of powers are opposed. Given the role China has played in climate debates in the past, it is worth noting that the country should not be important to American policy now. Some liberals simultaneously believe that more government regulation is welcome and needed, and that America faces a mysterious new normal of slow growth. There is little mystery — restricting choices available to and raising costs for small and large businesses mean less growth, including less wage growth. States, Senate Ready to Fight Obama's Clean Power Plan. The Obama administration unveiled the Clean Power Plan on Monday, calling it "a historic step in the fight against climate change." The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever national standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants. It sets what the EPA and White House describe as "flexible and achievable standards" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Opponents argue it is yet another assault in what they describe as the Obama/EPA War On Coal. The trouble with Obama's Clean Power Plan. In unveiling the final details of his Clean Power Plan on Monday [8/3/2015], President Barack Obama laid out the three main objectives of this federal action: Mitigate dangerous climate change, protect the public health, and provide international leadership. For good measure, he also threw in a fourth aspiration: Protect the planet for our children. How could one object to such unassailable goals? Unfortunately, upon close inspection, the plan's actual impact on climate turns out to be largely undetectable and the public health benefits tenuous, at best. It's tough to leave the world better for future generations by deliberately slowing the rate of human development, which is what this plan unfortunately calls for. Obama: Everybody's going to die without my 'clean power' plan, so ignore the fear mongers. How will middle class Americans feel about paying higher prices for energy just for the privilege of being pawns in Obama's heroic battle against an imaginary opponent so he can get even with industries he dislikes while further enriching Democrat cronies and adding a room to his presidential library? We might find out soon enough[.] Obama's Climate Hubris. Obama's Clean Power Plan has never had legislative support, even when his own party controlled both houses of Congress. Now he's trying to impose it without Congress, an audacious ploy his old Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe condemns as "burning the Constitution." [...] Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is imposing the Clean Power Plan on all 50 states, requiring each state to close down coal-burning electric plants, and shift to other sources of electricity — natural gas burning plants, nuclear plants, solar and wind-power generators — in order to reduce carbon emissions by one third. Nationwide, about 40 percent of electric power is produced by coal plants. Forcing these utilities to close will burn consumers with higher electric bills. Report: Obama's Climate Plan Will Shrink Coal Industry By 48 Percent. President Barack Obama's plan targeting coal-burning power plants will cost a quarter of a million jobs and shrink the coal industry by nearly half, according to a new report by the American Action Forum (AAF). The president released final regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday, which require every state to meet strict emission standards for coal-burning power plants in the next 15 years. The so-called "Clean Power Plan" will cost the industry $8.4 billion, nearly 10 times more expensive than the most burdensome regulation released this year, according to AAF, a center-right think tank led by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Obama Kills Another Industry: A $600 million coal mine just sold for less than $1. I have just found a weapon of mass destruction inside the borders of the United States. No, it is not a dirty bomb owned by the terrorists, a nuke controlled by Iran or an ISIS affiliated murderer. Nope, it is in Washington, D.C. — and the name is Barack Obama. He has killed hundreds of thousands of jobs in just one industry — plus been able to significantly raise the cost of energy for all Americans, costing us tens of billions of dollars MORE to heat our homes. Why doesn't President Obama address the nation about the climate change crisis? Let me make this suggestion to President Obama: [#1] Address the nation, and tell us about the threat of climate change, in much the same way as previous presidents have spoken about problems. Climate change is either a crisis or a lot of hot air. Obama should treat it like a crisis if he believes that it is one. [#2] Tell us how a failure to act will devastate our economy and national security and affect people all over the world. [#3] Send Congress a proposal that he can eventually sign into law. Why won't he do any of this? Obama climate change plan to kill jobs, raise electric bills; could pose health risk. President Obama argues that his policies will result in cleaner air and will mitigate the effects of climate change, but unintended consequences of the administration's environmental agenda seem all but certain — possibly even including higher mortality rates across the country, according to at least one scholar. Key pieces of Mr. Obama's environmental plan, including proposals to increase ozone standards, limit carbon emissions from power plants and continue mandating more ethanol in U.S. gasoline supplies, will bring with them serious side effects in the coming months and years, critics and some analysts say. The Inconvenient Truth About Climate Policy: It won't make any difference when it comes to global temperatures. If the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan — a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 — were to be implemented immediately, what temperature reduction would that yield by the year 2100? The answer: 15 one-thousandths of a degree. Obama Announces Global Warming Plan: We're Saved!. So today Obama released the EPA's final rule for the "Clean Power Plan" that gives the EPA the power to restructure our electric utility industry nationwide. By their own admission, full implementation of the emissions targets will avert only 0.018 degrees C of warming by the year 2100. I'm sure we'll all notice that much change in temps! But at least now we've "taken action" to "save the planet." The final rule is nearly 1,600 pages long, and the regulatory impact analysis is nearly 400 pages long, so it will take a while to figure out some of the fine points and where the mischief is. Obama shouldn't have the last laugh on carbon rules. President Obama on Monday touted the Environmental Protection Agency's extremely strict new rules regulating carbon emissions for electricity generation, the final details of which were announced abruptly over the weekend. Why are these rules so much more stringent than ones Obama had proposed earlier? The best explanation has nothing to do with science and everything to do with an administration seeking to boost its moral authority on the issue of climate change. There is a United Nations climate summit in Paris coming up this December. Obama does not believe he can bully developing countries into hobbling their economies unless he can claim he is hobbling his own country's economy first. The ObamaCare of Energy Sector Regulations. Here comes the beginning of the second holy grail goal of the Obama administration. [...] Get ready for "Carbon Trading" in the U.S. energy sector along a similar vein to the historical "Mortgage Trading" in the housing sector. Obama To Unveil New Energy Cost Skyrocketing "Climate Change" Regulations. Somehow, Mr. Barack "Largest Carbon Footprint In The World" Obama believes that slapping tons of new regulations on power plants will cause energy bills to decline, in the same manner he said that passing Obamacare would reduced medical costs. Obama's New EPA Rules: A Green Assault On Red States. Whether these feel-good regulations imposed on America's domestic industries will impact global carbon emissions and climate change appears highly doubtful, given the massive increase in the use of coal and other fossil fuels in nations like China and India. Yet the costs of these new rules for highly suspect benefits are gigantic. The Heritage Foundation, for example, estimates about 500,000 lost jobs, close to $100 billion a year in lost output (about half a percentage point of GDP), and more than $1,000 a year in higher costs to families. In other words, all pain, no gain. But the dirty little secret here is that these costs aren't uniform across the country. Not even close. Barack Obama's green plans could cripple America's economy. Cheap energy isn't just the result of the shale-gas boom. In much of the US, the power industry continues to rely on coal. Consumers in Kentucky, where over 90% of electricity is generated from coal, enjoy electricity prices roughly 50% lower than in the UK — an indication of the huge potential cost of Obama's plans. Indeed much higher bills are almost inevitable now that the US is adopting EU-style policies. Carbon emissions from the power sector will be cut by an ambitious 32% by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels). Worse still, the 'Clean Power Plan' will favour expensive renewable energy over the relatively low-cost option of cutting emissions by switching from coal to natural gas. How President Obama's clean-air rules slam cities. This move, which would revise a standard set most recently in 2008, threatens to place significant and even disproportionate strain on the nation's medium and large cities by penalizing them for failing to meet a standard that most urban areas have no hope of meeting any time soon. The EPA's proposal will set the new standard somewhere between 65 and 70 parts per billion — down from the current threshold of 75 parts per billion. Cities and counties around the nation have worked hard in recent years to improve their air quality and have made significant progress in doing so, but most are still very much in the process of implementing the 2008 standard and still have a long way to go to meet it. Who wins and loses under Obama's stricter power plant limits. Calling it a moral obligation, President Barack Obama unveiled the final version of his plan to dramatically cut emissions from U.S. power plants, as he warned anew that climate change will threaten future generations if left unchecked. Obama set to announce steeper emissions cuts from US power plants. President Obama will impose steeper cuts on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants across the country than previously expected, senior administration officials said Sunday [8/2/2015], in what the president called the most significant step the U.S. has ever taken to fight global warming. The Obama administration is expected to finalize the rule at a White House event on Monday, a year after proposing unprecedented carbon dioxide limits. Obama, in a video posted on Facebook, said the limits were backed up by decades of data and facts showing that without tough action, the world will face more extreme weather and escalating health problems like asthma. The Editor asks... Obama's Birthday Wish List: Job Losses and Increased Poverty Rates. Next week the Obama Administration and EPA will release the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP). In support of the rule, the President and EPA routinely cite to the benefits the CPP's carbon emissions regulations will have on the American public and environment. Yet such "benefits" are tenuous at best, largely based on questionable science and seldom founded in reality. The EPA's own projections show the rule would amount to a 0.02 degrees Celsius difference in world temperatures by 2100 and sea level reduction equivalent to the thickness of three sheets of paper. Obama's Economic Growth Gap Now Tops $2 Trillion. News accounts of the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis report pointed to the 2.3% growth in real GDP in the second quarter as evidence that the economy had "bounced back" and "continued the slow but steady recovery trajectory of the last six years." [...] But the real story isn't found in these latest quarterly numbers. It's elsewhere in the report. As it periodically does, the BEA revised previous years' GDP numbers, and what it found this time is that growth in almost every quarter since 2012 was weaker than it previously calculated. Federal court blocks logging in largest national forest, Alaska officials fuming. A federal appeals court has locked down America's largest national forest from logging, in a tight decision that reverses a Bush-era bid to open up the Alaska land and has state officials fuming. "[The] ruling is a disappointment and a severe setback for the economies of Southeast Alaska," Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in a statement. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in the 6-5 decision, on Wednesday [7/29/2015] lifted Tongass National Forest's longstanding exemption from a 2001 federal mandate called the "Roadless Rule." That rule prohibits road construction and timber harvesting across millions of acres of America's national forests. Mark Levin Pulls Back the Curtain on an Ominous Future for America's Next Generation. Why, for the first time in modern history, do the majority of Americans now believe that their children will be worse off than they are? [...] It is not simply the fact that the federal government is borrowing, spending and printing currency on a scale never before seen in world history. Its debts and unfunded obligations are, by some estimates, over $200 trillion and have accelerated from merely insane under George W. Bush to flatly suicidal at the direction of Barack Obama. It is certain that, without a rapid course correction, the economy is on the road to long-term collapse. And, ominously enough, that is the assessment not of a right-wing pundit, but the very government auditors and trustees charged with fiscal oversight. Why Is ObamaCare Punishing Companies That Try To Make Health Care Affordable? Back in 2013, the IRS issued a startling new rule. Any business that doesn't provide insurance but does help employees with the cost of their own insurance will be fined $100 per day — which works out to $36,500 a year — per employee. In the bizarre logic of the Obama administration, a company that offers such help is actually providing a group plan, one that doesn't meet ObamaCare's ridiculous array of mandates and regulations. Allegedly, the goal of the penalty — which went into effect this month — was to keep businesses from dumping workers into the ObamaCare exchanges. The newest Obamacare fail: penalties of $36,500 per worker. Hey, employers, don't even think about reimbursing your workers' health-insurance premiums. Beginning this month, the IRS can levy fines amounting to $100 per worker per day or $36,500 per worker per year, with a maximum of $500,000 per firm. This Internal Revenue Service penalty is not written into the Obamacare law. The amount is over 12 times the statutory amount in the Affordable Care Act of $3,000 per worker per year. That is what an employer is charged when one of its employees gets subsidized care on one of the health-care exchanges. It's 18 times the $2,000 penalty for not offering adequate health insurance. After Iran, Climate Change. NERA, the respected economic research firm, estimates the cost of the Obama "Climate Action Plan" at nearly half a trillion dollars over a decade. In effect, the administration is proposing to relieve hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions on Iran — and then impose larger burdens on the American economy in the same interval. And it proposes to pursue both sides of this global redistribution of wealth through the same extraconstitutional evasions.
Hillary's coming out speech. [Scroll down] Since Obama took office, growth has averaged just over 1%, half of what it has been in previous economic recoveries. The four years of Obama's first term made for the worst four-year period since 1930. Since 2012, GDP growth has averaged 2.19% (through Q1, 2015). [...] As many prominent economists have pointed out, the Obama economy is not growing because businesses are not investing, small businesses are not starting up, the labor force is shrinking, and those who are working are less productive. All of these factors are symptoms of the same disease: the breakdown of incentives to invest and to work as a result of increased government regulation and taxation. Since 2008, the U.S. has dropped from 5th to 12th on the Heritage Foundation's annual index of economic freedom. Democrats Want To Outlaw 'Unfair' Work Schedules. In the name of fairness, congressional Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday [7/15/2015] that would put significant restrictions on how employers schedule their employees. [...] The Schedules That Work Act will add restrictions on how employers can schedule their employees. If passed, it would ban employers from putting their employees on call, splitting their shifts, sending workers home with no pay, or punishing them for requesting schedule changes. Is Obama Stupid, Or Evil? Is Obama just a moron, an incompetent, a fool, a nitwit as the country falls apart around him? Or is he destroying the USA on purpose because he is evil? Let's Admit Obama Is a Marxist Transforming Us Into a Totalitarian Hellhole. While pretending he's not a Marxist, Barack Obama has been able to slip a radical socialist agenda into every government agency, including the Department of Defense. His policies for policing are also Marxist. He is spending us into bankruptcy and regulating small businesses to death, literally, while attacking the rich and Capitalism, pretending wealth and Capitalism are causing our weak economic state when it is his socialist policies and his crony corporatism. He's made socialism mainstream and the lack of attention and knowledge on the part of our fellow countrymen has aided him in his mission. He does whatever he wants at the same time he claims he is doing the opposite, sending misinformation in the form of soundbites out to the masses. Obama the triple-loser. Obama is delusional. [...] He talks about having reversed the economic downturn when we have millions of people who are out of work or have quit looking for work. While he has numerous chefs cooking for him at the White House, his loyal sycophants are licking food stamps. They are eating the scraps of the malnourished American Dream. Our economic recovery is like an amputee walking on his prosthetics. Obama considers his failed economy a part of his legacy. It's amusing that he is worried about his legacy when he is failing in the present. [...] He eliminates jobs, spreads around side dishes of his own racism, and diminishes his black brothers' economic power. He has expanded our national debt to an impossible eighteen trillion dollars. What Obama Has Taught Us. [Scroll down] Obama's most notable change legacies at home are debt, indifference to the law, and racial polarization. He is on schedule to have borrowed more money than all previous presidents combined. Debt can trump the gift of record U.S. oil production, which came about despite, not because of, Obama. Debt can hamper even natural recoveries from recessions. Debt can nullify the stimulus of endless near-zero interest rates. The Economic Illiteracy Of Obama's Overtime Rule. With the flick of his magic pen, President Obama will soon grant millions of workers overtime play. At least, that's the fantasy being peddled by the White House and regurgitated by a credulous press. Currently, businesses that pay salaried workers less than $455 a week have to pay overtime as well. Obama complains that this threshold has been raised only once since 1975. (He conveniently leaves out the fact that the last increase came during President Bush's "jobless recovery.") The shrinking workforce of Obama's America. Reagan gave us an enormous and highly productive work force, and that's why there was so much prosperity during his time in office. Barack Obama has a very different idea about what life should be like in America. And he's achieving his vision too. Obama thinks it's a shame when people have to work too hard, and he wants the government to enact policies that give people more free stuff in exchange for less work. Obama set to expand overtime pay for millions of workers. President Obama on Monday [6/29/2015] announced new rules that will require businesses to pay millions of additional American workers overtime wages. The long-awaited regulation would make all salaried workers who earn less than $970 per week, roughly $50,440 per year, automatically eligible to earn overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week. The cutoff under existing rules is around $23,660 per year. Obama climate change agenda faces legal, political resistance. The Supreme Court this week halted the administration's mercury and air toxin standards, part of Mr. Obama's broader plan to reduce pollution from U.S. power plants. In its 5-4 decision, the court said the Environmental Protection Agency disregarded the estimated $10 billion cost to utilities to comply with the measure. The ruling dealt a major blow to Mr. Obama's effort to ween the U.S. off of fossil fuels, and legal analysts say other pieces of the president's environmental slate also are vulnerable in court. Among them is the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which would dramatically limit carbon emissions from power plants. Big Damage to Hiring Emerges as Key Impact Of Obama's Healthcare. The economics of Obamacare are very bad. The law is inflicting broad damage on job creation and new-business formation. It ruins job incentives by making it pay more not to work, thereby intensifying a labor shortage that is holding back growth and in turn lowering incomes and spending. America's Coming Transfer of Wealth. According to the CBO's annual Long-Term Budget Outlook, if current laws were to remain unchanged, government spending as a share of gross domestic product would reach 22.2 percent in fiscal 2025, up from 20.5 percent today. By then, even under a very rosy GDP growth scenario, the debt would amount to 78 percent of the economy. [...] The deterioration comes fully from the explosion of major health care programs, Social Security and escalating interest on debt costs. More precisely, Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies, and Social Security are the drivers of our future debt. Spending on these programs alone could reach 11.8 percent of GDP in fiscal 2025 and 14.2 percent of GDP in 2040, up from 10.1 percent today. Black Chamber of Commerce: EPA Clean Air Plan Will Increase Black Poverty 23%, Strip 7,000,000 Black Jobs. A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2.1 million black-owned businesses in the United States, found that the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Power Plan would increase black poverty by 23 percent and cause the loss of 7 million jobs for black Americans by 2035. The study also found that the EPA' plan would increase Hispanic poverty by 26 percent and cause the loss of 12 million jobs for Hispanic Americans by 2035. WH Science Adviser: 'Cars, Trucks and Planes Are Going to Have to Run on Electricity, Biofuels or Hydrogen'. John Holdren, President Barack Obama's top science and technology advisor, said at a White House summit on clean energy on Tuesday [6/16/2015] that a "global low-carbon economy" by the year 2050 means that "cars, trucks and planes" will be powered by "electricity, biofuels or hydrogen." "As we all know, a global low-carbon economy in 2050 is going to have to meet the energy needs of 9 or 10 billion people using technologies that will have to be more advanced than the technologies that are in place today," he said. "Buildings, agriculture, machines must be dramatically more energy-efficient." The Editor says... Obama's 'Growth' Agenda — $110 Billion In New Regs This Year. The EPA is already responsible for the two costliest rules planned for this year. Its greenhouse gas emission standards for existing power plants will run $21.7 billion, and new smog standards will cost $15 billion. And for what? The controls on power plant emissions will effectively make zero difference in whatever warming is going to occur over the next 100 years. And smog levels are already so low that in most communities they're close to background levels. Other new regulations should raise eyebrows among consumers — like the $7.1 billion efficiency standards for dishwashers, or the $12.3 billion for CO2 emission standards on gas furnaces. Government debt threatens to send U.S. economy into death spiral, CBO warns. Rising federal debt threatens to choke economic growth within a decade, beginning a death spiral that will sap revenue from government programs even as demands grow, forcing the government to borrow even more, Congress' budget watchdog said in a frightening report Tuesday [6/16/2015]. Budget cuts or tax increases now would help avert that scary scenario, leaving the economy far stronger than it otherwise would be, the Congressional Budget Office said in the starkest warning yet by the independent agency that putting off tough decisions will only make things worse. TPP the European Union of North America. The best way to recognize the TPP is masquerading as Free Trade is reminding yourself that top TPP booster President Barack Obama is not for Free Trade, Free Enterprise, or anything else that promotes business, jobs and individual independence. Obama's first business move after election was to nationalize America's prime industries under the "too big to fail" mantra and has been killing off jobs ever since. Is Forcing Businesses to Pay Overtime to More Workers Really a Brilliant Idea? After a long wait, the Obama administration seems poised this week to vastly increase the ranks of American workers eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay. With just a simple rules change — raising from $23,660 to as much as $52,000 the threshold below which workers must be paid overtime — the federal government is poised to raise incomes. Or increase the number of jobs. The rationale varies, depending on who you ask. But it's all good, or so we're told. Except... It might not be so easy as bureaucrats think to manufacture prosperity by scratching out and replacing numbers in the federal rule books. With Little Regard for Science, Obama Targets Livestock and Meat. The Obama administration on June 2 convened the White House Forum on Antibiotic Stewardship, "to bring together key human and animal health constituencies involved in antibiotic stewardship." [...] The veterinary feed directive was an edict from the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees animal and livestock feed. It was issued in December 2013 and finalized in conjunction with the White House Summit. Its goal is to phase out the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock production by 2016. Indeed, curbing the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock feed has been a cause celebre for the administration and the food nanny crowd for decades. Barack Obama poised to hike wages for millions. The Obama administration is on the verge of possibly doubling the salary levels that would require employers to pay overtime in the most ambitious government intervention on wages in a decade. And it doesn't need Congress's permission. As early as this week, the Labor Department could propose a rule that would raise the current overtime threshold — $23,660 — to as much as $52,000, extending time and a half overtime pay to millions of American workers. The rule has already come under fire from business and Republican opponents who say it will kill jobs and force employers to cut hours for salaried employees. EPA gives farmers double whammy. The Environmental Protection Agency handed down two decisions in late May, one day after the other, that will have a negative impact on farming operations, according to Mark Watne, president of the North Dakota Farmers Union. EPA announced the final rules that will expand jurisdiction for Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) and the agency also released lower volume target levels for the production of corn-based ethanol. "In two days' time, EPA rendered a decision that may restrict farmers from managing their own land, and depressed ethanol markets which are important to North Dakota producers," Watne said. "We believe EPA has overstepped their authority on both counts." Industry on edge as EPA prepares to regulate airline emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency will soon announce it plans to regulate airline emissions, asserting they contribute to global warming and endanger public health, according to industry and environmental groups. Those findings will prompt a regulatory process for the EPA to determine and enforce aircraft emissions limits, following a similar effort to limit emissions by cars, trucks and power plants. But conservatives say higher airplane efficiency standards will only force airlines to raise ticket prices or install more seats on already cramped flights. New union-friendly rule from Obama targets small business. Supporters of tougher regulations on businesses usually present them as necessary to curb abuses by large "fatcat" corporations. However, President Obama's administration is pursuing a new labor rule that would largely ignore big business and instead target small and medium-sized companies. Under the federal "persuader" rule, businesses currently must disclose whenever they hire somebody to try to convince their employees they shouldn't unionize — hence the rule's name. Now the administration wants to expand the disclosure to include any time managers receive legal advice on the subject. Obama goes after the farmers. Farmers are now the bad guys. President Obama's administration last week claimed dominion over all of America's streams, creeks, rills, ditches, brooks, rivulets, burns, tributaries, criks, wetlands — perhaps even puddles — in a sweeping move to assert unilateral federal authority. The New York Times had a wonderful take on the power grab, saying the move "opened up a broad new front for attacks from business interests like farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and golf course owners, who contend that the rule would stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners' rights." Those, according to the Times, are the demons: Developers, oil producers, pesticide makers. But farmers? Trucking industry braces for new EPA rules for big rigs. President Obama is expected to soon add emission rules for big-rig trucks to a growing list of regulations to combat the threat of climate change. The president directed the Environmental Protection Agency to develop new rules for heavy-duty trucks to make them more fuel efficient, while lowering their carbon dioxide emissions to lessen the effects of global warming. Trucking manufacturers will be looking to see if they are able to meet the standards without driving smaller trucking fleets out of business, according to industry representatives. EPA is putting heavy-duty trucks on a new diesel diet. This week, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty trucks, a major new environmental mandate by the Obama administration that could dramatically transform America's trucking industry. A tractor-trailer now averages 5 and 6 miles to a gallon of diesel. The new regulations would seek to raise that average to as much as 9 mpg, requiring that fuel economy increase up to 40 percent by 2027 compared with 2010 levels, according to people briefed on the proposal. Also posted under CAFE standards. President Obama asserts power over small waterways. The Obama administration on Wednesday [5/27/2015] asserted its authority over the nation's streams, wetlands and other smaller waterways, moving forward with one of the most controversial environmental regulations in recent years. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers said they are making final their proposed waters of the United States rule, which Republicans and many businesses have long panned as a massive federal overreach that would put the EPA in charge of ditches, puddles and wet areas. New Energy vs. the Birds. Greenies were elated when one of their own, Barack Obama, was twice elected to the Oval Office and with his full-fledged commitments to crush the coal industry, drive up the costs of petroleum-based energy sources and spend hundreds of billions on the development of alternative fuel sources. Obama is fulfilling his 2008 promise to bankrupt coal power plant operators and introduce policies that would make American household's electricity costs "skyrocket." None of these measures could be passed through Congress so they're being implemented via federal agencies like the EPA and BLM and/or through executive order. So damaging are Obama's actions that on May 5th several state attorneys general testified before a Senate panel that the latest Obama EPA proposals will have a "devastating impact" on their states. EPA poised to issue landmark water regulations. The Obama administration is about to unveil an ambitious — and hotly disputed — plan to strengthen its authority over minor water bodies like wetlands, streams and ponds. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "waters of the United States" regulation, expected to be issued in the coming days, has become one of the most controversial environmental regulations of the Obama presidency, with some of the strongest lobbying forces in Washington staking out positions. The rule dubbed WOTUS in environmental and business circles could indelibly change how the federal government fights pollution and protects water for drinking, navigation, wildlife and other uses under the 1972 Clean Water Act. How Obama Radically Transformed America's Patent System. It's yet another progressive horror story of abandoning what works in the name of what's politically trendy. For left-wing saboteurs and their Big Business GOP enablers, this means throwing our unique patent system and its constitutional underpinnings under an 18-wheeler. So-called "patent reform" proposals continue to plague Capitol Hill. But like health care "reform" and education "reform," these government cures are worse than any purported disease. The Tip of the Regulatory Iceberg. In 2014, the government issued 2,400 new regulations, including 27 major rules that may cost $80 billion or more annually. They range from forcing restaurants to list the number of calories in food — even though past experiments have revealed that such measures fail to change consumers' behavior — to reducing consumer choices and increasing energy prices by imposing tighter energy efficiency mandates on the plugs that we use to charge cellphones, laptops and even electric toothbrushes. The case for conservative civil disobedience. [Scroll down] And worst of all, he contends, an army of federal bureaucrats and administrators has conspired with a corrupt political process to make the United States a near kleptocracy. Murray highlights zoning regulations, employment laws, rules governing professional "best practices" and regulations restricting risky personal activities as just a few unnecessary intrusions against liberty. Because of their economy-wide mandates, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are the three "most visible intruders." Regulators Thrive While Economy Struggles Under Obama. By just about every relevant measure, the regulatory state has grown in size, intrusiveness and cost under this administration. This is made clear by the latest annual "Ten Thousand Commandments" report compiled by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. CEI reckons the annual cost to comply with federal rules and regulations was $1.88 trillion in 2014. It doesn't include the massive costs of greenhouse-gas and other rules that the EPA is finalizing. Obama's Energy Regulations To Cost Americans $460.5 Billion. Energy and environmental regulations finalized by the Obama administration in the past five years come with a hefty price tag of $460.5 billion, according to data compiled by a center-right think tank. The American Action Forum's Regulation Rodeo database shows that the Obama administration finalized 275 energy and environment regulations between 2009 and 2014, with the price tag of each regulation averaging $1.75 billion. And that doesn't even consider the paperwork companies will have to complete. AAF data shows that Obama's energy regulations have burdened Americans with 24.3 million paperwork hours. Report: Cost of Federal Regulation Reached $1.88 Trillion in 2014. The cost of federal regulation neared $2 trillion in 2014, according to a new report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, a report by Clyde Wayne Crews, CEI's vice president for policy, also reveals that the U.S. debt now exceeds the size of China's economy. "Federal regulation and intervention cost American consumers and businesses an estimated $1.88 trillion in 2014 in lost economic productivity and higher prices," amounting to roughly $15,000 per household, the report said. 'Unfettered Capitalism'? 175,000 Pages of Federal Regulations. Whenever a liberal like Paul Krugman talks about the American system of "unfettered capitalism" I break out laughing. There are currently about 175,000 pages of federal regulations governing anything and everything about American business. In truth, many regulations have become necessary over the decades. Worker safety has benefitted enormously and death and injury rates on the job have plummeted in the last 50 years. Our air and water are cleaner, consumer products are safer, and predatory capitalists have largely been sidelined. But it goes without saying that agencies like the EPA are out of control, that the IRS has become even more overbearing, and that the dizzying array of federal compliance rules make it possible to violate the law without even knowing it. Obama eyes big change to rules on overtime pay. Under current law, employers are required to pay time-and-a-half wages to employees working more than 40 hours a week only if they earn less than $23,660 annually. The Obama administration is intent on increasing — and likely more than doubling — that salary threshold, according to people briefed on the administration's plans. The long list of unsolved problems Obama will leave behind. Slow economic growth will be at the top of the list of problems. The pattern of American history has been that the more severe the recession, the stronger the recovery. Until now. In Mr. Obama's recovery, average annual growth has been the slowest since the U.S. began compiling reliable economic statistics near the 20th century's beginning — a feeble 2.9%. This year is off to an even slower start, with GDP growing 0.2% in the first three months. Blacks, Hispanics reject Obama climate change agenda over concerns about poor. The very same voters who helped put Barack Obama in the White House increasingly are turning against the president's climate change agenda, with influential black and Hispanic leaders warning that stiff regulations to limit carbon emissions will have a devastating effect on the poor and will further stifle economic opportunity for minorities. Some of Mr. Obama's most ardent supporters say they simply cannot go along with the administration's increasingly ambitious program to combat global warming. They argue that, contrary to the Environmental Protection Agency's claims, the carbon regulations will drive up utility bills for poor households and will stunt economic growth in low-income areas. Fast-Tracking America's Economic Destruction. Last week's congressional committee votes to give President Obama "Fast Track" negotiating power may go down in economic history as among the most self-destructive ever. The leaders of the Republican Party betrayed their voters, may have destroyed their own political careers, and may have even destroyed America's economic future. In the 2010 and 2014 elections, American voters gave Republican leaders majorities in first the House and then the Senate so that they could stop President Obama's agenda. But instead of stopping him, the Republican leadership decided to give him more power. Republican leaders are determined to advance Obama's fast-track agenda despite deep opposition by their base. Why has the U.S. GDP Stalled? The only sectors where spending jumped in the first quarter were a stunning $25 billion rise in mandatory healthcare spending due to Obamacare, and the housing and utilities cost rise of $23 billion due to extraordinarily higher home heating costs. These jumps in cost tended to cancel out some of the 40 percent crash in crude oil prices that are now saving American consumers about $630 million a day, or $240 billion per year. Report: Federal Oil and Gas Production Down Significantly Under Obama. Oil and gas production on federal land continues to decline even as the United States experiences unprecedented growth in overall fossil fuel extraction, according to a federal report released on Monday [5/4/2015]. The Congressional Research Service found that oil production on federal land declined by 10 percent from 2010 to 2014 while production on private land increased by nearly 90 percent. Oyster Farmer: 'We Are Terrified' Of The Gov't. The National Park Service used falsified data to shut down an 80-year-old oyster company in Point Reyes, Calif, its owner claims. Drakes Bay Oyster Company operated in Point Reyes for decades until National Park Service officials used falsified data to force Kevin Lunny's family-run oyster farm to shut down. The experience has left its mark on Lunny: "We Are Terrified," he told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday [4/23/2015]. "Let me be clear, we did not fail as a business," Lunny said in his prepared testimony. "This was not bad luck. Rather, the Park Service engaged in a taxpayer-funded enterprise of corruption to run our small business out of Point Reyes." Study: President's Climate Agenda Hits Manufacturing Hard. The Obama administration's environmental policies could result in devastating job losses in manufacturing and mining across the country, a state-by-state analysis conducted by the Heritage Foundation has found. "The Obama Administration's Climate Agenda Will Hit Manufacturing Hard: A State-by-State Analysis," released February 17, builds on earlier research evaluating the economic impact of the Obama administration's climate policies. In this new study, the researchers break down the employment impacts of new regulations by state and congressional district. "The Obama Administration has put forward a variety of rules and goals aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions. These rules would drive up energy costs, reduce economic activity, and disrupt job markets," the researchers write. Obama's Three Premises. Based on President Obama's actions of the past seven years, one can surmise that his worldview is based on three major premises. His economic perspective is deliberately aimed at weakening the United States. Thus, despite the disastrous past history of mandated government directives that forced banks to provide sub-prime loans, Obama and company are at it again forcing banks to engage in risky loans. In "separate new reports to Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reveal Obama regulators are pressuring them to back high-risk home loans for 'very low-income' borrowers." Both mortgage companies are being "forced to accept mortgages with as little as 3% down." And most telling, they must "[y]ield disparate results based on the race of the borrower." If that were not enough, one learns that the government is allowing "lenders to use unemployment benefits as source of income." And these mandates will not expire until 2019. So here is a recipe for unmitigated economic disaster. White House sneaks out two new climate-related programs. The Obama administration snuck in two new climate change-related programs when it rolled out a major new study on the nation's challenged energy system. The first installment of a major four-part energy analysis, dubbed the Quadrennial Energy Review, was issued Tuesday morning [4/21/2015] after several months of persistent delays. Included with the 350-page review, which focused on the nation's energy infrastructure hurdles, were two new executive actions: one addressing climate change resilience, and another for clean energy improvements in rural America. Coal company lays off hundreds, blames Obama policies. A major Appalachian coal mining company is laying off hundreds of workers in West Virginia and blaming the lost jobs on President Obama's environmental policies. Murray Energy Corp. will lay off the 214 workers at three mines in Marion and Marshall counties. EPA ban on common coolants has lawmakers, industry worried. Lawmakers and industry groups are worried fast-approaching Environmental Protection Agency rules banning certain gases used in commercial refrigeration and air conditioners could have a chilling effect on business. The EPA is looking to impose the new rules starting in January 2016, restricting refrigeration coolants commonly found in grocery stores, restaurants and cars — not only in fridges and air conditioners but also vending machines and insulation. Cheney: If You Wanted a President 'To Take America Down ... It Would Look Exactly Like What Barack Obama's Doing'. [Hugh] Hewitt asked the former vice president, "Is he naïve, Mr. Vice President? Or does he have a far-reaching vision that only he entertains of a realigned Middle East that somehow it all works out in the end?" "I don't know, Hugh. I vacillate between the various theories I've heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama's doing. I think his actions are constituted in my mind those of the worst president we've ever had." Obama exploits the environment for his new global carbon goals. On Monday [3/30/2015], the Obama administration formally pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent compared to 2005 levels. This pledge comes despite agreements with China that will allow the country to emit more CO2 in one month than the $479 billion regulation under the Clean Power Plan will reduce in the United States within one year. The Obama administration will struggle to justify the lack of environmental progress achieved from such a deal, especially when American jobs become vulnerable to global competitors who can offer cheap and reliable energy. Obama pledges to cripple the U.S. economy to appease the United Nations' climate scam. President Obama's proposal to cut U.S. emissions by 28% over 10 years as America's contribution to a global climate treaty will devastate our economy while doing nothing to reduce temperatures. Study: Fracking Doesn't Mess With Your Drinking Water. In a new study of over 11,000 drinking wells, fracking wasn't considered the reason for water contamination through methane creeping into the wells. At the same time, Science magazine noted that the authors of the new study are still disputing the validity of the results. [...] Regardless, the Obama administration has released new regulations on fracking, which is a method that's used to extract natural gas since 1947. Fracking, the Keystone pipeline, and the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 30 percent by 2025 are issues at the heart of job creation in Washington. For construction, the impact could be steep with 45,000 jobs being lost every year if the EPA continues to push their agenda with ozone standards. Air Obama is headed for tragedy. Early on into the flight, a calm and collected president locked out advisors, rebuffed allies, angered world leaders, and overruled anyone who disagreed with his self-serving objectives. Then, slowly but surely, the passengers aboard Air Obama began to realize that what seemed historic at takeoff was quickly turning disastrous. Worse yet, mid-flight, the awareness set in that no one on either side of the aisle had the political will to halt what was "fundamentally transforming" into a vertical descent. Harry Reid: The poster child for term limits. Harry Reid will be remembered as the chief enabler for the massive expansion of government, spending, taxes, regulation and debt under President Barack Obama. Harry Reid enabled Obama to depress the private sector with the most regulations in history; thereby killing millions of jobs; suffocating the middle class; damaging small business; and allowing an ill-fated government takeover of the greatest healthcare system in the world. Time for the Obamadorian Reaction. Like the French Revolution, Cromwell's Puritan visions, and Soviet Lysenkoism, Obama has taken the US down a path of destruction. If we do not pull out, then we will collapse. The English reverted to a corrupt monarchy rather than put up with a post-Cromwell theocracy. The corrupt monarchy that followed led directly to the American Revolution. France had its Thermidorian Reaction, which led to Napoleon and to millions lost in his grandiose campaigns. Stalin's takeover slaughtered millions. So also will we fail if Congress does not act firmly. This is an unusual use of Congressional power, but it is constitutional. How much do executive orders cost? No one knows. When President Obama issued an executive order granting civilian federal employees a 1% pay raise last December, the White House did not tell Congress how much those raises would cost. Instead, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan said in a report that the order "is not anticipated to increase discretionary obligations and outlays overall." To Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., that statement is "ludicrous." As Congress and the White House battle over whether Obama has the executive authority to halt deportation, delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act or negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, another skirmish has opened up over the question of how much Obama's executive orders cost. The answer: No one knows.
Because it produces energy and encourages capitalism... Obama to unveil fracking rules. The Obama administration unveiled the first major national safety restrictions for fracking on Friday [3/20/2015], touching off a swift backlash from the president's critics in Congress and the energy industry. Two oil industry groups immediately sued to challenge the rules, calling them "a reaction to unsubstantiated concerns," while 27 Senate Republicans introduced legislation to block them from taking effect. Meanwhile, green groups were divided on whether the long-awaited regulations go far enough. Reclaiming Legislative Power. The power to make laws rests wholly in Congress — at least that is what the Constitution says. Yet who makes the "laws" in our federal system today? Vast amounts of legislative power have been "delegated" to independent federal regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission or to the president or his cabinet secretaries. The sheer volume of these rules is mind-numbing. Consider that in 2014, the year that just ended, 75,000 pages of new regulations were adopted by the Executive Branch, either by the Obama administration directly or through independent regulatory agencies. This is in addition to the myriad executive orders the president gives to his various departments regarding how to administrate federal laws. Obama Is Not Hitler. What Hitler and Obama do have in common, of course, is their love of socialism. Obama has given himself unprecedented power through Obamacare via the IRS. And while America has dabbled in socialism before — i.e., Roosevelt's New Deal — Obama is hell-bent on turning the United States in a National Socialist direction. Executive orders by the truckload, extra-constitutional czars, warrantless wiretaps, all wrapped under a cult of personality, which is central to National Socialism, mark this presidency. [...] So Obama's socialism results in the expansion of the welfare state, which continues to explode with illegal immigrants and a mix of terrorists. Add to this a burgeoning expansion of ill- or uninformed Americans as this concoction of dependency expands. Beef producers say Obama is trying to kill their industry. Lawmakers from cattle producing states are seeing red following a 571-page federal report that that encourages Americans to go green. A panel of nutrition experts recruited by the Obama administration to craft the newest dietary guidelines suggested last week that the government should consider the environment when deciding what people should eat. The report, which was presented to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, bills itself as a way to "transform the food system" and that's got a lot of people in the heartland and those elected to represent them in Washington fuming. Regulatory agencies burden economy. An alphabet soup of federal agencies is restricting job creation and slowing economic recovery for the rest of the United States. [...] And when it comes to issuing job-crushing regulations, no federal agency is more efficient than the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has proposed regulations on emissions from power plants that the U.S. Chamber's Energy Institute estimates would cost $480 billion and eliminate 3.6 million jobs by 2030. The rules would also cost American families an average of $200 per year in higher electrical rates — a loss that will hit the poor and elderly the hardest. Worse yet, the EPA's recent proposal to slash the ozone standard by up to 20 percent could be the costliest regulation in U.S. history. In a crushing economy, Obama administration has issued 6 million new work permits to aliens since 2009. Government data reveal that about 5.5 million new work permits were issued to aliens from 2009 to 2014, above and beyond the number of new green card and temporary worker admissions in those years. This is a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the limits set by Congress that inevitably impacts opportunities for U.S. workers, damages the integrity of the immigration system, and encourages illegal immigration. Debunking Obama's Methane Deceptions. First, they came for the coal mining and power plant industry; and most people did not speak out because they didn't rely on coal, accepted Environmental Protection Agency justifications at face value, or thought the EPA's war on coal would benefit them. [...] Now, the Obama EPA is coming after the natural gas industry. Hopefully, many will speak out this time, before more costly rules kill more jobs and damage the health and welfare of more middle class Americans. The war on coal, after all, is really a war on fossil fuels and affordable energy, and an integral component of President Obama's determination to "fundamentally transform" the United States. Krauthammer: Obama 'Wants To Punish the Rich Regardless of Its Effect On the Economy'. [Dr. Charles] Krauthammer said [1/19/2015] "Obama was asked about whether rating a capital gains tax is something he would support even... in the run up to the '08 campaign, even if it lowered revenues, which it does, which of course is totally illogical, [the goal of] taxes is to bring revenue. Obama's answer was 'yes, in the name of fairness.' This is a man who wants to punish the rich regardless of its effect on the economy." Economic Death Spiral: More American Businesses Dying Than Starting. In a stunning Tuesday [1/13/2015] report, Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton revealed that "for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births." Clifton says for the past six years since 2008, employer business startups have fallen below the business failure rate, spurring what he calls "an underground earthquake" that only stands to worsen as lagging U.S. Census data becomes available. $1.9 trillion: The cost of regulation in 2015. "Economically significant" regulations have exploded in the Obama era. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews has done exhaustive work cataloging regulation in America, and his new report on regulation for 2015, Tip of the Costberg, is an eye-opener. Crews estimates that regulation will cost the American economy $1.882 trillion in 2015. This is a staggering figure and, as you might have guessed, more expensive than 2014. It's larger than the entire GDP of all but 11 countries in the entire world — ahead of major developed nations like Australia and South Korea. On the Invalidity of All Cost of Regulation Estimates and the Need to Compile Them Anyway, 2015 Edition. We know the federal government spends $3.5 trillion annually, but it remains surprising how little is known regarding the costs of individual categories of federal regulation and intervention, let alone costs in the aggregate. Estimates range from trillions in foregone GDP to a few tens of billions tallied by the Office of Management and Budget. The 2015 edition of Costberg reckons a placeholder for regulations at around $1.882 trillion annually. Report: 1 million corporations closed, 60,000 a year; taxes blamed. America has lost 1 million corporations since their height during the Reagan era, in part driven out of business by the industrialized world's highest corporate tax rate, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The just-issued research revealed that the number of traditional "C" corporations has fall to a "historically low level" and wiped out the corporate tax base, resulting in the federal government relying much more on individual income taxes to fund its operation. Obama administration passed $181 billion in regulations in 2014, report finds. The Obama administration pushed through $181.5 billion in regulations last year, according to a new report from a conservative think tank that claimed the rules will lead to higher energy bills, more expensive consumer goods and fewer jobs. The new rules mostly focus on clean energy and vehicle regulations, said the American Action Forum, which issued the report Monday [1/5/2015]. The state that was hit the hardest by new regulations was California, which was slapped with $7.9 billion in new rules, followed by Texas ($6.5 billion) and Ohio ($3.4 billion). American economy stronger than Obama incompetence. The recovery might be robust if Mr. Obama's policies had not hamstrung recovery every step of the way, especially in the energy sector, where the president has been particularly hostile to affordable energy. With his monomaniacal effort to put coal mines out of business, his curbing exploration for oil and natural gas on federal lands, opposition to fracking, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and expensive carbon-emissions regulations, Mr. Obama has been the obstructionist-in-chief to affordable energy. He employed remarkable audacity — the unkind might say mendacity — to take credit for the plunge in the price of gasoline over the past year. Block EPA energy mandate. The Obama administration is on a crusade against our state's energy policies — and Kansas is fighting back. When the administration announced last year that it would force us to slash our greenhouse-gas emissions, our state quickly sued the federal government. That was the right thing to do — the mandate is illegal and would harm our economy in numerous ways. But despite numerous legal challenges, the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency will release the final regulation soon. Once that happens, our state will be legally bound to implement it. Unless our Legislature acts. The Obama Economic Record is Even Worse than You Realize. Six years ago this month, America cast its lot toward a young, first-term U.S. Senator from Illinois to lead the greatest nation in the world. His mesmerizing words and bold promises drew folks in by the millions. However, unless you're a bleeding heart liberal, you realize the social experiment of electing an unqualified, former professional antagonizer has been an economic disaster. The quantitative evidence, and it abundant, is overwhelming and ever-growing. Report: 21,000 regulations so far under Obama, 2,375 set for 2015. The pace of agencies issuing new rules and regulations has hit a record high under President Obama, whose administration's rules have filled 468,500 pages in the Federal Register. And, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the president is poised to unleash another 2,375 new rules on American businesses without first giving Congress an up or down vote. CEI's Clyde Wayne Crews, vice president for policy, told Secrets Wednesday that of the top six biggest Federal Register page tallies since 2002, the Obama administration owns five. This year, he said, the Federal Register ended up printing 79,066 pages — 78,978 when blank pages are removed. ObamaCare Hits Small Business Hard in Gloomy '15. With businesses' one-year reprieve from financial penalties under ObamaCare ending, the horror stories of complying with the costly health care law already are trickling in. The worst is yet to come. EPA Regs Issued Under Obama Are 43 Times as Long as The Bible. Since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued 3,120 new final regulations, equaling 27,854 pages in the Federal Register, totaling approximately 27,854,000 words. Where will you be when the lights go out? Make no mistake; President Obama's "Clean Power Plan" is not an environmental regulation at all. It's a proposal to completely remake an enormous sector of our economy which underpins almost every industry and affects every consumer. It is beyond belief EPA undertook this vast feat of social engineering without considering whether the real world engineering will even work. We now stand on the precipice of throwing away billions of dollars and decades of time invested in building an electricity infrastructure that undeniably works. DOJ: Employers Can't Discriminate Against Transgendered. On Thursday, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new interpretation of the Civil Rights Act meant to prevent employers from discriminating against people who claim the status of a transgendered person. Holder announced in a memo that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, also applies to the transgendered. "This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status," Holder said in the announcement. How Obama and His Environmental Base Are Planning to Eradicate the Oil and Gas Industry. Why does the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory war against hydraulic fracturing look like the Natural Resources Defense Council's 2007 agenda for eliminating domestic oil and natural gas development? Because it is. The NRDC's unjustifiable access to such anti-fracking regulatory power — and the diversion of $8.4 million in taxpayer dollars to its coffers — is highlighted in an October report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority staff titled, "Setting the Record Straight: Hydraulic Fracturing and America's Energy Revolution." Gov't Email Chain Reveals That Obama Intended to Destroy Legal Businesses With Harsh Regulations. A House committee just released a series of emails from a federal agency that reveals that Obama and his lackeys launched a campaign to destroy several types of totally legal businesses by purposefully creating overly stringent and difficult regulations meant to make certain businesses go bankrupt and close up. This is the kind of harassment and arrogance that infuses the Obama administration from the top man all the way down to every last lackey, placeman, and government loafer. They think they are smarter than you and have decided what business you should be allowed to have[.] Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can. On the domestic, economic, military, and foreign policy fronts, Obama is energetically and probably irretrievably weakening the country he has sworn to defend, with surprisingly little concerted opposition, or even awareness, from many politicians or from the still-infatuated members of his constituency. "Our Energy Policy is Insane: This is the Inconvenient Truth". The real casualties of the West's green policies aren't the poor in this country but in the developing world. Aid money that could be going to tackle malaria or to build a health infrastructure capable of containing Ebola often goes to dubious green projects. Barack Obama has stopped US aid from helping build any new coal-fired power plants. This policy will literally kill people. The alternative to fossil fuels for many poor nations isn't expensive renewable energy but no fuel at all. And no fuel at all means no refrigeration for medicines in health clinics and no warmth for very poor families on freezing nights. White House plans to force business to pay more overtime. President Obama early next year will try to force employers to pay their workers more overtime by limiting which workers can be called managers. The administration in February is set to announce a proposed new rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act that would designate who is an "exempt employee" who cannot claim overtime for working more than 40 hours a week. Regulation nation: Obama issues nearly 50% more costly regs than Bush. According to a just-issued Office of Management and Budget report, Obama has issued 406 unusually costly regulations over his first six years, for an annual average of 68. Bush, over a similar six-year period, 2003-2008, issued 277, for an average of 46 annually. That means Obama has issued nearly 50 percent more of the rules dubbed "economically significant" by OMB. Gruber, the Grey Lady, and Gullibility. [Scroll down] Obama originally declared that he was opposed to the [Obamacare] mandate. But at some point, mulling over the fate of Hillarycare, the President's advisors opted for the "salami strategy" — the incremental method practiced by the Hungarian and other European Communist parties to seize power over a period of time by a series of small, subversive measures. Just as he once promised to shut down the coal industry by taxes on emissions ("if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it's just that it will bankrupt them"), so he would eventually eliminate private insurance companies by mandating coverage that no fiscally responsible company could provide, taxing employers continuing to provide health insurance, and taxing those who didn't sign up for a plan. The taxes would be ratcheted up, and up. But that's not how the plan was sold. EPA's goofy green-energy rules. The EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan regulations are the most expansive and economically disruptive rules in four decades from an agency that is notorious for its reckless disregard for the financial consequences of regulation under the Clean Air Act. The EPA's rule aims to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30 percent. That's an enormous and costly burden on our power generating utilities. According to Energy Ventures Analysis, an energy research firm, the annual costs for residential, commercial and industrial energy customers in America would be about $173 billion higher in 2020 — a 37 percent increase. Average annual household gas and power bills would increase by $680 or 35 percent. Be afraid: This is the real Obama. While Ferguson burned, the president slipped in a federal rule dubbed "the most expensive regulation ever." On Wednesday [11/26/2014], after delaying the action for his entire presidency, waiting until there were no more elections, the Environmental Protection Agency released new tentative rules on ozone, meant to drastically cut the amount of smog produced by power plants and factories. The move would lead to costly new requirements for air pollution permits in much of the country. "This would be the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the American public," said the National Association of Manufacturers, in a July study calculating that an especially strict version of the rule would wipe out $3.4 trillion in economic output and 2.9 million jobs by 2040, according to Politico. EPA hammers industry with ozone-reducing rule that could cost $270 BILLION per year. The Obama administration took steps Wednesday to cut levels of smog-forming pollution linked to asthma, lung damage and other health problems, bringing jeers from business leaders who warn of trillions in compliance costs and millions of lost jobs. And evidence shows that a shifting regulatory environment could drive hundreds of U.S. counties over the new limit — for no reason other than their proximity to China's out-of-control smokestack society. Energy and industry trade groups painted the government's move as a roadblock that threatens to jeopardize manufacturing's comeback in the U.S. EPA: New Ozone Standards Would Prevent 330 Missed School Days, 750 Premature Deaths. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed new air quality standards within a range of 65 to 70 parts per billion, down from the current 75 ppb level, to "better protect the health" of Americans. [...] McCarthy estimates that meeting a 70 ppb level would prevent 330 missed school days, 32,000 asthma attacks and 750 premature deaths per year. She said those benefits would increase with a 65 ppb standard. [...] The National Association of Manufacturers has estimated that a tougher national ambient air quality standard for ozone could cost the American economy up to $270 billion each year. The Editor says... Obama's latest regulatory power grab aims at ozone. President Obama on Wednesday checked off yet another major item on environmentalists' wish list by targeting smog, further solidifying his legacy on green issues but also angering big business and giving Republicans fresh ammunition heading into the final 24 months of this administration. After delaying the action for nearly four years, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released new tentative rules on ozone, meant to drastically cut the amount of smog produced by power plants and factories. Government to announce new smog restrictions. The Environment Protection Agency will announce Wednesday a preferred range of 65-70 parts per billion to reduce the amount of smog pollution in the air. The proposal marks a historic and controversial move by President Obama to improve the air quality in the country. The standard is 75 parts per billion originally put in place by former President George W. Bush. The EPA was ordered to issue a new proposal by Dec. 1. The Editor says... Report: EPA Regulations To Raise Power Costs 37 Percent By 2020. A report by Energy Ventures Analysis found that the EPA underestimates how much its power plant regulatory regime will raise electricity and natural gas prices by imposing new regulations on power plants, most recently being the agency's rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants. These new rules to tackle global warming, combined with other rules to reduce more traditional air pollutants, will dramatically increase Americans' utility bills by 2020, according to EVA's report which was sponsored by the coal company Peabody Energy. "Annual power and gas costs for residential, commercial and industrial customers in America would be $284 billion higher ($173 billion in real terms) in 2020 compared to 2012 — a 60% (37%) increase," the EVA report found. Obama Shreds Constitution. President Obama's recent "executive action" regarding the Federal government's laws respecting naturalization marks the first time in U.S. history that a president has usurped the authority of Congress "to establish an uniform rule of naturalization" and established the United States as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. He has stated to illegal immigrants that they do not have to follow the laws of the United States. [...] The costs of President Obama's illegal move will be measured in the trillions of dollars, and one could argue that the major reason he has already created so much national debt is to support the public costs of illegal immigrants in the biggest cities. Sen. Sessions reacts: We must stop Emperor Obama. Apparently, America now has its first emperor. And he has issued an imperial order to dissolve America's borders. Millions more will enter and demand the same amnesty benefits as those who came before. The entire moral foundation and consistency of our laws will have been eviscerated. Law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned that the president's new amnesty will unleash a "tidal wave" of illegal immigration. The impact on our jobs, wages, hospitals, schools, police departments and neighborhoods will be crushing. Barack H. Obama opposes cheap and abundant energy because he hates capitalism. What a deal! Obama vows greenhouse gas cuts now, China stops gas growth later. The presidents of the United States and China, the world's two largest economies, announced an agreement Wednesday that they say is designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions believed by some to cause global warming. As usual with Obama's international agreements, the United States gives away far more than does the other side. Obama committed the U.S. to reduce such emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels in the next 11 years. That's up considerably from Obama's 2009 goal of 17%. China agrees to stop the growth of its emissions within the next 16 years, maybe a little sooner. No reductions. Just stop its increases. Such a deal! The coming climate onslaught. The Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president's environmental actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who think last week's election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House's "War on Coal." Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks, the efforts scheduled for the next two months show that President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive actions to combat global warming. The Editor says... Understanding Obama's Ebola Psychosis. Obama's neo-Marxist, multiculturalist, identity politics-infused worldview holds that America is an imperialistic, systemically racist, rotten, unjust country that has victimized other nations merely by being wealthy and powerful. America must be punished and deprived of its power to abuse brutal third-world dictators who fatten themselves while keeping their countries in desperate poverty, he believes. This is why he can't stop apologizing for America. This is also why Obama wants to fundamentally transform — that is, destroy — America as we know it.
The Editor says... Obama Wants the Democrats to Lose. [Scroll down] But Obama hears the clock ticking. Six years have gone by, and the American economy, though crippled, is still intact. The food stamp rolls, though expanding exponentially, have still not swamped GDP. The Federal Reserve, though printing money faster than it ever has, has still not flushed the value from the greenback. Attempts to incite racial revolutions in Florida and Missouri stalled because of the pesky persistence of facts. Israel, far from being enslaved to its Muslim neighbors, rightfully ignores Obama, and defends herself more forcefully than ever. The EPA still does not have the power to socialize the means of energy production in the United States. Oil and natural gas still flow out of the ground, enriching American companies. Obamacare has not yet killed off American medical research and advancement. And Christians still do not have to choose in mass numbers between jail and Christ. There is precious little time to bring all of these aims to fruition. Taking back America. Never in my lifetime did I believe this great nation would be taken down and withdrawn from its world leadership position by its own leadership. While some try to explain away the Obama administration's damaging policies by making excuses, they fail to face reality. This is a planned agenda. When then-Sen. Barack Obama announced in 2008 that he was going to fundamentally transform America, few Americans comprehended what that declaration actually meant. However, with his radical background and his leftist mentors and associates, his agenda became very clear early on in his presidency. America's October Worries. The stock market is wobbly, and for good reason. A record number of Americans have dropped out of the workforce. The quiver of traditional priming — zero interest rates, massive deficit spending, huge government stimulus — is now empty. Yet the economy still remains weak. Six years of piling up more debt, raising taxes, issuing more regulations, perpetuating deficits, slashing defense, expanding social programs, and creating vast new bureaucracies have only stifled economic growth. Barack Obama has no interest in trying something other than boilerplate Keynesian borrowing. Obama's Enablers in the Senate. Is there a single Obama initiative that has actually worked as advertised, or even one that has improved the lives of most Americans or improved the U.S.'s standing in the world? [...] Obama's jihad against fossil fuels resulted in the rapid doubling of gasoline prices (and they stayed that high until a minor recent abatement). Its Consumer Products Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, National Labor Relations Board, and other astonishingly interventionist regulators have put a wet blanket on jobs, inconvenienced consumers, and even interfered with yard sales and tried to outlaw outdoor Christmas lights. Obama is Ebola for Finance. So the volatility in the market finally finds a cause. It was just revealed that Obama met with U.S. financial regulators at the White House. Uh oh. The Shrinking Deficit Myth. Former Reagan administration official David Stockman has one of the more compelling financial sites operating today. Dubbed David Stockman's Contra Corner, it offers a distinctly anti-Keynesian viewpoint that attempts to dispel the notion that limitless money printing can somehow repair a damaged economy. Stockman recently directed a spotlight on the absurd assertion that Obama has "shrunk the deficit" or "slashed the debt". Identity Politics: Fool Us Twice, Shame on Us. The root cause of the major issues devastating America is Obama — an outgrowth of who he is as a human being, his lack of character, and what he believes. Listing all of America's woes directly caused by Obama would take up far too much of this article — the flood of infected and unskilled illegals, the spread of ISIS, the devastating fatal consequences of Obamacare, Ebola in the U.S., over 90 million unemployed, the disappearance of the 40-hours-a-week job, our failing economy, and more. Obama Pursuing Environmental Virtue? There are studies showing that the climate is warming, and others that show it hasn't done so for a couple of decades. There are studies showing that solar and wind power are now competitive with fossil fuels even in the absence of subsidies, and others showing that replacing fossil fuels with greater reliance on renewables that are not available when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine can drive up energy costs and reduce a nation's competitiveness, as has happened in Germany, in the end forcing greater reliance on coal than at any time since 2007. EEOC Revives Nearly Half of Discrimination Cases Dismissed by Feds. Nearly half of federal agency rulings dismissing employee discrimination claims have been overturned under President Obama, costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in settlements to keep with the administration's mission of operating a politically correct government. In one year alone this translated into an astounding $51.4 billion that federal agencies paid to settle discrimination claims that often had no merit, according to the government's figures. The information comes from a report issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the bloated federal agency that enforces the nation's workplace discrimination laws. White House using global warming as a tool against capitalism? [Scroll down] However, the real core of 350.org's mobilization is more bluntly stated in a cover article [Naomi] Klein wrote for the November 2011 issue of The Nation (the self-described "flagship of the left)." [...] [S]he admitted that the left really is using global warming as a tool in its campaign against capitalism, and urged leftists to stop denying and trying to hide the fact. [...] Her shredding machine is adapted from standard Leftist Utopia dogma: government will pay for everything with seized corporate profits, it will dismantle the fossil fuel infrastructure, mandate public transit instead of cars, allow only no-carbon energy sources, pretend to feed 318 million Americans from community organic farms, create make-work jobs for the disemployed, regulate personal incomes with caps and subsidies, and so on. Federal regs cost $1.88 trillion, more with Obama's 'pen and phone' rules. Burdensome federal regulations cost American taxpayers and businesses a shocking $1.88 trillion annually — far more than the administration estimates — and that doesn't include the impact of President Obama's "pen and phone" rulemaking, according to a "Costberg" analysis from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. [...] The economic hurt is $8 billion from USDA rules. And a category called "federal worker mobility restrictions" cost $12 billion. No Drilling or Fishing: Obama Vastly Expanding Pacific Ocean Marine Preserve. The revamped expanded Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will cover 490,000 square miles — an area roughly three times the size of California — and will become the largest marine preserve in the world. Obama to create the world's largest protected marine territory. President Obama will expand a protected marine habitat to six times its current size, making it the largest aquatic area off limits to development in the world, the White House said Wednesday [9/24/2014]. Obama will officially sign a proclamation increasing the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in the south-central Pacific Ocean on Thursday to 490,000 square miles. The White House said it would help revive overfished populations, such as tuna, and preserve coral reefs that support marine life. "Expanding the Monument will more fully protect the deep coral reefs, seamounts, and marine ecosystems unique to this part of the world, which are also among the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification," the White House said. The Editor says... ISIS is so last week; Obama's strategy to punish companies protecting profits. Lurching on to the new week's next news diversion, the Obama administration announced new regulations Monday [9/22/2014] to punish U.S. businesses that employ Americans, make profits and seek to protect the gains for shareholders, as is their fiduciary responsibility. The over-hyped administration moves came against so-called business inversions, a perfectly legal pro forma shift of corporate headquarters to a foreign country with corporate taxes lower than the United States' confiscatory 35% rate. The goal was to crimp the economic appeal of such moves. Democrats Unfazed. Obama doesn't look very happy these days. His face is drawn, his hair graying, his voice a monotone. To keep going he needs a lot of luxury vacations, therapeutic golf with low-level lackeys, and non-stop fawning from billionaire Democrats at fundraisers. [...] The destruction of American prosperity and power that Obama has purposefully wrought isn't as fun as he thought it would be. Obama seeks faster phaseout of popular coolant in effort to curb greenhouse gases. The Obama administration is preparing to introduce major steps to phase out production of a popular chemical coolant used in refrigerators and air conditioners, citing growing evidence that the substance is contributing to the warming of the planet. The White House will announce on Tuesday [9/16/2014] a series of voluntary commitments by some of the country's largest chemical firms and retailers to move rapidly away from R-134a and similar compounds used in nearly every office, home and automobile in the country, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort. The Editor says... President Obama is a fantastic success. I've argued for years that Obama wants to hurt, not help America. So let's take a look at the wreckage and carnage from coast to coast... and across the globe under Obama's leadership. No one could possibly be trying to help America and produce results like this. It just isn't possible. EPA takes step toward regulating plane emissions. New greenhouse gas emission regulations for planes may be getting ready for take-off. The Environmental Protection Agency this week informed the United Nations aviation program that it had begun investigating whether airplane emissions endangered public health. While that alone doesn't amount to crafting rules, the "endangerment" finding was a necessary precursor for EPA emissions rules on power plants and cars. The agency said it expects to roll out a notice of proposed rulemaking by April 2015. The Editor says... Federal contractors used as testing ground for Obama social agenda. President Obama is increasingly using federal contractors as testing grounds for his social agenda, including a higher minimum wage and expanded gay rights. But contractors warn about an eventual tipping point when rules become too costly or difficult. [...] The Obama administration has raised the minimum wage for government contract work to $10.10 an hour, called for changes to overtime rules, prohibited discrimination against workers based on sexual orientation, called for contractors to report their workers' salaries and demanded that workplace safety violations be reported to federal officials. In Obama Power Grab, Climate Trumps Constitution. Apparently letting the Environmental Protection Agency run amok with regulations fulfilling candidate Obama's pledge to bankrupt the coal industry, and enact a de facto cap-and-trade regime the president couldn't get through Congress, is not enough. The man who said his nomination was the moment the seas began to recede and the planet began to heal now plans to deal the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution yet another blow. He's doing it by agreeing to a Kyoto-like "accord" he can use as moral cover for further destroying the U.S. economy, in lieu of an actual climate change "treaty" that must be ratified by two-thirds of a Senate that has already unanimously rejected such a pact. Feds Punish Business For Engaging In 'Citizenship-Discrimination'. A Texas catering business will pay the United States $26,400 for engaging in "citizenship-discrimination," as part of a settlement with the Justice Department announced Tuesday [9/2/2014]. Culinaire International unlawfully discriminated against employees based on their citizenship status, the Justice Department claimed, because it required non-citizen employees to provide extra proof of their right to work in the United States. DOJ 'Chokes' Off Due Process. DOJ, with help from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), has systematically pressured banks to cut off financial services for a number of industries that the Obama administration disagrees with, including gun dealers, fireworks sellers, and payday lenders. Ostensibly, DOJ is using its authority to stop businesses from engaging in fraud, but a number of business owners have written Congress to complain that they've been targeted despite an absence of wrongdoing. 'Extorting' Is the Word For Government Action Against Bank of America. [Scroll down] These huge bank settlements are election-year ATMs for the Obama administration. It was $12 billion for JP Morgan, another $7 billion for Citigroup, and on and on. It's a real shakedown. No one even remotely knows how these penalty-payment numbers are calculated. The federal government's disbursement of these funds is equally mysterious. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page has pointed out, a lot of money has gone to states run by Democratic governors. The Obama tee party. The endless stream of handouts has plunged the nation $17.7 trillion in debt. By the end of his term, Mr. Obama will be responsible for nearly $10 trillion in red ink, more than all 43 of his predecessors combined could spend. Mr. Obama is spending all the economy's money so there's little left for the private sector that creates the wealth. Underemployment grows apace, economic growth is tepid at best. Pursuing Energy Failure, Again and Again. From the energy-independence moonshine of the corn-ethanol scam to the latest 645-page slate of regulations the EPA wants to inflict on the domestic electricity-generation sector, the supposed threats have varied. Back in the 1970s, the claim was that we were too dependent on Arab oil (a claim that we continue to hear today). These days, in addition to the never-ending blather about "energy independence," we have the spurious claim from the Obama administration that yet another layer of EPA rules on U.S. industry will make a dramatic difference when it comes to global climate change. Declare a Ceasefire in EPA's War on Coal. Before we become too optimistic about the prospects for using renewable energy sources to curb carbon emissions, it's worth looking at a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which should give pause to even the most confident advocate of action against climate change. The study forecasts that new EPA regulations — regulations intended to cut carbon emissions by 30% from coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired plants by 2030 — will lead to higher energy costs, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth in the United States. That, in turn, will lower Americans' standards of living. A typical household could lose up to $3,400 in disposable income annually by 2030. President Humpty Dumpty. President Obama has accomplished more or less what he set out to accomplish. He has made himself the most consequential and transformative president since Lyndon Johnson. [...] True, Obamacare is a mess, but it has destroyed the existing health insurance system, and it will take the next administration, along with the health and insurance industries, a long time both to figure out what a crazy tangle Obamacare has created and then to untangle the confusion, some of it intentional, some inadvertent. 50 Things Barack Obama Has Done Wrong: [#11] Through 2013, the Obama Administration had imposed new regulations on businesses that cost 46 billion dollars a year. The Democrats want a smokescreen to hide the economy. One lesson to derive from the Obama administration is that not all growth represents good policy. To achieve the paltry growth we have seen in the past five years, Obama has resorted to economic steroids in the form of federal bond-buying programs and worse, economic meth in the form of debt. Obama has increased our country's debt by more than any other president in history. Have You Taken Your Obama Loyalty Oath? Jonathan Alter at the Daily Beast has an idea that will infuse the president's "economic patriotism" rhetoric with some bite: Compel companies to take "loyalty oaths" to prove their patriotism. You may find this suggestion a little creepy, maybe even a little fascistic; but Alter says that "it's time for red-blooded Americans to take matters into our own hands." And by taking the matter into "our" hands, Alter means that President Obama would unilaterally bar any company that practices "inversion" — corporate merging with foreign firms to save on U.S. tax bills — from doing business with the federal government. Companies that follow the administration requirements will earn a government seal of approval. The NLRB attack on McDonald's. Amid the economic doldrums of recent times, the fast-food industry has been one of the biggest job creators. So far this year, it has added employment at a 4 percent rate, which stands to make this the third straight year at that pace. If only the entire economy had done so well. But no good deed goes unpunished. Last week, the National Labor Relations Board decided that McDonald's will have to play by a brand-new set of rules — and if that decision stands, it could affect a lot of other businesses in fast-food and other sectors. It's a mistake that needs to be reversed before it does real damage. $7,060,259,674,497.51 — Federal Debt Up $7 Trillion Under Obama. The total federal debt of the U.S. government has now increased more than $7 trillion during the slightly more than five and a half years Barack Obama has been president. That is more than the debt increased under all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Bill Clinton combined, and it is more debt than was accumulated in the first 227 years of this nation's existence — from 1776 through 2003. The total federal debt first passed the $7-trillion mark on Jan. 15, 2004, after President George W. Bush had been in office almost three years. Federal contractors vow to fight Obama executive order. Business interests are vowing to fight President Obama's executive order imposing new restrictions on companies who want to do business with the federal government. Obama announced the action this week, ordering up new regulations that would require firms seeking federal contracts to disclose labor law violations and create new compliance advisers at agencies to oversee decisions about which firms get the work. But contractors, already facing executive orders requiring them to pay a higher minimum wage and subjecting them to additional anti-discrimination rules, say the president went too far. Obama Promise Kept: Record Price for Electricity. Remember when Obama promised that he would make the price we pay for electricity skyrocket? That was before he was elected. Rising electricity prices raise all other prices, in addition to lowering employment by increasing the price of doing business. As energy prices rice, our standard of living declines. Yet people voted for Obama anyway, possibly out of ignorance, possibly out of disbelief that he could really be as hostile to this country as he seemed. They are paying a price for their foolishness — and so are the rest of us. 21 Ways
To End The Phrase 'Americans Are So Broke...'. [#2] Americans are so broke that
Congress is now actually considering allowing post offices to provide payday loans and check cashing
services. GOP rep. sounds alarm on new climate rules. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) used his Fancy Farm speech on Saturday night [8/2/2014] to warn voters about President Obama's "war on coal." Speaking at the rowdy annual political picnic, the western Kentucky congressman told Bluegrass State voters that the Obama administration's new climate rules could mean fewer coal mining jobs in the state and deliver a devastating blow to the local economy. "His EPA is finalizing a rule that will make America one of the only countries in the world where you cannot build a new coal power plant," Whitfield said during a campaign speech on Saturday. "And he's not satisfied with that. He's now coming out with a regulation on existing coal power plants." Obama has his head in the sand over America's corporate exodus. When companies are heading for the door as fast as they decently can, you have to ask yourself why? President Obama's approach is a rather different one; let's just lock the door and stop them from leaving. On both sides of the US political divide, America's apparent corporate exodus via so-called "inversion takeovers" is a source of growing concern. However, their response to the problem could hardly be more different. Broadly, Republicans want to deal with the issue by lowering corporate tax rates; but Democrats want to stop the outflow by changing the rules. Behind All The Scandals Is A Lie So Big That It Could Utterly Destroy Obama. The political-media establishment realizes that if the truth is told about Barack Obama, the system from which they accrue enormous personal power and profit will collapse. Republicans will oppose Obama; but they will not expose him because by doing so, it will reveal their own dereliction of duty. Many believe, and with reasonable cause, that all the hearings and lawsuits conducted by the Republicans are a subterfuge meant to run out the clock. It doesn't matter if Obama thinks he is right or if he thinks he is being virtuous. The policies he is pursuing are destroying the country. Obama Wants Limits on US Company Mergers Abroad. President Barack Obama is tapping into growing misgivings about tax-driven overseas mergers by U.S. corporations, issuing a new call to end the practice quickly and questioning the patriotism and citizenship of those companies. The Editor asks... Is Anything Obama's Fault? President Obama blamed the recent influx of unaccompanied children crossing our southern border on violence in Central America. [...] The War On Drugs has been with us since 1970. The Wilberforce Act became law in 2008. The murder rates in El Salvador and Guatemala were declining from 2005 through 2012. Yet the number of children crossing the border was fairly low and steady through 2011 — a full three years after the 2008 law. My "keen grasp of the obvious" criterion says we should be looking for things that changed in late 2011 or early 2012 for the most likely causes of the explosion in child border crossings. Did anything change around then? Yes, two things, maybe three, all authored by President Obama. Obama Encounters an Apex of Anger. Americans are amazingly patient with their presidents, but Obama has pushed them beyond scandal fatigue. The "final straw" appears to be the illegal alien invasion masterminded by Obama. What they are seeing and hearing is not what they were sold; a charming man of allegedly extraordinary intelligence. 2014: Obama's America. The economy shrank last quarter. Record numbers of adult Americans are still not working. Zero-interest rates have destroyed the tradition of passbook savings and the very idea of thrift. No-interest financial policies ignited a stampede to the stock market that has further enriched the one-percenters — an artificial boom that everyone believes will soon bust. The borrowing of $7 trillion has proved no stimulus. A natural American recovery was stymied by vast federal borrowing, by the addition of more incomprehensible regulations, and by an Obamacare package that proved to be the opposite of almost everything that was promised. Inflation is said to be manageable, but only by not counting soaring food, gas, and electricity costs that do the most to erode family budgets. U.S. immigration law simply no longer exists. Incoming foreign nationals more likely welcome arrest than fear it. [...] Report: Deficit To Soon Skyrocket To Historic World War II Heights. The years between 2009 and 2012 saw the largest recorded federal government deficits since 1946, based on percentage of the economy. And although the White House also reported that the deficit this year is the lowest of the Obama administration, there is little reason for celebration. Currently, the amount of federal debt is exactly 74 percent of the economy, and if measures aren't taken to reign in the deficits, the CBO projects that by 2039 the U.S. will see a debt to GDP ratio of 106 percent. According to the CBO, the rate of debt growth is expanding at an undeniably unsustainable rate. Along The Road To (Fiscal) Perdition. Last Friday, in announcing the release of the administration's updated budget numbers, the acting White House budget director bragged that the deficit is undergoing "the most rapid sustained deficit reduction since World War II, and it continues to fall." What he didn't say is that it fell from all-time highs produced by Obama's spending spree. Or that deficits will soon stop falling and — under current policies — begin a steady and unbroken climb for decades. The CBO's long-term budget report, released on Tuesday [7/15/2014], shows that if nothing changes, the debt held by the public will exceed the entire economy in 25 years — the first time that's happened since World War II — and will continue to climb from there. The report also shows that this fiscal crisis is entirely due to the spending side of the ledger. Obama the 'Manchurian Candidate'. My definition of a "Manchurian Candidate" is a person who hates everything America stands for and whose goal is to win the presidency for the express purpose of destroying the greatest nation, the greatest economic system, and the greatest middle class in world history. That, my friends, describes Obama. I'm not basing it on rumors or innuendo. I'm basing it on the facts. I know liberals hate facts, but bear with me. Economic Freedom Survey Reveals More Evidence Of Obama's 'Fundamental Transformation' Of America. The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal just released their 2014 Index of Economic Freedom. One of the surprising results is that the United States is no longer in the top 10 freest economies in the world. In fact, the United States's economic freedom score has declined every year since 2008. Obama [is] Killing America by Simply 'Disappearing' It. Obama is now full bore in the devious act of 'disappearing America'. He is actively disappearing America by flooding its borders with hostile aliens posing as unaccompanied minors fleeing the violence of three Central American countries, the same violence that has always been part of those country's imprimatur. Obama and his handlers and supporters know that if Americans are overwhelmed by the citizens of countries beyond their borders, then there is no longer a valid America. If anything, Obama is master of the disappearing act. Between golfing and holidaying he's rarely at the White House, from which he disappears on an almost regular basis. States Fighting Obama EPA's Global Warming Decrees. The "climate" regulatory regime unveiled by the EPA last month calls for massive reductions in emissions from power plants. Under the scheme, described as "ObamaCare for the atmosphere," emissions of what scientists refer to as the "gas of life" — exhaled by humans and required for plants — must be slashed by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Obama explained the economic effects of his plot in a 2008 interview: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." At least in that instance, he was telling the truth. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that the scheme could cost $50 billion per year in lost GDP and over 200,000 jobs annually, in addition to a plunge in household disposable income of over half a trillion dollars a year. Obama: treacherous or incompetent? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2007 on the eve of the recession, there were 146.6 million Americans working. Today, after six years of the Obama Administration, there are 145.8 million Americans in jobs, 800,000 below the previous peak. Since Obama came into office in 2009, 7.2 million people have left the workforce, making the true unemployment rate 8.3 percent, not 6.1 percent. Median household income is down almost $2,300 from what it was when Obama took office. Real wages are lower than they were in 1999. Growth in the first quarter of this year was a negative 2.9%, the biggest downward revision from the agency's second GDP estimate since records began in 1976. Obama Classmate: "Our Nation is Being run by the Real Life Manchurian Candidate". During the recent campaign in Mississippi for Chris McDaniel, former classmate of Barack Obama, Wayne Allyn Root, said that Obama is a "Machurian Candidate." Referencing his new book The Murder of the Middle Class, Root said that he is a "champion of small business and the middle class." He claims that what is taking place is "not a mistake," nor "a coincidence." Instead, he echoed what this author and others have said time and again. "It's a purposeful plan to wipe out America, capitalism, the middle class... and destroy American Exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian values." An immigrant surge en route to a Third World USA. The "humanitarian crisis" on the southern border is the most persuasive evidence of all that America is adrift in a sea of incompetence, blown about by every ill wind that blows. The mighty ship of state is bereft of a rudder, traveling in endless circles with the captain stumbling on the bridge, trying to make sense of navigation charts he can't read. However, this may be ascribing to incompetence what is better explained by conspiracy. Mr. Obama promised in 2008 that he intended to transform America, and he is well on his way. [...] Making the United States over into a Third World country is exactly what this president is about. Why Does Obama Want to Reduce CO2 Emissions? The Democrats wanted to enact cap-and-trade, but couldn't get it through Congress, so Obama is doing the best he can through administrative action. Simultaneously, the administration has poured billions of dollars into specious "green" energy projects, many of which can't be kept alive even with lavish subsidies, although their developers always walk away with their pockets full. But why? Even if we assume that the climateers' bogus models reflect scientific reality rather than left-wing politics — an assumption that is plainly contrary to fact — does any plausible reduction in American CO2 emissions make any difference? The answer is: no, it doesn't. If the climate alarmists' models are correct, then the Obama administration's efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are pointless. Feds Suing Wisconsin Company For Requiring Employees To Speak and Understand English. The United States government is actually suing a private American business for discriminating against Hispanic and Asian employees because they don't speak English on the job. It involves a Green Bay Wisconsin metal and plastic manufacturer that fired a group of Hmong and Hispanic workers over their English skills, "even though those skills were not needed to perform their jobs," according to the feds. More importantly, forcing employees to speak English in the U.S. violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, says the Obama administration. Federal Gov't Sues Wisconsin Company, Says English-Language Requirement is 'Discrimination'. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency tasked with enforcing workplace discrimination laws, is suing a private American business for firing a group of Hispanic and Asian employees over their inability to speak English at work, claiming that the English-language requirement in a U.S. business constitutes "discrimination." Judicial Watch reported Tuesday [7/1/2014] that the government is accusing Wisconsin Plastics, Inc. of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on "national origin." The government argues this includes the "linguistic characteristics of a national origin group." Irene Garcia, the blog editor and Spanish media liaison for Judicial Watch, called the EEOC's accusation "ludicrous." The agenda an enemy would devise. What's happening to America's standing in the world is not due to incompetence, as some have claimed. This is planned. We are witnessing the Obama administration's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood creed, which is to destroy America from within. Also posted with the evidence that Obama is a Muslim. Weakening America is Obama's specialty. I won't dwell on the multitude of scandals that have engulfed the Obama administration, but suffice it to say that any one of them would have had a Republican president impeached by now. EPA moves on green refrigerants. The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed federal approval of climate-friendly refrigerants used in household air conditioners and refrigerators, as part of President Obama's quest to counter global warming. The Editor says... The EPA is America's Other Enemy. While our attention is focused on events in the Middle East, a domestic enemy of the nation is doing everything in its power to kill the provision of electricity to the nation and, at the same time, to control every drop of water in the United States, an attack on its agricultural sector. That enemy is the Environmental Protection Agency. Like the rest of the Obama administration, it has no regard for real science and continues to reinterpret the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It has an agenda that threatens every aspect of life in the nation. The Justice Department Unleashes A Godzilla On Business. After she destroyed Arthur Andersen in a flawed and subsequently overturned prosecution, the Senate has confirmed Leslie Caldwell to lead the DOJ's criminal division, giving her a mandate for even more mayhem. [...] It's not just that the woman has a record of doing anything for a conviction — including concealing exculpatory evidence, as her task force did in the Enron case. She's also a political animal who specializes in high-profile cases and handles political pressure with no sweat. President Obama is not finished. More and more people are finally coming to the realization that President Obama is presiding over America's decline, though there are differences of opinion as to whether he's deliberately or even directly causing it. You have to admit that it's outright bizarre and alarming that people are even having this discussion, yet many of us have been warning about it for years now. It is gratifying that others — albeit belatedly — are waking up. There are two separate issues: Is Obama trying to bring America down, and is his presidency falling apart (and what does that mean)? Energy CEO says Obama is destroying low-cost energy with EPA. Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray says he is scared to death for this country, for poor people, those who live on fixed incomes and for people who are retiring. Murray says Obama is illegally using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to take over the US Electric Power Grid and in the process he's destroying low-cost energy. Murray points out that coal is only 4 cents per kilowatt-hour and Obama wants to replace it with renewable energy sources, wind and solar, that cost 22 cents per kilowatt-hour. New EPA Regs Issued Under Obama Are 38 Times as Long as Bible. Since President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued 2,827 new final regulations, equaling 24,915 pages in the Federal Register, totaling approximately 24,915,000 words. The Gutenberg Bible is only 1,282 pages and 646,128 words. Thus, the new EPA regulations issued by the Obama Administration contain 19 times as many pages as the Bible and 38 times as many words. Barack's Second American Revolution. There is no doubt that what Barack is doing in 2014, and for his entire presidency is to foment Marxist revolution. There can be no other possible explanation of the various and collective nature of his malfeasance. The claim is that no person could be so bad as Barack, in terms of leadership, decision making, and always accidentally doing things that harm American interests. And since Barack cannot hide his leftist instincts anymore, especially given he won't run again for election, we now see his fulsome progressive agenda hard at work. As Al Qaeda Approaches Baghdad, Obama Orders Department of, Defense to Fight "Seafood Fraud". More regulations for controlling the supply chain will make it more expensive to catch and sell fish... and that will make it harder for working families to eat. Not that Obama cares about working families except when he's reading from a teleprompter. Lost Jobs 'Collateral Damage' To Environmentalists. Writing in the Huffington Post, William Becker of the Climate Action Project praised the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations to stop climate change, and wrote that "there is nothing explicit in the (Obama) plan to mitigate or adapt to the economic disruption the clean energy transition will cause for coal and oil-country families." [...] The Obama administration fantasizes that this knife to the throat of our domestic energy industry will somehow create "green" jobs. On the contrary. A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce finds that the new EPA regulations will destroy 200,000 mostly blue-collar energy jobs, reduce the U.S. GDP by about $50 billion a year and cost families thousands of dollars over the next decade in higher energy costs. Murray Energy CEO Says EPA Rules Will Harm Coal Industry, Consumers. The Obama administration's latest proposal to curb carbon emissions at existing power plants threatens to drive up energy costs, Murray Energy chief executive Robert Murray tells FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto. Murray and the company he founded have filed four lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over regulations that target the coal industry. Four state attorneys general have joined those efforts. Earlier this week, Murray Energy sued the EPA over a new set of rules that aim to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 30% from 2005 levels. The proposed regulations raised more questions over the future of the coal industry and electricity rates. Coal, already under pressure from low natural gas prices, accounts for 40% of electricity generation in the U.S., down from 45% in 2009. More about Obama's war on coal. Even if we all assume that Barack H. Obama is not malicious, but merely
incompetent and
stupid... National Labor Relations Board rules employers wrong to fire profane employees. In a pair of recent cases, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled against businesses who fired workers who used profanity in the workplace. In one case, the NLRB ruled that a business shouldn't have fired an employee even though he berated the owner to his face. In the other, the board ruled that Starbucks was wrong to fire an employee even though he used profanity and got into an altercation with a manager in front of customers. Big Business has expressed alarm at the NLRB's stance. In posting on it's website Friday, the Chamber of Commerce wrote that the board was "flat-out undermining the ability of employers to exercise even the most basic principles of running a business." Obama will propose vast expansion of Pacific Ocean marine sanctuary. President Obama on Tuesday will announce his intent to make a broad swath of the central Pacific Ocean off-limits to fishing, energy exploration and other activities, according to senior White House officials. The proposal, slated to go into effect later this year after a comment period, could create the world's largest marine sanctuary and double the area of ocean globally that is fully protected. The Editor says... Obama moves to protect vast Pacific Ocean areas. The White House on Tuesday [6/17/2014] unveiled efforts to expand protection of vast areas of the Pacific Ocean controlled by the United States from over fishing and environmental damage. The Editor says... Kerry Wants 10% of World's Oceans Off-Limits to Human Activity. With all that's happening in the world, Secretary of State John Kerry spent part of Monday addressing "the threats facing the ocean." "Today less than 2 percent of our ocean is considered a marine-protected area where there are some restrictions on human activity in order to prevent contaminating the ecosystem," Kerry told a conference at the State Department. "There isn't anybody here who doesn't believe we can't do better than that. So let's start by finding a way to perhaps bring that number up to 10 percent or more as soon as possible." The Editor says... Obama Even Worse Than We Thought. Even those of us who were highly critical of Mr. Obama early on, who twice voted against him and worked in campaigns to defeat him, could not envision how epically incompetent he would be. The harm this man has done is immeasurable. And he still has more than two years left to go. Mr. Obama belongs in a category all his own. Exposed: The Horrific Cost And Utter Pointlessness of Obama's War on Carbon Dioxide. Here is the Obama administration's green strategy reduced to one damning equation. 19 million jobs lost plus $4.335 trillion spent = a reduction in global mean temperature of 0.018 degrees C. Yes. Horrifying but true. These are the costs to the US economy, by 2100, of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory war on carbon dioxide, whereby all states must reduce emissions from coal-fired electricity generating plants by 30 percent below 2005 levels. Yes, Obama Is 'Fundamentally Transforming' America. His administration began by exercising control over the banks, insurance companies, and major automakers. All this was done in the name of pulling the country out of its economic nosedive. Mr. Obama's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers reassured worried corporate leaders that the administration was not going to nationalize everything, but only "the commanding heights of the economy." Austin Goolsbee seemed blissfully unaware of the Marxian roots of that expression and that tactic. Apparently, it is getting harder to distinguish between classic Marxism and liberal thought in our Ivy League faculty lounges. Obama's Balloon: Federal Student Loan Debt Up 517% in 5 Years. Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the cumulative outstanding balance on federal direct student loans has jumped 517.4 percent. The balance owed as of the end of May was $739,641,000,000.00. That is an increase of $619,838,000,000.00 from the balance that was owed as of the end of January 2009, when it was $119,803,000,000.00, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement. Earlier this month, Obama announced new executive actions to allow five million student-loan borrowers to cap their monthly payments at 10% of their income, according to the White House. Open Borders: Entrenching the Fundamental Transformation of a Dying Nation. The United States as we have known it is dying. Its death is at the hands of politicians and it is being done so cleverly, with the help of a compliant and far-left media, that the people don't even know it's happening. Mr. Obama is overloading the system with crises and we cannot handle them. This opens the way for Mr. Obama to use his pen and phone to solve them. He will solve it as Marxists solve problems and he will do so as incompetently as he has done in the past. There is no reason to believe he will suddenly become competent. Mr. Obama isn't doing it alone. He has help from his hand-picked staff and an obsequious Congress that cares nothing for their own authority under the Constitution. We will soon see the end of the United States as a free nation as a result. Obama Thinks You're Stupid, that's Why. Obamacare, a failed trillion dollar stimulus, sky-high food stamp usage, disability rolls soaring, our national debt mortgaging America's future, our adversaries and enemies on the march. Obama has compiled quite a list of "accomplishment" as he fulfills one promise — to fundamentally transform America. Tragically, it has been a very damaging transformation. [...] All these failures have been justified, explained away or caused by lies (you can keep your insurance, doctor, and save $2500 on premiums; ObamaCare will add not a thin dime to the deficit; a red line that was Orwellian-erased when it became an embarrassment; Al Qaeda was on the run; Benghazi was caused by a video; there was not a "smidgen of corruption" at the IRS). The lies are too numerous to list [...] Obama is driving the country to ruin. The list of dramatic markdowns is breathtaking. They include trading away five murderous terrorists for a likely Army deserter, an open invitation to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to cross the Mexican border, and a decision to recognize the terrorist group Hamas as part of the Palestinian government. On the home front, environmental regulations will cost thousands of coal miners their jobs and drive up the cost of electricity for millions. The ObamaCare mess is hardly resolved, and the Veterans Affairs scandal keeps getting worse. Obama's war on electricity. The directive, outlined over 645 pages, empowers the EPA to enforce extreme and radical regulations in each state in pursuit of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants by "approximately 30 percent from CO2 emission levels in 2005." The administration regulates carbon dioxide as an "air pollutant," but carbon dioxide is not all bad. One of the largest sources of carbon dioxide is exhaling by humans, and that's always a good thing. Without carbon dioxide, plants would wither and man (and woman, too) would suffocate. Like most government schemes, the new EPA rule employs extreme measures that won't be effective, at great expense to taxpayers and to the economy, with methods based in flawed science and bad math. It addresses a problem that exists in the fertile imagination of the foolishly frightened. What is real is that hundreds of coal-fueled power plants will close for the states to meet the new requirements. Since more than one-third of America's power comes from coal, and coal is the largest source of electricity for half the states, shuttering coal-fired plants will create a dramatic shortage of energy. 'Clean Energy' Ruined Spain; now Obama is Dragging the US Over the Same Green Precipice. "Feeding the masses on unicorn ribs". That was how Walter Russell Mead once poured scorn on Obama's misbegotten attempts to revive the US economy by creating five million "green jobs." Mead was quite right, of course. And there was plenty of evidence to back him up, such as the 2009 report by a Madrid university professor Gabriel Calzada Alvarez that for every expensive "green job" created by government subsidy, 2.2 jobs were destroyed in the real economy. The Obama administration responded as only the Obama administration knows how: by calling in its left-wing attack dogs. More about so-called green jobs. A Most Successful President. If one sets out to destroy the core pillars of a society, to incrementally break down the values of a country, and to dishearten its inhabitants, then Barack Hussein Obama has been a sterling success. He is no amateur; he is not a feckless individual who doesn't know what he is doing. His actions are deliberate, and his goals are in direct opposition to the vast majority of the American people. His so-called misdirections are calculated, and his leadership traits are not intended to support America. He knows exactly what he is doing, and far too many people still don't comprehend or want to believe the machinations of this man and his underlying political arc. Obama to claim credit for economy-killing EPA plan. President Obama will personally drive the next nail into the coffin of America's economy next week, proudly announcing harsh new Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on energy. It won't just be power plants that feel the new Clean Air Act restrictions expected Monday. Expect the president to brag about "flexibility," which is a bureaucratic way of spreading the burdens so they will fall on consumers all across the country. [...] Why? For the salvation of mankind. On something simpler, like deciding if there's wrongdoing within the Veterans Administration, Mr. Obama insists on more study. But on supposed man-made climate destruction of Planet Earth a hundred years from now, he claims the debate is over: New regulations must dictate that we kill America's economy now, lest our economy kill the planet in a century or so. White House to propose rule giving states free rein to meet emission reduction goals. The Obama administration will next week unveil a cornerstone of its climate-change initiative with a proposed rule aimed at allowing states to use cap-and-trade systems, renewable energy and other measures to meet aggressive goals for reducing carbon emissions by existing power plants. Energy companies and others affected by the proposal will be watching for key details, including the percentage by which companies and states must reduce carbon emissions, which is expected to be proposed in a range instead of a single number. The Editor says... Oil companies say new fed reg on prairie bird won't fly in South. Oil companies say a weeks-old Obama administration ruling that protects a Southwestern prairie bird has already halted oil-drilling operations in Kansas and is costing the U.S. economy tens of millions of dollars, as a GOP congressmen suggests the move is another "job-killing" attack on fossil fuel. Gun Retailers: Obama Admin Restricting Business. Gun retailers say the Obama administration is imposing regulations that will put them out of business, the Washington Times reports. The retailers say the administration is choking off their credit lines, freezing their assets, and prohibiting online sales. Mega Church Pastor: Obama Legacy Is That He Destroyed The Experiment Called America. San Diego evangelical minister, James L. Garlow, says if history books are not distorted by today's revisionistic tendencies, President Obama's legacy should be that he's responsible for "morally and economically destroying a wonderful experiment called America." It's a Very Complex World. It's not by accident that environmental groups all trumpet the same doomsday lies at the same time. Their leaders get together to coordinate their efforts and the current one is aimed at what they call "de-growth", the reduction of economic growth by any means. With President Obama blathering about "climate change" threats, it should not surprise anyone to conclude that the horrible economic conditions he has imposed on our nation was not an accident, nor that he focuses on thwarting the provision of energy, the most vital component of economic growth. Obama Reaffirms His Intention to Rule By Dictatorship. He began his address with a lie: "At a time when our businesses have created 9.2 million new jobs in just over four years, and more companies are considering bringing jobs back from overseas, we have a choice to make. We can make it easier for businesses to invest in America — or we can make it harder." We actually have 4 million fewer jobs than we had when he came into office. He is the one sending jobs overseas. He talks about cutting red tape but he is the leading purveyor of red tape. He wants another $302 billion plan to repair the country's transportation system. He used the demand for the money as an opportunity to bash Republicans. Obama already wasted much of the 900 billion on the Stimulus in 2009, money that was spent on frivolous green energy projects. More Obama Climate Lies. The continuing drama of a President willing to lie about the climate continues with the release of a report, the National Climate Assessment. It is a repeat of all the lies that have been generated by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "The climate report," said Dan Kish, a Senior Vice President of the Institute for Energy Research, "bears a strong resemblance to the IPCC report, only with less science and more rhetoric." It is "just another attempt to justify more government intervention in American's lives and more attacks on affordable energy and economic growth." Like Obamacare, the new report is, said Kish, "intentionally confusing and misleading." EPA readies rules on CO2. Next month, if all goes according to plan, the Environmental Protection Agency will launch the most serious assault on American business since the 1970's. New regulatiosn governing the release of Carbon Dioxide will hit every corner of the economy, causing your electric bill to skyrocket (as promised by candidate Obama) and adding billions in costs to manufacturers and other businesses that generate CO2. The Editor says... Obama Said to Put Personal Push Behind EPA Emission Rules. U.S. President Barack Obama plans to personally unveil proposed carbon-emissions rules for power plants, elevating climate change policy as a top tier issue for his final two years in office, according to two people familiar with White House strategy. Obama is preparing to make the announcement with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, who said this week the rules are on track to be proposed by June 2, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the schedule is still being planned. Obama to loosen lending standards to boost home ownership. What could go wrong? After a near-depression and worst-ever financial crisis that cost the US economy as much as $14 trillion, one might think Washington would be careful to avoid repeating the same policy mistakes. One might think, for instance, Washington would think twice and then thrice before loosening mortgage lending standards to boost home ownership, particularly among low-income borrowers. Because, you know, loosened mortgage standards seem to have played some role in helping set the stage for the catastrophic mortgage meltdown. Is Obama is a jinx upon America? What an embarrassment. The USA has had the unchallenged #1 economy in world since 1872 (when we passed the United Kingdom). [...] 142 years of world dominance erased in only six years under one man's leadership. [...] The same thing is happening to entrepreneurs and small business. For the first time in history businesses in America are being destroyed faster than they are starting. Amazing. Under Obama there are now more food stamp recipients than the number of women working full-time in America. Under Obama the average full-time male employee now earns less (adjusted for inflation) than 40 years ago. Under Obama there are now 70% more Americans collecting entitlement checks than working in the private sector. US Retail Sales Rise a Scant 0.1 Percent in April. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that seasonally adjusted retail sales rose just 0.1 percent last month, after surging 1.5 percent in March following a harsh winter that had curtailed shopping. The Editor says... Media misdirection and Climate Change. [J]ust as not covering Benghazi and the IRS is intended to give political cover to the administration, the point of the tsunami of climate hyperbole washing over the heads of Americans — who poll after poll show are not particularly interested in the issue — is to drown us in fear and confusion as the president, on a "personal" anti-energy jihad, uses executive agencies to attack oil and coal, and along with them the entire productive sector of our economy. So much for pivoting to jobs. Fed Chair: 'Deficits Will Rise to Unsustainable Levels'. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, referencing the Congressional Budget Office's long-term budget projections, told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress today that under current policies the federal government's deficits "will rise to unsustainable levels." In the 10-year budget projections it released in April, the CBO estimated that the federal government will run $7.618 trillion in deficits from 2015 through 2024. Keywords: Cloward-Piven strategy. U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they're being created. The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978. Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study — 2009, 2010 and 2011 — businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011. The Democrats own this economy. I have always said that Obama specifically and Democrats generally don't have any problems that a few quarters of 4 percent GDP growth wouldn't solve. But they have to want to make it happen. Instead, the Democrats are pursuing low-growth, job-killing policies, from the bogus minimum wage debate to the new efforts to take payroll decisions (such as overtime requirements) away from the private sector; to the passionate desire to gratuitously raise everybody's power bill on behalf of the global warming crusade and the open hostility toward the private sector memorialized by the classic Obama quote, "You didn't build that." The only thing that's up in the Obama economy is dependency on the government. The Left's Advice Would Bring A Second Great Depression. One oddity of the current economic debate is that the more Barack Obama's incompetent income-redistribution policies have failed, the more the left calls for more government-intervention policies to correct for the deficiencies of the earlier rounds. American middle-income families have lost nearly $3,000 in purchasing power since 2007, and the left's only solution to get us out of the rut is more debt, more social-welfare spending, more income redistribution and higher taxes on the rich and big business. This sounds like the beginning of a shakedown. AG Holder: "No such thing as too big to jail". In video remarks released Monday on the Justice Department's website, he said no company is immune from prosecution regardless of its size. "There is no such thing as too big to jail." Holder also said the Justice Department is pursuing several "important investigations" into corporate wrongdoing and hinted the agency would take action in the "coming weeks and months." 1000
Days Left and Counting: Here's a Quick Snapshot of What Obama's Done So Far. What jumps out is the
unemployment rate, food stamps, and debt. But Fact Check fails to account for: Obamacare could destroy us. At first thought, health care for everybody sounds like a great idea. The problems begin once you read the law. The layers of government regulation that will be implemented because of the law will cripple our health care system. It is meant, by design, to eliminate the free market health care system we currently have in place. The free market will be replaced with a socialist health system, with health care rationing, which will ultimately cause a shortening of the average life span of Americans. Health insurance costs have already risen, and will continue to skyrocket until this monstrosity is repealed. U.S. electricity prices may be going up for good. As temperatures plunged to 16 below zero in Chicago in early January and set record lows across the eastern U.S., electrical system managers implored the public to turn off stoves, dryers and even lights or risk blackouts. A fifth of all power-generating capacity in a grid serving 60 million people went suddenly offline, as coal piles froze, sensitive electrical equipment went haywire and utility operators had trouble finding enough natural gas to keep power plants running. The wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to nearly $2 per kilowatt hour, more than 40 times the normal rate. Obama Calls for Highest Sustained Taxation in U.S. History. In the budget proposal he presented to Congress last month, President Barack Obama called for what would be the highest level of sustained taxation ever imposed on the American people, according to the analysis published last week by the Congressional Budget Office. Under Obama's proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP. America has never been subjected to a ten-year stretch of taxation at that level. Telling Students to Earn Less. The federal student loan program is becoming so costly to taxpayers that even President Obama is pretending to fix it. Readers will recall Mr. Obama as the man who has spent much of his Presidency expanding this program, creating new ways for borrowers to avoid repayment, and then campaigning about these dubious achievements on campuses nationwide. Now Team Obama is acknowledging that his policies are turning out to be more expensive than he claimed. Participation in federal debt-forgiveness programs is surging. Electricity Price Surged to All-Time Record for March. The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday [4/15/2014] by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. The relative price of electricity in the United States tends to rise in spring, peak in summer, and decline in fall. Last year, after the price of a KWH averaged 12.8 cents in March, it rose to an all-time high of 13.7 cents in June, July, August and September. Obama delivers on promise to make electricity prices skyrocket. Millions of Americans are dealing with skyrocketing electricity prices and it looks like costs will be going even higher. Congressional Budget Office: Obama budget wouldn't put debt on downward path. President Obama's budget would not place the federal debt on a downward path over the next 10 years, according to projections released by the Congressional Budget Office on Thursday [4/17/2014]. The CBO, Congress' nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, projected that if the president's proposals were to go into effect, federal debt held by the public would rise from $12.8 trillion at the end of fiscal 2014 to $19.9 trillion in 2024, leaving the level of debt as a share of total economic output constant, at roughly 74 percent. That would be lower than the baseline projection of 78 percent if nothing is done, but would mean that the debt was headed in the wrong direction even in a relatively favorable scenario. That estimate differs by $1.7 trillion from the White House budget office's projections. The Office of Management and Budget had the debt peaking in fiscal 2015 and then falling, reaching as low as 69 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the budget window. Obama has Proposed 442 Tax Hikes Since Taking Office. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Obama budget with the lowest number of proposed tax increases was released during an election year: In February 2012, Obama released his FY 2013 budget, with "only" 34 proposed tax increases. Once safely re-elected, Obama came back with a vengeance, proposing 137 tax increases, a personal record high for the 44th President. In addition to the 442 tax increases in his annual budget proposals, the 20 signed into law as part of Obamacare, and the massive tobacco tax hike signed into law on the sixteenth day of his presidency, Obama has made it clear he is open to other broad-based tax increases. Obama's Economy-Killing Tax-Hike Frenzy Knows No End. In his first campaign, President Obama pledged to cut taxes for all but the very rich. Now that another tax day has come and gone, it should be very clear that his pledge was just another in a long line of falsehoods. [...] A new report from Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a group that advocates tax cuts to restore economic growth, says that President Obama has so far pushed for 442 tax hikes — many of them aimed squarely at the struggling middle class whom Obama has vowed repeatedly to protect. If Obama were to get his way, he'd be the most prolific tax hiker in history. Here's another reason for the high price of hamburger:
Government-mandated inefficiency through over-regulation. The process of killing the U.S. dollar. The Obama agenda is to simply "kill the U.S. dollar," where the ultimate objective is to implement an international currency in tandem with a system of global governance. [...] This is a process that has been long in the planning, and is no accident, nor is it a result of the amateurish handling of our economic affairs by the Obama regime or the last few presidential administrations. It is a deliberate process, covered by the fog of the geopolitical machinations between the U.S., Russia and the controlling power elite. Obama's Weekly Address on How Big Government Grows Opportunity. It's hard to say whether Obama is lying just to expand government power or he actually believes this clap-trap himself. [...] It's no coincidence that as government spending has risen over Obama's tenure, the rich are getting richer and opportunity is shrinking. Half of new college graduates won't be able to find a full-time job in their fields. The middle class is being "buried" by Obama's policies. We're doing more of the same and the nation is getting worse. Major Regulations 153% Higher in First Five Years Under Obama Than Bush. The number of major federal regulations issued in the first five years of the Obama administration was 153.2% higher than during the first five years of the Bush administration, according to data from the Heritage Foundation. "In the first five years of President Obama's Administration, 157 major federal regulations were issued. By comparison, only 62 major federal regulations were issued during the first five years of the George W. Bush Administration," according to Heritage's report, Red Tape Rising: Five Years of Regulatory Expansion. Red tape can be used to strangle capitalism. Obama imposes his policies directly on federal contractors, in 'year of action'. President Obama is imposing his policies directly on federal contractors. This week, he will sign an executive order that would prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their pay with each other. The prohibition on the wage "gag rules" is similar to language in a Senate bill aimed at closing a pay gap between men and women. That legislation is scheduled for a vote this week, though it is not likely to pass. In addition, Obama on Tuesday will direct the Labor Department to adopt regulations requiring federal contractors to provide compensation data based on sex and race. Obama looks to close wage gap while paying female staffers less than men. President Barack Obama is planning to sign two new executive actions aimed at narrowing the wage gap between men and women Tuesday [4/8/2014], even as the Obama White House pays its female staffers less than men. The first executive action will be an order banning federal contractors from retaliation against employees who disclose or ask about their wages, according to reports. His other executive action will require federal contractors to submit data to the government about their employees compensation by sex and race. The Minimum Wage Will Slash the Economy's Throat. It is amazing how violently the Democrats shout about how the increase in the minimum wage law is the key to economic salvation. I'm not sure, even if we forget about increased unemployment and higher prices, how a $10.10 minimum wage is supposed to give us a vibrant economy. Nevertheless, Democrat Representative George Miller of California insisted the Republicans are suffocating the economy by not passing this pay increase. Runaway Regulation Is Destroying Wealth And The Economy. The power to promulgate rules, edicts and commandments applied to consumers, banks, local and state governments, schools, churches and businesses is, alas, almost limitless. Obama pledged in this year's State of the Union address that "wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation ... that's what I'm going to do." Well, a new report by economists James Gattuso and Diane Katz of the Heritage Foundation indicates that Obama and his army of regulators have already been hard at it for years, using the rule-making powers of the executive branch to harass and intimidate private businesses engaged in the course of normal commerce. White House looks to regulate cow flatulence as part of climate agenda. As part of its plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama administration is targeting the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions in their operations. This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990. The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas. Some of these methane emissions come from cow flatulence, exhaling and belching — other livestock animals release methane as well. America in Decline. For a president that promised to reduce the national debt, Obama has added a massive seven trillion dollars to that debt. Under his presidency, America has accumulated as much new debt as it did in its first 227 years. He heads an Administration that produces food stamps, pries into people's private lives, and sets government agencies against political opponents. Obama is following the guidebook of Saul Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals," and is putting Alinsky's primer into practice from the White House. The results of his experiment are devastating. The Obamacare of Real Estate. Top Senate Banking Committee members released plans this week to wind down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a complicated apparatus disturbingly similar to Obamacare. [...] In going through contortions to reinvent the housing finance system, the senators have avoided the obvious solution: keep the basic platform that has generally served American homeowners well but reform it to reduce risks. Instead, Johnson and the others have come up with a contraption that resembles the Affordable Care Act in its convolutions and its potential for unintended consequences. The Editor says... Lawsuit Challenges Use Of Endangered Species To Stop Energy Boom. Oklahoma's attorney general has filed what could become a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, arguing the so-called "sue and settle" procedure for listing animals and plants on the endangered and threatened list violates the federal Endangered Species Act. Scott Pruitt filed the complaint late Monday on behalf of the state of Oklahoma and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), a national network of oil and gas companies. The attorney general charges that "by entering into private settlements with special interest litigants, (the Fish and Wildlife Service) has attempted to circumvent the legislative and regulatory process and make fundamental changes to its (Endangered Species Act)-imposed obligations." On Track to Restart the Cold War. On economic policy, President Obama has consistently and thoroughly followed just the opposite of everything Reagan did. And that is why he has consistently and thoroughly gotten the opposite of Reagan's results. Reagan slashed tax rates, with the top income tax rate reduced from 70% when he entered office to 28% when he left. [...] In sharp contrast, Obama's consistently anti-growth economic policies have produced the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression. Obama Will Seek Broad Expansion of Overtime Pay. President Obama this week will seek to force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated. On Thursday [3/13/2014], the president will direct the Labor Department to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million additional fast-food managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others whom many businesses currently classify as "executive or professional" employees to avoid paying them overtime, according to White House officials briefed on the announcement. 'Generous Guy' Obama Rewrites Overtime Regs as Back-door Pay Hike. Hailing him as a "Generous Guy," in this morning's "Cheat Sheet" digest the editors of the Daily Beast today [3/12/2014] praised President Obama for planning to "unveil a plan to force businesses to pay more overtime to millions of employees," justifying the move since the country "[faces] an economy where workers' wages have stagnated while corporate profits have taken off." The editors explain how Mr. Obama is going about this, but fail to note any criticism from conservatives or libertarians, even as they, naturally, found a way to blame George W. Bush for the plight of fast-food wage earners. Obama signs order to revise overtime pay rules. President Obama on Thursday unveiled his latest initiative to boost workers' pay, saying he wanted to "restore the common-sense principle behind overtime." Obama signed an executive order directing the Labor Department to develop new rules to expand the number of Americans who can receive overtime pay. The president was joined by workers he said would benefit from the strengthened rules at a White House event. Biz stunned as Obama moves on overtime. Business groups and congressional Republicans are blasting regulations President Obama will announce Thursday [3/13/2014] that could extend overtime pay to as many as 10 million workers who are now ineligible for it. While liberals lauded the plan as putting more cash in the pockets of millions of workers, business groups warned it would damage the economy and Republicans said it was another example of executive overreach. Trade associations already battling the White House over a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour said they were blindsided by the announcement. Obama overtime plan already stirring controversy. President Barack Obama's move to make more workers eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay is being hailed by Democrats who see it as a potent midterm election issue and condemned by Republicans and business leaders as presidential overreach. Obama, Inc. President Obama has no business experience. For most people, that might incline one to modesty. Not this president. To the contrary, he believes he knows how an auto company should be run, what policies health-insurance companies should offer, the wages, say, a part-time worker in a family restaurant should receive and what banks should pay in bonuses. Now the president has found a new area in which to intervene. US energy security threatened by prairie chicken and sage grouse. The Obama administration seems hell-bent on sabotaging domestic energy production, one way or another. As James Freeman writes in the Wall Street Journal, "Delaying approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, maintaining export limits and discouraging refinery construction haven't stopped a revolution that will soon make the United States the world's largest producer of crude oil." But the administration, goaded by radical environmentalists, has a new weapon to curtail production: more endangered species. Washington may add a record 757 new species to the endangered list by 2018. Job Destroyer. Does the president have a clue about what creates jobs and what kills jobs? Based on the evidence from his five years as president, the answer is no, he doesn't. [...] His environmental policies are relentless job killers. The crackdown on the coal industry has come at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs. Approval of the Keystone pipeline would lead to thousands of new jobs, but Obama has balked. So too would the opening of federal lands to natural gas production, just as it has on private lands. The Editor says... Dinesh D'Souza: Obama Believes in 'Moral Indictment of America and Free Market'. President Barack Obama believes in the central argument of modern progressivism, according to Dinesh D'Souza. [...] Obama, he said, knows exactly what he is doing. "The point about Obama is that he is someone who wants to shrink America's footprint in the world," he said. "He wants to remake America." Modern progressives like Obama, D'Souza said, believe that "America and the wealth of America is based on theft." He said they fundamentally believe that America stole land from Native Americans, took the labor of Africans, stole a part of Mexico, and is currently taking oil from the Middle East. "This is what we are up against," D'Souza said of the "moral attack against capitalism." Keystone XL is Proof Obama Opposes U.S. Economic Growth. It's taken nearly five years, but Americans are finally aware that President Obama is opposed to anything that contributes to the economic growth of the nation. [...] The most dramatic example is Obama's five-year delay of the implementation of the Keystone XL pipeline that would safely transport oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast. CBO slams Obama's recovery as sluggish; labor force won't recover for years. The Congressional Budget Office has more bad news for President Barack Obama: His economic recovery isn't working — and is much worse than the previous four recoveries. "More than four and a half years after the end of the recession, employment has risen sluggishly — much more slowly than it grew, on average, during the four previous recoveries that lasted more than one year," the report reads. Obama's stimulus beginning to drag economy down. President Obama's stimulus may have boosted the economy when it passed in 2009, but it's now beginning to take a toll and will soon begin to leave the economy worse off than if it had never passed, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office. +106%: Obama Has More Than Doubled Marketable U.S. Debt. The marketable debt of the U.S. government has more than doubled — climbing by 106 percent — while President Barack Obama has been in office, increasing from $5,749,916,000,000 at the end of January 2009 to $11,825,322,000,000 at the end of January 2014, according to the U.S. Treasury's latest Monthly Statement of the Public Debt. Obama Signs an Executive Order to Raise the Federal Minimum Wage. Obama originally wanted to raise federal employees to $9 per hour. However, having failed so embarrassingly on the Affordable Health Act he had to do something dramatic, hence $10.10 per hour. Still, it's a joke. For income equality with the upper tier, Obama would have to raise federal employees to ten thousand dollars an hour. And that still wouldn't equal the income of the financial titans or the hedge fund managers. Obama's minimum wage hike will cost 500,000 jobs by the end of 2016 - report. The White House may have to scrap its plans to aggressively promote a 40 percent national minimum wage hike now that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the move would likely cost the U.S. 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016. The CBO's report, released Tuesday afternoon, also estimated that it would pull 900,000 low-income Americans above the federal government's poverty line. Congressional budget office: Minimum wage hike raises income for over 16.5M but cost 500K jobs. Boosting the federal minimum wage as President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are proposing would increase earnings for more than 16.5 million people by 2016 but also cut employment by roughly 500,000 jobs, Congress' nonpartisan budget analyst said Tuesday [2/18/2014]. Minimum wage hike would kill a half-million jobs: CBO. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour will cost the U.S. economy a half-million jobs by 2016 but will substantially boost wages for most low-income workers, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday that adds a significant hurdle to Democrats' push for an increase. Stung by the findings, the White House, which is still facing a sluggish job picture five years after the recession, scrambled for a response. It praised the nonpartisan agency's finding that low-wage workers' income would rise but said the CBO job numbers "do not reflect the overall consensus view of economists." Government's insane hallucinations. Once upon a time, people could start businesses in America and run them as they saw fit. People can no longer do that. Instead, businesses must conform to insanely expensive one-size-fits-all health insurance requirements imposed by a group of people who have never run a business, never met a payroll and never had to worry about making a profit. Government's insane hallucinations. Obamacare results in higher unemployment as employers shy away from the insane expenses and government requirements endemic in the ACA. To stay in business, many employers must reduce worker hours or reduce the number of employees. Nebraska Sues EPA over Power Plant CO2 Restrictions. The EPA standards appear to be fulfilling a pledge President Barack Obama made in a meeting with the editorial board of the liberal San Francisco Chronicle while campaigning for president in 2008. Obama promised to impose enough costs on coal-fired power plants that companies would go bankrupt trying to build them. "I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers under my plan of a cap-and-trade system. Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," said Obama at the time. "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them," Obama added. Obama's Plan to Bankrupt Coal Continues Without Congress. Remember back during the 2008 presidential campaign when Barack Obama promised to bankrupt anyone who wanted to build a coal-fired power plant and essentially shut down the coal industry? For those not paying attention, despite his inability to get cap-and-trade passed, he is still pursuing this plan. Now, he's doing it via EPA regulations known as New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) — which amount to a "cap" without the "trade." [...] It could also cost over 200,000 jobs if implemented as currently drafted. And that's all leaving aside the fact that Obama EPA regulations are already responsible for about 130 coal-fired power plants shuttering since 2009 (over 200 more are expected to shutter in coming years). Obama's SOTU: 18 Lies and Distortions That Should Concern Us. [#1] He is proud of the 6.7% unemployment rate. Raw Deal: Obamanomics Has Cost The Economy $1.3 Trillion. The good news from Thursday's GDP report is that growth for the second half of 2013 topped 3.5%. Hardly warp speed, but an Indy race car compared to the slow-motion rate since the recession officially ended. Even the better numbers, however, can't mask the Obama growth deficit during this expansion. The Joint Economic Committee of Congress calculates that if the recovery over the past 4½ years had been at just the normal pace of recoveries, the economy would be $1.3 trillion larger today. Stop Giving Obama Radicals the Benefit of the Doubt. [Scroll down] History never stops turning the soil and what seemed impossible not long ago is always possible. Had you brought up fears in 2005 that the federal government would take over General Motors, shut down coal plants, destroy secured creditor rights of Chrysler bondholders, or taken over the health care system, polite company would have moved to the other side of the room. "Couldn't happen here," would have been the response. Obama Executive Order to 'Cut Red Tape' Has Added $10.2 Billion in Costs to Economy. Tuesday [1/21/2014] was the third anniversary of Executive Order 13563, prompting the American Action Forum to examine the effects of the order. It was intended to reduce "redundant, inconsistent, or overlapping" regulations. The order was hailed as "unprecedented" by the president and former Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) administrator Cass Sunstein. However, Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at American Action Forum, found that the action was hardly unique and has had the opposite effect of its intended purpose. Obama vs. Obama. [Scroll down] So who is responsible for this state of affairs? Consider the trillion and a half dollars handed over to the banks and other financial institutions shortly after Obama took office. This money was supposed to be extended as credit to businesses — including small businesses — in a bid to supercharge the economy according to the old Keynesian formula. Instead it went directly into the markets, where it triggered the growth of the current market bubble, generating plenty in the way of paper profits, bonuses, and so forth along the way. Also consider the $65 billion a month handed to the banks in the form of "quantitative easing." New study shows that Obama's proposed minimum wage hike will kill jobs. The Employment Policies Institute recently released a study on the impact that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 will have on the economy. The news is grim, as an estimated 360,000 to 1,084,000 jobs would be eliminated across the country according to the report. Imperial, lawless Obama threatens more unilateral action. Obama is simply a lawless president who regards his own counsel higher than his duty to obey the Constitution. He believes that advancing his political agenda justifies ignoring clear limitations on his power. In rationalizing these imperial outrages, Obama tells us that he is going to provide the American people with the help they need — as if he is the sole arbiter of that, as if Congress is a potted plant and as if the Supreme Court is either impotent or a rubber stamp. Obama's overreaches would be just as outrageous if he were providing Americans with what we need, but he is doing the opposite as he is systematically destroying the country. 1,687,000 Fewer Americans Have Jobs Today Than 6 Years Ago. Although the number of people who had jobs in the United States increased by 143,000 from November to December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that still left 1,687,000 fewer Americans holding jobs than held jobs six years ago in December 2007 — the month the last recession began. Obama [is] America's Clear and Present Danger. Pure and simple, liberal progressives are advocating for wealth redistribution and trickle up poverty. They believe instead of having tax, regulatory, and monetary policies that enable a thriving free market system, we should expand the welfare nanny-state. It's purely political, and not as President Obama tries to persuade, moral. The goal is to create such a state of depravity and hopelessness for a broad swath of Americans who are forced into the desperate state of grateful dependency upon Obama and his ilk. It's the textbook Alinsky tactic of demonizing the opposition as heartless, uncaring, mean and evil. Obama's Internal Devaluation Increases Income Inequality. The Obama Administration's $5.8 trillion of big government deficit spending has caused the United States to suffer an "internal devaluation," as American worker wages after inflation were forced down in each of the last five years. American competitiveness increased by over 10% due to worker sacrifices, but all the benefits flowed directly to corporate officers and financial speculators. The hidden costs of ObamaCare. ObamaCare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it's sticker shock. Now that most people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that Affordable Care is a big hit to the family budget. And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy? Barack Obama's Presidency Is A Complete Failure By His Own, Self-Imposed Standards. [Scroll down] Meanwhile, electricity prices are skyrocketing to all-time highs, according to the government's own official statistics. The Electricity Price Index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hit an all-time record in November, 20% higher than 6 years ago. That is another loss for the middle class, further reducing real incomes. That is due to Obama's runaway overregulation, pursuing the President's War on Coal, and other manipulative, fairy tale delusions. New EPA regulations will take out 10% of all electricity produced by plentiful, low cost American coal, according to the Institute for Energy Research. Obama Lawlessness Spreads To Supreme Court. Obama race-mongers first mugged mortgage bankers, then went gunning for car lenders. Now they're trying to block the Supreme Court from taking away their main weapon: disparate impact. Obama Must Be Forced to Resign. Ignoring the central role of a free market prolongs bad economic conditions and high taxation to maintain an ever-expanding central government led to big problems for European nations and promises the same — or worse — for the U.S. When you add in the increased debt imposed in Obama's first term you are looking at the road to ruin. Blaming "millionaires and billionaires" or "income inequality" is the very essence of communism. It is a rejection of our capitalistic economic system. Financial ruin for America is embedded in its huge debt, its deficits, and its multi-trillions of dollars in unfunded debt that already insolvent Social Security and Medicare programs represent. And Medicare was looted to fund Obamacare! EPA v. USA. As part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan unveiled in June, his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating exorbitant and punitive limits on power plant carbon emissions. The EPA unveiled its proposal in September to restrict new power plants to technologically impossible standards of carbon dioxide generation and capture. The announcement has brought down a storm of criticism from industry and public officials. "Never before has the federal government forced an industry to do something that is technologically impossible," countered U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who serves on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He warned, "If these regulations go into effect, American jobs will be lost, electricity prices will soar, and economic uncertainty will grow." Bringing Abuses By EPA to a Halt. Among President Barack Obama's first assaults in his war against the coal industry and reasonably priced electricity was an Environmental Protection Agency action that was truly outrageous by almost any measure. During Obama's first term, the EPA overruled the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' approval of a water discharge permit for a surface mine in West Virginia. The veto was retroactive, occurring nearly four years after the Corps approved the permit. Obama's Misguided Obsession With Inequality. In his widely noted speech, President Obama said that "a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility" is "the defining challenge of our time." This belief makes Mr. Obama unique: Unlike the other presidents since World War II, he places inequality above economic growth as the organizing principle of U.S. economic policy. More about Obama's big income inequality speech. Attorneys General Join Forces to Call Into Account Illegal Obama Administration Violations. In Oklahoma, the EPA illegally usurped Oklahoma's authority in the Clean Air Act to determine the state's own plan for addressing sources of emissions by imposing a federal implementation plan. The federal plan goes beyond the authority granted to the EPA in the Clean Air Act and will result in a $2 billion cost to install technology needed to complete the EPA plan and a permanent increase of 15-20 percent in the cost of electricity. Obama's War on America's Energy Needs. The Obama administration's relentless war on the nation's coal industry and on the electrical power generation plants that depend upon it is one aspect of his war on America that doesn't receive the attention it deserves. There is literally no basis, no justification for it, and yet the mainstream media tends to take little notice or supports it. It is far more than a "war on coal". It is a war on the nation's capacity to meet its ever expanding energy needs. You can't build a power generation plant overnight. You can't get the enormous amount of electrical energy the nation needs from wind and solar power. ObamaCare May Devastate the Real Estate and Travel Industries. Americans are among the most mobile people on earth, but ObamaCare may soon start freezing them in place. Millions are losing their health insurance policies and being forced onto the ObamaCare exchanges, where most plans only provide local medical coverage. As Americans realize they must pay for all non-emergency medical care when they leave their home county, their decisions may have a profound impact on the real-estate market, particularly the second home sector, and on the travel business. The Financial Collapse of America. Despite nearly fifty years of a Cold War with the former Soviet Union (1945-1991), Americans have been blissfully ignorant of the communist intention to destroy capitalism and have accepted a vast matrix of social programs that now represent $70 trillion in unfunded financial liabilities. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, their plan "to overwhelm America with debt, welfare, and entitlements — in other words, to bankrupt America has continued unabated. Drowning In A Costly, Intrusive Federal Regulatory Flood. The federal regulatory machine is coming not only for power plants, as the president promised while campaigning in 2008. It also has its eye on controlling private property. Earlier this week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has a long history of highlighting Washington's regulatory excess, said that during the first week of December, "95 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register," which followed "77 new final rules" published the previous week. It's "the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 46 minutes." Obama Is Laying the Groundwork to Move Without, Around, and Outside Congress. "Climate change" suggests that Obama intends to ramp up his war on coal in the remaining years of his presidency, via the EPA and perhaps executive actions similar to those he has used with regard to Obamacare and immigration. Obama came into office threatening to bankrupt the coal industry, wanting to impose a cap and trade regime, but could not get one passed by Congress even when Democrats controlled both houses. Obama is aware that his actions will force energy prices skyward. His actions come at a time when evidence for global warming has disappeared. That has not changed his intention to impose cap and trade. ObamaCare created a Medicaid time bomb. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far. The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments. Report: Obama Regulatory Agenda Will Cost $143 Billion to Economy Next Year. Upcoming regulations from the Obama administration in 2014 would cost the private sector $143.3 billion, according to a new report. The American Action Forum (AAF) examined the "unified agenda," which lays out "regulatory priorities" for the next year, and was released shortly before Thanksgiving. The report documents regulations for 2014 from Obamacare, the EPA, Department of Energy, and others, revealing a regulatory system on "autopilot" that covers everything from calorie postings in vending machines to efficiency standards for portable air conditioners. The Government's War on Long-Haul Truckers. Manuel Hernandez is not a complainer. But lately, he's got a lot to complain about. Excessive government regulations are making it harder and harder for him to earn a living. And he's not sure what he can do about it. Hernandez is not an energy executive being hassled by the EPA, a banker trying to cope with Dodd-Frank, or a doctor getting nickel-and-dimed by HHS and Obamacare; he's a long-haul trucker. And his story is one all Republicans running for office should know, because it personifies our government's war against a large category of middle-class workers who make our economy hum. Obamacare merry-go-round: Regulations, subsidies, taxes, more subsidies. Nobody should be surprised that President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a new bailout for insurers. Whenever Obama sees a problem, he proposes a regulation. When that regulation hurts someone, he proposes a subsidy. That subsidy, in turn, justifies a new tax or regulation, then more bailouts. It may seem like he's swinging back and forth — pro-business, then anti-business — but he's marching in a straight line: more state control of industry. It's the ratchet of state corporatism, and Obama is pretty handy with it. Obama Pivots to Income Inequality. Today President Obama announced to an audience at the far-left Center for American Progress that he will spend the remainder of his term in office focusing on income inequality. He began by saying that middle-class Americans are struggling, and the American Dream is threatened. He is right. Statistics on the White House's own web site indicate that since Obama took office, median family income has fallen, per capita income has dropped, and millions of Americans have been plunged into poverty. But Obama is like a weatherman: he takes no responsibility for the disasters he describes. EPA preparing to unleash a deluge of new regulations. Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power plants and expand the agency's authority to bodies of water on private property. On Tuesday [11/26/2013], the White House released its regulatory agenda for the fall of 2013. It lists hundreds of pending energy and environmental regulations being crafting by executive branch agencies, including 134 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency alone. Obama's American Dream. At some point before the 2008 election, an angry sounding Michelle Obama snarled, "there are kids who still believe in the American dream. They think it exists!" For the past five years, her husband has been doing everything in his power to make sure it doesn't. Under Obama, the American Dream — the idea that anyone can achieve prosperity through hard work — is becoming a thing of the past. You do not need to install a dictator when you've already had a politically
supercharged permanent bureaucracy in place for 40 years or more. Barack Obama: Architect of American decline. Obama has never followed the Constitution as it was written or intended. He has always chosen loopholes to bypass what the founding fathers so eloquently established. That by itself should tell us this was never about Washington politics. But the media never saw it that way. They still don't. They are still talking about 2014, whether Obama hss been damaged, what his legacy will be and the panic in the White House. This story is bigger than that. It always has been. It is about a fundamental strategy to alter the foundations upon which the United States was built. Growing Use of Civil Forfeiture Creates Nightmares for Small Business Owners. Imagine that you run a grocery store with your daughter, a store you have owned for thirty years. Imagine that just last year the IRS found no violations in an audit of your store. Now imagine that, despite continuing your sound business practices, you awake one day to find the IRS has seized your entire bank account. The IRS has used a technique called civil forfeiture against you and you find your Constitutional guarantee of innocence until proven guilty has been completely reversed. That is the nightmare that Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas found themselves in on January 22, 2013. Obamacare Failure May Shave 30% From U.S. Drug Sales. Potential shortfalls in enrollment for President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul would put a 30 percent dent in projections for U.S. prescription-drug sales in 2017, a report from IMS Health Inc. shows. That worst-case scenario would translate to $320 billion in drug spending, according to the report. The best case is supposed to be $460 billion, boosted by demand from the health law's expansion of insurance coverage and medical screenings, and removal of restrictions on pre-existing conditions. Another Big Green power player moves up in Obama's Washington. President Obama this week nominated Rhea Sun Suh to be the Department of the Interior's assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, a move that has brought shudders to ranchers, miners, timber harvesters and energy workers nationwide, particularly in the West. The reason is that this high post controls both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. Those two large agencies have a track record of appalling behavior that ranges from massively coercing private property away from thousands of owners, to faking science for new regulations, to cozy sue-and-settle lawsuits with not-so-former green group colleagues. The unspoken success of ObamaCare. Despite what you are being told, the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, is already proving to be a resounding success. [...] First, it is vital to understand that the ACA is not now, nor never was, about providing affordable health care. It is merely disguised as such. Rather, it is the vehicle that is being covertly used to conduct the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that this nation has ever experienced. It is being done methodically and for a specific purpose. It is the vehicle that will ultimately disassemble and destroy significant parts of the United States Constitution and further enslave United States citizens. EPA Shutting Down Last-standing U.S. Primary Lead Smelter. The last standing primary lead smelter in the United States will be closing in December — thanks to the federal Environmental Protection Agency's continuing war on American industry. While environmental militants may cheer the demise of the Doe Run Company smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri, as an ecological "victory," the plant's closure will have little-to-no positive environmental impact, while causing significant economic harm. The potential implications for individual liberty and national security could prove to be even more significant. Meanwhile, Congress continues to permit the EPA to wreak havoc on the American economy, with draconian regulations that have no basis in science and are causing incalculable harm. When Obamacare Mugs a Liberal. California has been waging a war against independent contractors for the past 20 years, and President Obama's administration has made it clear through their actions how much they hate small business in general. But in forcing so many people out of individual health insurance policies, they apparently never bothered to consider how many of those individual policy owners would be journalists. Obama's Economy: Wall Street Thrives, Main Street Dies. The man at the center of the storm has blown a giant hole in the notion that the Obama administration is looking out for middle class Americans. [...] For [Andrew] Huszar it's the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time. It's far worse than that. When the proverbial music stops playing, Main Street America could find itself on the wrong end of the greatest swindle in the history of mankind. Grand Theft Obama: The Biggest Heist in U.S.
History. [Scroll down] The consequences of welfare state policies are evident everywhere. Consider the following statistics: Krauthammer: Obamacare a tool to intentionally destroy wealth and create Democratic voters. During the online-only portion of Fox News Channel's "Special Report" on Wednesday night [11/6/2013], Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer laid out his theory on what Obamacare's real intended purpose is: an instrument to redistribute wealth. The President Who Has Done the Most Damage. I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that. [...] But I have never written or broadcast that our country was being seriously damaged by a president. So it is with great sadness that I write that President Barack Obama has done and continues to do major damage to America. The only question is whether this can ever be undone. This is equally true domestically and internationally. Domestically, his policies have gravely impacted the American economy. Obama Has Presided Over 5 of 6 Largest Deficits in U.S. History. President Barack Obama has now presided over five of the six largest annual budget deficits the U.S. government has ever run, according to data released yesterday by the U.S. Treasury. In fiscal 2013, which ended Sept. 30, the deficit was $680.276 billion, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released Wednesday [10/30/2013]. Interior Secretary: Obama Will Use Executive Powers to Conserve Lands. President Barack Obama will use his executive powers to protect more mountains, rivers and forests from development if Congress does not act to preserve such wild spaces, the U.S. Interior Secretary said on Thursday [10/31/2013]. The Editor says... Can We Finally Stop Pretending? [Scroll down] So, can we finally stop pretending that the left has a positive plan for the United States? Can we stop pretending that the president meant to do anything other than destroy a system he has hated since his socialist-influenced youth? Can we dispense with the unhinged rants about dog whistles and face up to the fact that conservatives have been right about this all along? Can we finally openly discuss that the left's own hatred and bigotry are largely to blame for where we are now, not just regarding ObamaCare? What is it about Detroit, Italy, or Greece that we do not understand? When the Have Nots Become the Haves. Saul Alinsky the political thinker who seems to have had more impact on President Obama than any other was very clear in his most important book about what his motives were and what he was aiming at, "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. 'The Prince' was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. 'Rules for Radicals' is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." More about Obama and Alinsky. Toward Single-Payer: We're Almost There. Seventy-five years ago, it was lawyers, doctors, and shop owners; today, it's insurance companies. These free-enterprise for-profits are the main obstacle to instituting a single-payer health care system in the U.S. They must be removed from the equation if Obama is to realize his dream. A Fifth of Doom. "You add one to the trillions place" is how we need to teach math in the Age of Obama. It happened again to our national debt on Friday [10/18/2013], for the seventh time in just five years — we added another 1 to the trillions place, for a total national debt of about $17,075,000,000,000. Over $12,000,000,000,000 of that is held by the public, meaning that the vig on that much must be paid or else we go into default. "Public" includes China, which holds one of those trillions places, plus change.
Under Obamanomics, America Morphs Into Welfare Nation. Any lingering doubts about the deficiencies of Obamanomics can be dispelled with one piece of data: The U.S. has spent $3.7 trillion on welfare in the past five years, with virtually nothing to show for it. GOP members of the Senate Budget Committee reported that cumulative spending on welfare during the Obama years has been five times greater than what's been spent on transportation, education and NASA — combined. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising. Obama, after all, promised a "fundamental transformation" of America. He's fulfilled that promise with a vengeance. Why ObamaCare is a fantastic success. The GOP needs to stop calling ObamaCare a "trainwreck." That means it's a mistake, or accident. That means it's a gigantic flop, or failure. It's NOT. This is a brilliant, cynical, and purposeful attempt to damage the U.S. economy, kill jobs, and bring down capitalism. It's not a failure, it's Obama's grand success. It's not a "trainwreck," ObamaCare is a suicide attack. A Criminal Enterprise Called the Democratic Party. The President and the Democratic Party want all the restrictions on their capacity to spend tax dollars lifted. They want an end to the sequestration that curbs the natural inclination of government departments and agencies to spend taxpayer dollars as fast as the Federal Reserve can print them. The Reserve in turn has been purchasing $85 billion in the nation's debt every month to maintain the fiction that the nation can pay its bills despite the fact that it has more debt than the entire national economy — the Gross Domestic Product — generates every year. And who tripled that debt in just his first term? Obama. U.S. debt jumps a record $328 billion — tops $17 trillion for first time. U.S. debt jumped a record $328 billion on Thursday [10/17/2013], the first day the federal government was able to borrow money under the deal President Obama and Congress sealed this week. The debt now equals $17.075 trillion, according to figures the Treasury Department posted online on Friday [10/18/2013]. 'Objective' Media Celebrate Obama Shutdown Victory. Something that makes our Constitution work so well are those features that roadblock what is known as the "tyranny of the majority" — like the filibuster. Losing the ability, especially under this spend-happy president, to use the debt ceiling/continuing resolution triggers to force spending cuts is going to have long-term ramifications on our country, none of them good. Loophole will allow government to spend without limit until February. Obama: the Revolutionary as Halfwit. [Scroll down] Of course, Obama is a revolutionary communist (whether card-carrying or not), and of course, his aim is to demolish the capitalist system of which America is the foremost exponent. Everything we know about him, everything he does, points in this direction. As a matter of fact, he has never concealed his real intentions. Didn't he promise, mere days before the 2008 election, to "fundamentally transform America" if elected? To radically transform the country after extolling it, on the campaign trail, as the envy of the world means exactly that — to destroy it. Banging the Drum for Default. Actually, default is not paying the interest/principle on what one has borrowed. Current federal revenue is way more than enough to easily pay what we owe on federal notes, bills, and bonds. If the feds do indeed have enough revenue pouring in to meet their obligations, then actual default would be an act of volition, a decision by the president. The president would have to decide to squander the full faith and credit of the nation. Such an action would be an impeachable offense. The president tells us that the deficit has been cut in half. He's right, but that's only because it's come down from astronomical levels. Obama tampers with the stock market to achieve political gains. Congressman: 'Constitutional Crisis' If GOP Caves On Debt Ceiling. "Given the ruthless and vindictive way the shutdown has been handled, I now believe that this president would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands, at least as long as he sees political advantage in doing so," McClintock said in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Sebelius: ObamaCare To Bring 'Western Civilization To Its Knees'. [Scroll down] Then in a moment of intended sarcasm that was really one of unintentional honesty, the U.S. secretary of health and human services said, "As you know, we're facing the end of the Western Civilization by having a market-based strategy. We are bringing Western Civilization to its knees by selling private insurance plans on a website where people can pick and choose." People have long been able to buy insurance online and free to choose which insurance to buy and from whom or not to buy any at all. By forcing people to buy a product they don't want, Sebelius and the Obama administration are bringing Western civilization to its knees — at least our Constitution-based part of it. How do you deal with a President who is hell bent on destroying America? Glenn [Beck] opened the radio program this morning [10/9/2013] with a scathing critique of President Obama and his increasingly authoritarian leadership style. When you consider the results of a new AP-GFK poll, which find the President's approval rating to be at a mere 37%, clearly the American people are fed up as well. Obama to Boehner: Drop Dead. [Scroll down] "The actual liabilities of the federal government — including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits — already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP," according to Cox and Archer. "For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure." Some economists say it's a lot more than that, even more than $210 trillion, or roughly triple the annual economic output of every single person on the planet Earth combined. Treasury Secretary Lew: Stop lying to the American people. Since January 2009, the federal government has thrown money out the window then burned it once it hit the ground. Starting with spending for non-existent "shovel ready jobs," your Administration bilks taxpayers and future generations blithely and continuously. Federal spending under President Obama's watch soared upwards from 2007 levels by approximately one trillion dollars each subsequent year. This huge increase funds ineffective and "extraordinary stimulus" outflows that the Obama Administration apparently seeks to lock in as a permanent, growing base even as we unwisely shrink our military. The Black Swan in the Perfect Storm. The literal point of default doesn't have to be reached to have a major negative impact on the economy. If you're driving with the red light on your fuel gauge indicating you're low on gas, you slow down. Same for the economy. 6 Things We've Learned About Democrats From The Government Shutdown. [#2] Barack Obama is willing to deliberately tank the stock market for political reasons: In an interview with CNBC, Barack Obama tried to frighten Wall Street into selling stocks. Retaining America's liberty requires an alarmed America. National finances, domestic and foreign policies are all askew. Government spends the earnings of our yet-unborn great-grandchildren buying political support with corporate and individual welfare programs. The U.S. government stifles the entrepreneurial spirit that made us prosperous, with over-regulation. Dancing With Default. For people who claim that defaulting on U.S. debt is unthinkable, President Obama and Harry Reid are sure behaving as if they can't wait for that day to arrive. Why else are they refusing to take up the multiple Republican offers to guarantee that the U.S. will never default? This Is All About a Petulant President. Taking a page out of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," the plan is to maximize the people's pain — to maximize the political damage to the enemy, the Republican Party. What else explains it? Consider this: Asked Wednesday if there were any danger of America defaulting on her debt, President Obama rushed to assure a reporter that, yes, indeed, there certainly is such a peril. Why would a president act in so perverse a manner, were he not trying deliberately to rattle or panic the markets? Rich, Arrogant, and Stupid. [Scroll down] We have put off-limits huge supplies of oil and natural gas — a trillion barrels by some estimates — everywhere from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico. The only development going on is on private lands in states that, unlike California, do not put up punitive regulatory barriers to exploration and exploitation. Obama has intensified this bizarre behavior. He has blocked the Keystone pipeline, and his federal Bureau of Land Management has just reduced by two-thirds the 1.3 million acres George Bush set aside for development in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Compared to the last 3 fiscal years of George Bush's second term, during the first 3 fiscal years of Obama's first, drilling leases on federal land fell 42%, and permits fell 39%. And his EPA has just issued regulations on coal-fired electricity plants that are so severe and expensive that many plants will shut down and fewer new ones will be built, meaning electricity will become more expensive. Obama: Transforming America. [T]o what degree, after nearly five years in office, has Obama succeeded in changing the United States? [...] We are $6 trillion more deeply in debt. And there are record numbers of Americans on food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, or simply disengaged from the work force. Obama has also fundamentally changed Americans' ideas about the redistributive state. Destroying Household Jobs. Despite evidence from around the world that minimum wage laws can price low-skilled workers out of jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor is planning to extend minimum wage coverage to domestic workers, such as maids or those who drop in from time to time to do a few household chores for the sick and the elderly. Welcome to Obamacare — fax us your money! Months ago, the government that could hardly administer a Cash for Clunkers program had to bail on the "employer mandate," pushing the start date back to Oct. 1, 2015. That means businesses with more than 50 full-time employees are exempt from Obamacare. But small businesses, the backbone of the American economy, are still forced to comply with the regressive law. Obama: I Won't Negotiate with GOP 'Extremists'. President Barack Obama said Friday that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling with Republicans, whom Obama accused of wanting to negotiate "under the threat of blowing up the whole economy." [...] Obama said a potential default would have a "dampening effect on the economy" and cause an economic shutdown. The Editor says... A one-two punch for the baby boomer self employed. The major insurance company with which I have had my family health insurance for over 20 years said they are no longer offering the policy under which I am covered. It was a high deductible. In other words, I paid nearly all of my bills out of pocket. Didn't particularly like it, but settled for it. Now it is gone. Ben Bernanke has removed any fair return on my savings. He has done all he can to keep rates at zero and push inflation to 2%. Over a five year period, this in none other than a net accumulated tax of 10% on savers. Obama administration killing jobs pointlessly. Last Friday's announcement by EPA head Gina McCarthy of impossible-to-meet emissions standards for new coal power plants shows that the Obama administration is not for jobs. The EPA's move — the start of a long-term effort to effectively outlaw the burning of coal — is all of a piece with the stalling over the Keystone XL pipeline and sends a similar message to blue-collar workers: The Obama administration is prepared to sacrifice your jobs even when it can't show any benefit to the United States. Timber industry suffers as loggers blame federal regs for lost jobs. The Rough and Ready Sawmill was an institution in southern Oregon for 91 years. [...] While Rough and Ready sits in the middle of America's richest timber country, the federal government owns 80 percent of the land. Many in these decimated small towns blame The Endangered Species Act, which paved the way for a flood of lawsuits blocking federal timber sales, because of an endangered species in the region. Obama Has Dismantled America. Obama seems bound and determined to drive America over a cliff and make [Fareed] Zakaria's vision of the future a self-fulfilling prophecy. Obama went to work from his first day in office to make Zakaria's wishful thinking about America's decline a reality. As the most powerful man in the world, he would level the playing field, even if it meant cutting America off at the knees. Good and evil would be made equivalent, with evil sanctioned by the world's only remaining superpower. The Wrecking Ball Known as ObamaCare. Daily, one learns that ObamaCare is a job destroyer. The graph here shows that deep cuts to jobs will continue as "ObamaCare kills off at least two percent of the U.S. full-time workforce." The list of companies cutting hours for workers continues to grow. Employers seek to keep staff below the 30-hour threshold set by the not-so Affordable Care Act. Thus, "according to an April survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 41% of 603 small business owners" are delaying hiring. In fact, "one in five [have] already cut hours, while 20% have reduced payroll." Obamacare May Wipe Out 2% of America's Workforce. If this seems rather terrible, it's what some of the worst European economies already look like with part time jobs for most younger people and a limited reserve of full time jobs for union members and government employees. EPA effectively bans coal plants with stifling carbon dioxide limits. The battle lines have been drawn as 17 states, the coal industry and pro-coal Democrats and Republicans prepare to take on the Environmental Protection Agency's new carbon dioxide emissions limits. These sweeping new rules effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants. The EPA's new emissions limits cap carbon emissions for coal plants at 1,100 pounds per megawatt hour, which is an unmeetable standard unless operators install carbon capture and storage technology. This technology has yet to prove commercially viable. Obama Begins Carpet Bombing the Coal Industry. On the eve of this past election, we made a plea to toss-up states that are widely described as residing in coal country to understand that if President Obama were to emerge victorious, the EPA would soon unleash a slew of anti-coal regulations that would absolutely crush the coal industry, and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs in those states. Today [9/20/2013] is the day that this all comes to fruition. Today is the first strike in the war on coal, the first carpet bombing of the industry, and the beginning of the President's long-sought dream to bankrupt the industry and take out numerous employment and economic casualties with it. More about Obama's war on coal. New Rules On Power Plants Will Kill Coal Industry. The administration finally has released its rules for curbing CO2 emissions from U.S. power plants. Far from being a plan to clean up the environment, it is in fact a road map to de-industrialization and poverty. Obama's Middle-Class 'Mission Accomplished'. During his four and a half years in office, Obama has done more damage to the American middle class than any president since Herbert Hoover. That is not a difficult statement to prove, and it may be an understatement. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show an official unemployment rate of 7.3%. Not since the Great Depression of the 1930s have so many Americans been out of work, and 7.3% is only the tip of the iceberg. The real unemployment rate, or U-6, which includes discouraged and part-time workers, still stands at 13.7%. [...] One troubling aspect of the August report was the revision of the official July unemployment figure — downward from to 162,000 to 104,000. In other words, the July BLS jobs estimate was a whopping 36% too high. The estimate for June also had to be revised downward, as it often had been in the preceding months. Is there a con man in the Oval Office? Since January 77% of all jobs created in America under Obama have been part-time jobs. Not surprisingly in a nation with only crummy part-time jobs, the income picture is degenerating into a nightmare. Real household income has dropped in every year of Obama's Presidency. A new Census Bureau report reveals that the typical American family under Obama now earns less today than it did in 1989. Remember when Obama promised to bankrupt coal? That's tomorrow. Tomorrow [9/20/2013], Dear Leader is set to unveil a regulation that forms the centerpiece of his "anti-climate change" policy announced awhile back to much green fawning. This new regulation will reportedly ban all future coal-fired power plant construction. Yes, you read that right. Obama is set to ban all future coal-fired power plant construction tomorrow by regulatory fiat. CBO Report's Facts Speak Louder Than Obama's Spending and Debt Crisis Denial. The release of today's [9/17/2013] Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the long-term budget outlook sends one message loud and clear: The U.S. spending and debt crisis is only getting worse. U.S. public debt doubled since before the recession and stands at a 50-year high today. Census on Obama's 1st Term: Real Median Income Down $2,627; People in Poverty Up 6,667,000; Record 46,496,000 Now Poor. During the four years that marked President Barack Obama's first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released today [9/17/2013] by the Census Bureau. The Obama EPA's War on America. If an enemy was doing this to America we would go to war against it, but this is being done and the enemy is the government on which we depend to ensure the nation has the energy it needs to function and grow. Leading the war on America has been the Environmental Protection Agency, but it is joined by the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and other agencies. US poverty rate remains stuck at 15 percent. The nation's poverty rate stood still at 15 percent last year, the sixth straight year that it has failed to improve. By Joe Biden's Own Metric, the Obama Administration Is Failing. Median household income is in the U.S. in the midst of its worst 12-year stretch since the Great Depression. That's actually lower than when the recession officially ended in 2009. Between 2007 and 2010, the median net worth of U.S. households tumbled 47 percent to its lowest level in more than four decades. The Editor says... Target: Natural Gas. The oil and gas fracking boom increased household disposable income by $1,200 last year as lower energy costs flowed to consumers, according to a new study from IHS Global Insight. So Americans may want to know that President Obama's nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) thinks natural gas is a "dead end." That nominee is Ron Binz, and in March 2013 he spoke at an Edison Foundation panel on utilities and green technologies. To fight global warming, he argued, government must adopt a "new regulatory model, because that's where it's going to start." Obama's War on Energy. The EPA is about to release a new draft rule effectively prohibiting new coal-fired power plants. The rule will undoubtedly face a stiff legal challenge, but that takes time, and in the meantime coal mines and utilities facing the regulatory uncertainty will get squeezed in the marketplace. The Weak Recovery Explains Rising Inequality, Not Vice Versa. The poor economic policies of the past few years is a reasonable explanation for today's weak economy. Fiscal policy has at best provided temporary stimulus before fading away with no sustainable impact on growth. More costly and confusing regulations — including the many mandates in the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Act — have reduced the willingness of firms to invest and hire. The Federal Reserve has employed a variety of unconventional and unpredictable monetary policies with not very successful results. Jarrett pledges administration support to finish silica rule. Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama's closest aides, pledged to labor on Sunday to complete a worker safety rule long lobbied for by unions. Speaking to union members and leaders at the AFL-CIO's conference on diversity, Jarrett touted the Obama administration's effort to protect workers from harmful silica dust. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last month issued draft regulations for the rule, which had been under review at the White House for more than two years. The Editor says... Calling it Treason. We could have walked away from the Middle East already and left them to their own savagery, but the president insists that we remain inextricably tied to their historical need to kill each other so that we can overpay for oil, both monetarily and with American lives. Thus, as technology enables us to break free of dependence upon Middle East oil, our president bends over backwards to ensure that never happens. The Obamanomics decline. President Obama's economic policies have guaranteed a lower standard of living for Americans. A recent report by Gordon Green and John Coder of Sentier Research paints the disturbing picture. On the whole, we're less well off than we were 13 years ago. Our median income, currently $52,000, is 7 percent lower than it was in 2000, using constant dollars. It's an especially tough punch in the gut to our youth, who've seen nearly 10 percent of their income evaporate. Obama's regulatory tsunami is eroding America's competitive edge . President Obama's unprecedented regulatory agenda is driving both foreign and domestic capital out of the United States. For now, the U.S. fortunately is still the top destination for investment in the world. Foreigners have invested more than $3.5 trillion in the U.S. economy, more than triple the share of the next-closest economy. But that edge is slipping. In 2011, foreigners invested $227 billion in the United States. That dropped to just $147 billion in 2012, a drop of more than 35 percent. And the decline occurred during what was supposedly an economic recovery. Regulation nation: Obama expands the regulatory state. President Obama has overseen a dramatic expansion of the regulatory state that will outlast his time in the White House. The reach of the executive branch has advanced steadily on his watch, further solidifying the power of bureaucrats who churn out regulations that touch nearly every aspect of American life and business. Experts debate whether federal rule-making has accelerated under Obama, but few dispute that Washington, for better or worse, is reaching deeper than ever before into the workings of society. There's An Economic Boom Lurking Once President Obama's 2nd Term Ends. President Obama's economic policy speech last week at Knox College in Galesville, Ill. was a classic case of [...] misdirection, distraction, and deception. He talked a lot about championing the middle class, a ploy he learned from Saul Alinsky, while all his policies have been trashing the middle class. He talked a lot about economic growth, while all his policies have been trashing economic growth. America 3.0: The Coming Reinvention of America. The United States of America is in crisis. The economy is supposedly in recovery, but it is the slowest and most painful economic rebound since the Great Depression. Unemployment is high and millions have dropped out of the workforce entirely. Many American families have suffered a collapse in their net worth since 2009. During the current administration, America's debt has increased from ten trillion to sixteen trillion dollars. American businesses face a regulatory burden of well over a trillion dollars per year. Investment in start-up businesses is thwarted and innovation is far short of what it should be. The government is abusing its powers and attacking basic liberties. It's Official: 2012 Deficit Was $1.087T; $1T+ All 4 Yrs of Obama's 1st Term. The Congressional Budget Office last week released updated historical budget data for the federal government, reporting a deficit of $1.087 trillion in fiscal 2012. 2012 marked the fourth straight year — and the only four years in the history of the nation — when the federal government's deficit topped $1 trillion. Why we can kiss the US economy goodbye. First, almost 50% of Americans have less than $500 in savings. Not surprisingly 1 out of 3 residents of Obama's home state of Illinois live in poverty. A mind numbing 4 of 5 Americans are either experiencing poverty, foreclosure or welfare, or will in their lifetime. Four out of five. Say goodbye to the myth of the American Dream. It's only a nightmare now. Ditto for the American middle class. Obama has massacred them. Our middle class now ranks 27thin the world. Immigration Reform versus Unemployed America. With millions of Americans un- or underemployed, it's difficult to see how any political party that's looking out for the folks would want to import more people. America doesn't seem to be able to provide jobs for the people already here. Yet, importing more people to compete for jobs in a stagnant economy is exactly what Democrats want to do with their comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Democrat-controlled Senate rolled out on June 27. Obama's perverse notion of fairness. In President Obama's world, "fairness" seems to be of overarching concern. [...] He is about consolidation and top-down control. To him, those in power should concern themselves not with growth but with how resources are allocated. Obama opposes lower capital gains tax rates, despite their history of spurring economic growth and more tax revenues than higher rates. He simply can't abide the wealthy's thriving under this scheme. To him, fairness means punishing high-income earners, even when doing so requires hurting lower-income earners. Analysis: Obamacare [is] Gutting [the] Middle Class. While President Barack Obama has claimed he is a champion of the middle class, two of his signature initiatives — comprehensive immigration reform and Obamacare — threaten to further gut America's middle class. Obama's Tax Hikes Are Killing Growth. Between ObamaCare and the fiscal cliff deal, President Obama has raised taxes nearly $2 trillion — most of which kicked in this year. Yet he and the press keep blaming minuscule spending cuts for the flat economy. GOP braces for business nightmare with Thomas Perez taking over at Labor Department. During [Hilda] Solis' tenure at Labor, the department focused most of its energy on writing and implementing Obamacare while other regulatory work piled up. Now, free-enterprise advocates are preparing for their worst nightmare — a flood of onerous regulations at a delicate time in the country's economic recovery from a man who Republicans know is smart and aggressive. Destroying the American Brand. The cumulative negative effect of the Obama administration's methods, actions, and ideology on the perception of the United States, both at home and abroad, becomes especially vivid when viewed in the context of a business analogy. And no business can survive the purposeful destruction of its brand. In business, no corporate asset is more valued than the brand. At its heart, the brand is a promise; it represents customers' collective expectations of the firm's products and services. It is built over years and can be destroyed in an instant. EPA Continues Imposing Costly and Unnecessary New Restrictions. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has already promulgated a tsunami of 1,920 regulations, many of which will bring few health or environmental benefits but will impose high economic and unemployment costs, often to advance the administration's decidedly anti-hydrocarbon agenda. The Heritage Foundation calculates EPA's 20 "major" rulemaking decisions alone could cost the United States more than $36 billion per year. The President's Broken Window Fallacy: Carbon Policies and Jobs. That there are no free lunches is an eternal truth, notwithstanding the assertions of experts and public officials. The Obama version of this ancient snake oil is simple: we can have a stronger economy and more employment if we discard part of the power-generating capital stock. [...] For the economy as a whole, the broken window — or the electric generating capital forced into retirement — is a net loss. We cannot become richer over time by making ourselves poorer in the here and now. Obama's Climate Plan Has No New Ideas, But Would Make Economy Worse. Except for resolve to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing power plants, this manifesto either doubles down on the subsidized green energy programs of his first term or creates mushy-to-the-point-of-meaningless new programs to weather (extreme) weather. The president's thinly veiled plans to eliminate coal from our nation's energy supply would undermine the reliability, affordability and adequacy of electricity. Although natural gas has rapidly gained ground in the power mix, coal still provides 40% of this country's electric power. Ethanol, wind and any source labeled green already increase the costs of food, fuel and electricity. Obama's planned 2013 regs would cost over $130 billion, study says. The Obama administration's newly detailed rule-making agenda for the coming year would cost in excess of $130 billion to implement, according to a conservative-leaning group that tracks regulations. The American Action Forum (AAF) review follows the administration's belated release last week of its spring Unified Agenda, a document that is traditionally issued twice annually and contains updates for hundreds of rules in the pipelines at federal agencies. Food Stamp Nation is now larger than the full-time private-sector workforce. The Obamanomics transformation of America is nearly complete. Obama administration preparing host of new environmental regs. The Obama administration is looking forward to a host of new environmental regulations that go far beyond the president's plans to issue new standards for greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants. The new regulations, previewed in the administration's spring regulatory roadmap released this week, cover everything from pollution runoff from military ships to landfill methane emissions [...] Is Climate Change Our No. 1 Crisis, Mr. President? At the heart of Obama's program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. "Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they're having a war on coal," explained one of Obama's climate advisers. "On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what's needed." Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty. The Obama Jobs Plan: Hire Criminals? If there was any doubt that Obama is hostile to business and out to damage capitalism, this story should settle it. [...] Why are there no jobs? Why does the economy only move sideways? Why are American workers wages stuck in quicksand? Why did one of America's largest law firms just yesterday announce massive layoffs and salary reductions? The answer is Obama. His rules and regulations are killing the spirit of American business. But this was all child's play compared to Obama's newest directive. Obama's Climate Five-Year Plan. [President Obama's] plan directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "to work expeditiously to complete carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants." The EPA is still formulating those standards, but in their current draft form they would limit new power plants to emitting 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity generated. Since conventional coal-fired plants typically emit around 1,800 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour generated, the new rule would essentially be a ban on building new coal-fired power plants. If the EPA were to establish a uniform 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour standard, that would eliminate nearly all coal-fired plants in the United States, which generated about 37 percent of the country's electricity last year. Obama's Perversity. Presidents can never control everything. The greatest example today is the flourishing of the U.S. energy sector. We are now a net exporter of hydrocarbon fuels, the cleanest kind: natural gas. This has happened because the market financed exploration in shale deposits, gambled that a workable technology would be found, and, because of the high price of fuel, made competitive investments in Montana and Canada that are paying off even now. [...] In the face of fantastic success stories in clean fuel discoveries today, Obama is still pretending to see artificial scarcities. He still has to save the earth, which is in no particular danger. Obama's plan hatched at Columbia University. This is no accident, or the work of an economically inept liberal. This is a purposeful plan to drown the nation in debt and hook a majority to government handouts, happening in front of our eyes. [...] Why would anyone want to purposely collapse the economy you might ask? Saul Alinsky taught the ends justify the means. A bankrupt America wipes out the middle class and small business. That wipes out the majority of donors to conservatives causes — meaning Obama has no opposition. Obama's War on Prosperity. Four years ago [President Obama] began his Inauguration by announcing that fossil fuels were a thing of the past and that we would now get our energy from "wind, sun and soil." He spent the next four years trying unsuccessfully to push cap-and-trade through Congress and subsidizing a bunch of scraggly "renewable energy" projects that haven't produced much of anything except a few notable scandals. Now with unemployment still pushing 8 percent, with participation in the work force at a historic low of 62 percent, with the economy limping along in a five-year doldrums, and with the financial system starting to tremble as Ben Bernanke lets up the pressure on interest rates, the President has decided to stake his second term on — another initiative against coal! Obama Adviser: 'A War On Coal Is Exactly What We Need'. Obama has been waging war on coal from day one of his administration. He has paid no penalty for it. [...] By the time he's done, Obama will have ushered in extreme health coverage prices through ObamaCare, extreme energy prices in the name of "climate change," a devalued dollar thanks to the massive debt he has piled up, and food and fuel prices that have inched up year after year as he has been in office. If he wins on the immigration bill, he will have watered down sovereignty and citizenship while banking millions of new votes to support his pet schemes. New Carbon Regulations, at Greater Cost to America. Five years into Obama's presidency, twelve million Americans remain unemployed, ten million others are underemployed, the unemployment rate is rising, and Obama wants to make it worse. In the fourth year of the Reagan presidency, the national economy grew by 6.8%. Last year, under Obama, it was still stuck at 2.2%. That difference is not accidental. It is the result of the contrasting policies of the two administrations. Sadly, the economic destruction of America continues in Obama's second term. The radical ideologue in chief can no longer stand the heat, nor apparently his country. The Editor says... Pricey Attack on Phantom 'Warming'. There hasn't been much evidence of "global warming" for at least 15 years. If anything, "cooling" has kicked in as part of an eternal cycle that stretches back through history. But President Obama is not one to let the facts stand in the way of a beautiful theory. Especially when it rallies his restive liberal base. During (what else?) a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday, Obama announced that he'll use his favorite leadership tool, executive orders, and the powers of the unelected, Nixon-era Environmental Protection Agency to end-run Congress and crack down on one of his favorite whipping boys, coal. All in the name of fighting the phantom menace of climate change and in particular carbon emissions. Obama declares a War on Coal. An administration that throughout its 2012 election campaign denied it was waging a War on Coal has now come out and publicly declared its intention to shut down coal-fired power plants — putting hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work and sending electricity prices skyrocketing. This is not what the American people voted for. Obama calls racism on criminal background checks. Not wanting to employ a criminal makes you a racist. At least that is what the Obama administration has determined to be law with a regulation made without congressional approval. Businesses are fighting the charge that not wanting ex-cons on the payroll is illegal discrimination. On June 11, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed federal lawsuits against BMW and Dollar General store alleging that their use of criminal background checks violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race. Forcing Businesses to Hire Criminals. [Scroll down] The stakes are huge. Some 92% of U.S. firms check for criminal records for all job openings and a mandated case-by-case determination would sharply raise hiring costs. Actually, firms already face racial discrimination lawsuits when they refuse to hire applicants with criminal records. In 2012 PepsiCo paid $3.1 million to settle accusations that it racially discriminated by using criminal background checks. But on the other side, a business may also risk a lawsuit if it knowingly hired an ex-con who then commits a crime. Feds file civil rights suits on companies using criminal background checks for hires. The Obama administration is suing Dollar General and a BMW facility in South Carolina for the alleged unfair use of criminal background checks for job applicants, months after warning companies about how such screenings can discriminate against African Americas. The suits were filed June 11 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which last year issued new guidelines that cautioned against rejecting minority applicants who have committed a crime and recommended businesses eliminate policies that "exclude people from employment based on a criminal record." Obama administration cuts back oil shale development. Controversy is heating up over an administration plan to drastically reduce the amount of federal lands available for oil shale development in the American West. The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres, a decision that has prompted industry outrage. EPA Continues Imposing Costly and Unnecessary New Restrictions. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has already promulgated a tsunami of 1,920 regulations, many of which will bring few health or environmental benefits but will impose high economic and unemployment costs, often to advance the administration's decidedly anti-hydrocarbon agenda. The Heritage Foundation calculates EPA's 20 "major" rulemaking decisions alone could cost the United States more than $36 billion per year. Obama Planning Massive Crackdown on Electricity Generation. The Community Organizer in Chief did warn us that if he took power, energy costs would "necessarily skyrocket." His enablers at the New York Times report that America's fundamental transformation is proceeding according to plan. Obama Economic Policies Guarantee A Jobless Recovery. The recession ended four years ago. So how's that Obama recovery going? Still rather poorly, if jobs are the standard by which it is measured. Federal Kudzu Is Strangling This Great Nation. [Scroll down] In the past few years this bold [EPA] bureaucracy has undertaken to regulate dirt roads in remote forests and spills of cow's milk on the barn floors of Amish farmers. What is more, the EPA has plainly embarked upon a mission to shut down the entire coal industry. On May 24, West Virginia and Montana officials announced that their states are joining Kansas in its legal challenge to the EPA's "anti-coal" policies. According to West Virginia's Democratic governor Earl Ray Tomblin, "The EPA's proposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions threaten the livelihood of our coal miners to the point of killing jobs and crippling our state and national economies, while also weakening our country's efforts toward energy independence." Obama's Tax Hikes, Not GOP Spending Cuts, Are Killing Growth. Liberals are apoplectic about "austerity," claiming that draconian spending cuts are killing jobs and economic growth. But it's President Obama's tax hikes, not spending restraint, that are hurting growth prospects. Obama officials raise 'social cost' of carbon in federal regulations. The Obama administration has increased the "social cost" of carbon emissions in federal regulations, a move that could lay the groundwork for new rules on climate change. The order, handed down by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with little fanfare, bumps the so-called social cost of carbon — a monetized estimate of health, property and environmental damage — to $35 per metric ton, up from $21. The directive requires all federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to use the new figure when crafting regulations. Stricter EPA Ozone Rules Could Put 'Entire Country' Out of Business, Industry Group Warns. American Petroleum Institute Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs Howard Feldman warned that new ozone regulations currently under review by the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency could put "nearly the entire country" out of business. "Such strict standards are not justified from a health perspective and are not needed to continue air quality progress," Feldman said Thursday on a conference call with reporters. The President's Ruinous Energy Policy: Once More with Feeling. [Scroll down] The reality is that in the decades to come, America will need all the carbon-based fuel it can produce. If the U.S. fails to develop adequate carbon fuels, its economy will decline, and it will be outpaced as a global superpower. Those who endorse the fantasy of a carbon-free future are, in effect, promoting the destruction of America as well. Unfortunately, our current president is one of these. The Texas Economic Lesson Obama Refuses To Learn. President Obama went to Texas on Thursday [5/9/2013] to kick off a nationwide tour pushing his economic policies, apparently unaware that Texas has thrived the past four years by doing pretty much the opposite of what Obama has prescribed. ObamaCare's 30-Hour Work Week: Fulfilling a Longtime Leftist Dream? It turns out that the idea of a 30-hour work week in the U.S. is at least nearly a century old. Its lineage ultimately goes back to Karl Marx's long-discredited idea of "surplus labor." In 1919, the 30-hour week was a central but ultimately abandoned demand in nationwide negotiations between unionized coal companies and their United Mine Workers members. Also posted under Obamacare kills (full time) jobs. Despite sequester, DOD signs contract for $59/gallon green jet fuel. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently warned that sequestration would cause "suspension of important activities, curtailed training, and could result in furloughs of civilian personnel" but the spending cuts haven't killed the green fuels program, as the Pentagon has continued purchasing renewable fuel at $59 per gallon. "In March, Gevo entered into a contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to supply the U.S. Army with 3,650 gallons of renewable jet fuel to be delivered by the second quarter of 2013," Gevo announced this week in its first quarter financial report. The Editor says... Will Obama Put Coal out of Business? In 2008, candidate Barack Obama infamously said that as president he would set policy that would bankrupt the coal industry: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted." Now, according to a new Duke University study, pending regulations by President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency may just accomplish that goal. How Government Killed the Medical Profession. I am a general surgeon with more than three decades in private clinical practice. And I am fed up. [...] Government interventions over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors from my generation are exiting the field. Race-Obsessed Obama is Artificially Reinflating the Housing Bubble. Obamanomics: Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Poorer. When President Obama first ran in 2008, he claimed his economic policies would "foster economic growth from the bottom up and not just from the top down." He said he'd put in place "an immediate rescue plan for the middle class" and would end the "tired, worn-out, trickle-down ideologies we've been seeing for so many years." Obama got all he wanted in his first two years in the White House, when Democrats had solid control of Congress — a massive stimulus, auto industry bailouts, temporary middle class tax cuts, vast new regulations on businesses and ObamaCare. EPA's dirty secret about the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency late last month proposed strict new "clean fuel" standards on gasoline. The EPA said the so-called Tier 3 rule would cut emissions of smog-forming pollutants, as well as toxic emissions like benzene. What the EPA didn't say was that levels of these pollutants have been falling steadily for years, and would continue to fall even without the new rule, which the oil industry says will cost tens of billions of dollars. Obama Wants to Make Sure You Don't Retire Rich. A bullet point on Page 18 of President Barack Obama's 2014 budget sounds ominous: "Prohibit Individuals from Accumulating Over $3 Million in Tax-Preferred Retirement Accounts." That it appears in a section titled "Strengthening the Middle Class" is odd since such a proposal would seem to undermine the goal. But of course... Obama Chooses Energy Foe Gina McCarthy to Lead EPA. President Barack Obama told reporters in early March he is choosing EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy, architect of unprecedented restrictions on energy use and power generation, to become the new head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. McCarthy is a longtime advocate of energy restrictions she says are necessary to stop global warming. She also says government should actively seek to transform energy production in the United States away from affordable conventional sources and toward more-expensive renewable alternatives. Obama Lays the Groundwork for the Next Housing Bubble and Banking Crash. The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obama's EPA Pick Threatens Market Stability. President Obama has made it clear, both in word and action, that climate-change regulation is a top priority for his second term. Putting aside the legitimate questions about the science behind climate-change alarmism, the nomination of Gina McCarthy as EPA administrator is just the latest sign that the president is determined to push a market-subverting, economy-handcuffing energy agenda on the American people. Production Obstruction. Delays in federal permitting for oil and gas exploration on public land is likely reducing national energy production and depriving the federal government of revenue, according to a federal report released Friday [3/22/2013]. The report is the latest addition to a mounting body of evidence undercutting the administration's claims that it has fostered increased oil and gas production, critics say. Production on lands the federal government controls has plummeted during Barack Obama's presidency. China and U.S. Debt. As the U.S. federal debt is steadily climbing closer to $17 trillion, President Obama and Congressional leadership are making statements that we "don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt." All the same, our bloated federal debt does pose a crisis. Not only will it slow economic growth, threaten us with higher interest rates, and increase inflation; it also allows China to threaten our national security and status as a world power. Deceiver in Chief. Barack Obama is arrogant, intolerant, mean, dishonest, vengeful, and ruthless. He does not wish us well. He is considered by many of his supporters to be a savior. In fact, he's a destroyer. Is that an unfair indictment? Consider the evidence. The economy is operating far below its potential. Is he doing anything to discover why? Millions of people are unable to find jobs. Does he seem concerned? He has an abysmal ignorance of how a market economy actually works. He doesn't show the slightest curiosity about the causes of our economic distress. Progressive Democrat Control Came Via Welfare State Voters. The U.S. populace has simply become too ignorant, stupid and weak (qualities reflected in those it chooses to send to Washington) for the nation to survive. The country is committing slow-motion assisted suicide — maybe not so slow anymore. It must be said because the tipping point has been passed: The liberal Democrats are literally destroying America. http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/032013-648719-far-left-control-was-built-on-votes-by-those-who-take-welfare.htmDHS Insider update: It has begun. [Scroll down] Our current financial situation was not bred out of incompetence, but by design. The occupancy of Barack Hussein Obama as the putative President of the United States was a plan in the making long ago, to usher in this oppressive system where we will be left at the mercy of the global ruling class. It is not by accident that we have been prevented from knowing exactly who this man is, from the controversy of his birth records to his college transcripts and even his social security number. Contrary to what the state-controlled media wants you to believe, these questions have never been answered with any measure of authenticity. Obama: Our Out-of-Control Debt Is 'Sustainable' for the Next Decade. In an interview with former Bill Clinton apparatchik George Stephanopoulos aired on ABC Wednesday morning [3/13/2013], President Barack Obama shared his beliefs about where the nation stands financially. The takeaway quotes from that sit-down concern Obama's unserious take on the size and grave nature of the federal government's annual deficits, which have exceeded $1 trillion during each of the past four fiscal years, and the national debt, which, at $16.71 trillion as of Tuesday, has increased by over $6 trillion since he took office less than 50 months ago. President Obama appears to be deliberately wasting money. The Real Cost of Obama: $19 Trillion. There's a super storm raging over our economy that's been seeded and fueled by the federal government over a period of the past several decades. And it's literally costing the country trillions of dollars in GDP per year. It's not merely garden-variety government waste that's the problem either. It's monumental stupidity by the government, combined with venial cupidity by voters who think they can get others to pay for their free lunch. Karl Marx and the American Dream. You cannot use Karl Marx's ideas to help the middle class. You can't do it. Anyone who claims otherwise is stupid, ignorant, crazy, a liar, or some combination of the above. An Order From Obama Puts Another Boot On The Economy. According to Bloomberg media, "President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways." [...] It's happening just as Obama threatened it would: If Congress won't pass the laws he wants — in this case limits on greenhouse gas emissions — he will just make law on his own, without constitutional restraint. Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change. President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways. The result could be significant delays for natural gas export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn. This is futility, of course, because global warming stopped, all by itself, in 1997. Credit Scores Relaxed Under Obama Pressure. Bullied by President Obama's new consumer watchdog, the Big Three consumer credit bureaus have curved credit scores for deadbeats. The capitulation is a bad omen for the economy. Respect the office, not necessarily the man. Barack Hussein Obama does not deserve the respect due the office of the President. He is an empty suit man who can't speak without a tele-prompter. His Presidency is marked by constant drama, distortions, and exaggerations, which is just now waking up the mainstream media and the low information voters. He has embarked on his promised transformation from capitalism to socialism on the path to communism, just as he was taught by his leftist mentors. He has made the economy worse; people's jobs and wealth have been destroyed; and our nation's global reputation has been destroyed. The Crushing Impact Of A 24% Minimum Wage Hike. While wage adjustments may sound good for those who do not have to worry about profits and losses, the real impact for a company typically means it must either increase productivity or lay people off. In a recession, if productivity has already been maximized and there is very little profits from which to give increases, companies — especially smaller companies — may close. Obama's anti-stimulus energy policies take money out of economy. The Institute for Energy Research predicts that new EPA rules on mercury and cross-state pollution targeting old power plants will shut down 34 gigawatts of coal-fired production capacity, or 10 percent of the U.S. total. Those burdened most by the energy price increases resulting from these rules — as with the price hikes that result from Obama's more ambitious plans for carbon reduction — will be the poor, who already spend a greater percentage of their income on energy than those who are more affluent. Obama's Energy Plans [are] Not a Triumph But a Tragedy. [Scroll down] The inclusion of this comment in the SOTUA aligns with Obama's ideology of pushing less energy usage. This is troubling because it is widely accepted that energy consumption and economic growth go hand-in-hand. A successful country uses more energy. For example, one of the reasons the US is using less gasoline is that so many people are unemployed. They are not driving to and from work every day. They are not taking long driving vacations. They are hunkered down. Heavy manufacturing requires abundant, available, and affordable energy. Energy is one of manufacturing's biggest expenses. But because of closed factories, we are actually using less electricity in the industrial sector than we did in 2000. The $6 Trillion Man — Debt Up That Much Under Obama. According to the latest estimate from the Census Bureau, there are 115,031,000 households in the United States. Thus, the debt of the federal government has increased by approximately $52,685 per household during Obama's time in office. Barack Obama, the Spending Jihadist. Mr. Obama's terroristic threats have been amply noted everywhere. Planes will fall from the skies, starvation in the streets, teachers will be sent home. What is truly astonishing here is not all of the reckless and dire predictions he has made. Nor is it that already many of his predictions have proved to be demonstrably false. [...] What is truly astonishing and breathtaking here is that all of this doom and gloom Mr. Obama has predicted is precisely what he wants for this country. Obama's Sequestration plan works to perfection. We're talking about second term full-on hyper socialist agenda mode for team Obama. And what just took place at 12:00 am this morning [3/1/2013] was the lynch pin in Obama's plan to cover up his crashing of the economy by successfully blaming sequestration and the pending economic catastrophe on the Republican Party. [...] Sequestration is nothing compared to what Obama has already set in motion for our economy. Krauthammer: Americans Will Realize Admin. Is "Acting In Bad Faith And Deliberately Making Things Really Bad". ["]A lot of people disagree on what to do about the 11 million illegal aliens in the country, but I don't think anybody wants to empty the prisons of people who jumped the border and are being held. We don't really know how they're going to act. I think it's laughable to assume they are going to show up under this alternate status, you know, and act like good citizens.["] The architects of our economic demise. Like most events taking place in Washington, DC, we are witnessing the ongoing shredding of the United States Constitution by both sides of the political divide. Yet how many people actually understand that what is taking place is completely unconstitutional? Thanks to the incremental infusion of Communist goals into the legal and societal framework of the fabric of America, people have been intellectually hobbled by a complicit media and a compromised educational system. Men Earn Less Under Obama Than Carter. New findings show that the real earning power of men is on the decline, with most earning less today adjusting for inflation than they did when Jimmy Carter was president 34 years ago. Where Does the Money Go? The federal government wastes vast amounts of money, often spending it in ways that are not only useless, but that actively damage the United States. The idea that the government spends its borrowed money so wisely that spending simply can't be cut — the position of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats — is ludicrous. National debt up $6 trillion since Obama took office. Less than two months into President Obama's second term, new numbers show the national debt increased by more than $6 trillion since he took office. It's the largest increase to date under any U.S. president. During the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, the debt soared by $4.9 trillion. Personal Income Drop Is Bottom-Up Economics Failure. The economy racked up another dubious achievement in January, when personal income suffered the biggest drop in 20 years and disposable income suffered its biggest decline in more than 50. Is this what "bottom-up" prosperity looks like? Explaining the Inexplicable. The president really does believe that at some mythical date the capitalists and profit mongers have no choice but to get back to work and make tons of money, and that the resulting increased revenue will pay off the debt without cuts or hardship. Therefore, he genuinely thought in 2009 that the stimulus would lead to the summer of recovery. He believed that the first $4 trillion in debt would stimulate the economy, and so is surprised that we are still massively borrowing. Will Obama push us over the edge? Obama thinks he has a mandate for change. But this is the man who ran for president in 2008 promising to "cut net spending" and to shrink the federal government; a man who promised that his "stimulus" spending was only temporary. Obama hid regulations from view until after his reelection. [...] Does a candidate who won re-election with just less than 51 percent of the vote and who has adopted a second-term agenda that he never talked about during the campaign really have a "mandate"? EPA's fuel folly. [Scroll down] In 2010, the first year of the mandate, EPA projected that 5 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels would be available. In fact, there were none. In 2011, EPA increased the mandate to 6.5 million gallons. Again, the actual amount available was zero. Undeterred, in 2012, EPA increased the required amount to 8.5 million gallons. The actual available amount was 25,000 gallons. Since it is impossible to comply with the mandate to use this phantom fuel, EPA is effectively taxing the industry. This tax is passed to consumers in the form of higher gas prices. EPA's overestimates are part of an intentional strategy. EEOC goes to bat for drunken steelworkers; strikes out. We sometimes hear of the savings that could be realized by eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" at federal government agencies. But substantial savings might also be achieved if only we could eliminate absurdity. Consider a lawsuit brought by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against United States Steel and the United Steelworkers Union under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The suit challenges a practice, approved by the Union, of alcohol testing of probationary employees. EEOC alleged that the practice violated a provision of the ADA that prohibits medical testing that is not "job related and consistent with business necessity." Obama: Marxist Revolutionary. As most real conservatives know, Obama, by his own admissions, appointments, associates, and actions, is a hard-core, 21st century, Marxist revolutionary. This means that while he has no real plan for what his utopian, pie-in-the-sky collectivist state would look like, or how it would survive as an economic entity, he is dedicated to destroying our existing free, constitutional, capitalist republic to start the process. GAO Report: Obama's Policies 'Not Sustainable'. For two months, reporters and lawmakers have ignored a devastating report from the federal government itself, which warns that the nation's current fiscal policy will lead to economic collapse. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) — the personal auditor of President Obama and the federal government — released its assessment of the federal government on January 17, 2013. The report's findings illuminate just how dire America's spending problem is and, therefore, how little the current cuts debated by Congress do to fix it. EEOC Threatens Lawsuits for Hiring 'Discrimination' over Criminal Records. President Barack Obama's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced last April that the "Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions" would be updated so an employer's use of an "individual's criminal history in making employment decisions may, in some instances, violate the prohibition against employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." The Editor says... A Black Father in the House. Obama reminds me of my father. And like my father, Obama uses anybody and everything at his disposal for his own personal exploitation. I thought it was detestable, that my father stole Christmas presents from the family one year. However when you consider that Obama not only steals Christmas, he steals our children's futures, my deadbeat, drug-addicted murdering father doesn't seem quite so bad. My father and Obama do have one difference. My father was convicted of his crimes and served many years in San Quentin, while Obama's crimes gained him the presidency. Company That Survived The Great Depression And Two World Wars Falls To Obama Economy. Oberdorfer Industries, a foundry in Dewitt, NY, survived the Great Depression, two world wars, and the Jimmy Carter presidency. But the Obama economy was just too much to withstand and the company is closing up shop. EPA Corruption and Scandal. [Scroll down] [Lisa] Jackson makes clear that her job and the EPA's are to hurt companies/industries that produce energy counter to the wishes of the Obama administration (and the left's agenda). Obama's Economic Growth Record Is The Worst In 60 Years. President Obama's defense of his economic stewardship has effectively amounted to this: At least we no longer have the Bush-era economy. With an entire 4-year term in the books, it's now possible to confirm, and to lament, the essential truth of those words. Prior to Obama, the second term of President Bush featured the weakest gains in the gross domestic product in some time, with average annual real (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth of just 1.9%. That's according to figures from the federal government's own Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Perform Criminal Background Checks at Your Peril. Should it be a federal crime for businesses to refuse to hire ex-convicts? Yes, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which recently released 20,000 convoluted words of regulatory "guidance" to direct businesses to hire more felons and other ex-offenders. In the late 1970s, the EEOC began stretching Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to sue businesses for practically any hiring practice that adversely affected minorities. Note To Everybody: Obama Isn't Stupid. The truth is that Obama has figured out something FDR stumbled upon 80 years ago but never really understood — namely, that a poor economy is the friend of socialism. And because it is, a socialist in office can consolidate support by creating a stagnant economy with an ever-growing public sector and an ever-growing dependent class. When you understand this, you understand all the inexplicable economic policies emanating from this White House. EPA caught sabotaging fracking. [Ed Lasky has] written numerous columns regarding President Obama's War against Inspectors General. These are the taxpayer advocates within various government agencies who seek to ensure that fraud, waste and abuse of power is prevented. Hence, Obama determined opposition to them that has gone to such lengths as character assassination, attempts to form a new $30 billion-dollar agency without an Inspector General, failing to replace Inspectors General when they depart. Now comes news that again illustrates the reasons Obama has tried to gut the Inspector General program: one is investigating possible abused or power at the EPA as part of its crusade against energy producers. Dreams From Our Fathers: Obama Resigns. [Obama] and his disciples are systematically transforming the United States into a fiscal basket case, a real paper tiger this time, which fact is leading to an insecure world highly vulnerable to unstable, war-inducing madness. He and his party's misguided and deliberate fiscal policies are what's causing a Roman-like decline of America, and the indirect excuse by which the world is returning to a powder keg. Arizona Fights Anti-Coal Regional Haze Rules. [Scroll down] In Arizona, it would cost the Apache, Cholla and Coronado coal plants over $1 billion to adhere to EPA's regional haze rules. That would mean higher electricity costs and possibly higher water costs if the rule is extended to the Navajo Generating Station which powers water delivery in the state. And since other states like Montana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming are also covered by these consent decrees, expect EPA to institute rules on those states that target coal-fired power plants. Supermarkets cry foul as FDA proposes new food labeling rule under ObamaCare. Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners — to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone. Obamacare red tape burden: 127,602,371 hours yearly. Based on figures from President Obama's own Office of Management and Budget and Internal Revenue Service, the new report provided to Secrets reveals that the health reform law set to fully go into effect in 11 months will be the most costly federal burden to hit American in generations. And that hardship will grow as more rules are released. Here's a sure way to drive small businesses out of business: The dirt on 'Government Motors'. Maybe the most disturbing news in "American Turnaround," Ed Whitacre's new book that describes his stint as head of General Motors, is how naïve he was about what it means to run a company that's been bailed out by the federal government, and is now regulated by the anti-business types who populate the Obama administration. As Whitacre takes the job back in 2009, he thinks that the automaker's government masters are rational people looking to help the company survive and thrive. Along the way, he finds out that they're not. Abandon 'the Children'. The debts we face now are not like any debts we have seen before. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio has spiked in the past only during wars or major crises like the Great Depression. Only once in our history has our debt as a percentage of GDP been higher than it is now — during and immediately after the massive mobilization for World War II, when it peaked at 108.7 percent. Obama's path toward energy poverty. [I]nstead of promoting the most reliable and least expensive energy technologies, such as coal-fired electricity generation, Mr. Obama encourages the least reliable and most expensive sources. It was certainly an understatement to say, as he did in the address, "The path toward sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult." He should have added, "and virtually useless," because the sustainable energy sources he has most in mind are wind and solar power. The president presents the transition to these technologies as an economic benefit. He asserted, "We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality." No, that is how you ruin a country's economy. Is President Obama Really A Socialist? President Obama says that income taxes must be raised on the rich because they don't pay their fair share. The indisputable facts from official government sources say otherwise. [...] Is he ignorant? Wouldn't somebody in his Administration whisper to him that he is peddling nonsense? The answer is that to President Obama this is still not fair because he is a Marxist. To a Marxist, the fact that the top 1% earn more income than the bottom 99% is not fair, no matter how they earn it, fairly or not. DHS Insider: Obama's cyber warriors & preparing for collapse. [Scroll down] This is one of the reasons why no one wants to talk about Obama's past. He is the product of a continuing intelligence operation, put in power to oversee the dismantling of the U.S., with the economy being the lynchpin of our destruction. Obama, Jarrett, and the Clintons are in constant contact with all high level operatives inside the DHS. Perhaps not directly in all cases but through their contacts. They are working together to see to it that the U.S. economy is brought down, robbing the people of their wealth and then blaming partisan politics for the crash. The Cost of Obama's Regulatory Explosion. [Scroll down] Of course, the Obama White House fancifully contends that, in addition to costing colossal sums of money, its regulations also save colossal sums of money. But only the truly credulous could believe this is true — or that there's any accurate way to quantify the "savings" that would ensue from, say, cleaner air (to the extent that these regulations even legitimately advance such goals). New England fishermen say new regulations may lead to collapse of the industry. The new low limits reduce the cod catch to just a fraction of what it once was and prevent fishermen from landing more plentiful species, such as haddock and pollock. Killing the American Dream. President Obama won re-election on the premise that he is defending the middle class. But that very assertion assumes, firstly, that the middle class needs "defending" and, secondly, that it is the function of government to defend it. Both assumptions are wrong. Basic to Obama's thinking is the idea that the American middle class is endangered, and endangered not by government, but by capitalism. Web of environmental rules threatens Gulf Coast businesses with jail, steep fines. According to a new report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, thousands of people are being prosecuted for environmental crimes every day they didn't know were even on the books. They've been threatened, fined and thrown in jail. The trend is especially prominent along the Gulf Coast, but is becoming a national issue. Obama is doing everything he can to make it impossible to run a business. Obama's path on climate change runs through EPA. Obama has vowed to reduce greenhouse gases and to slow warming temperatures, saying a failure to do so "would betray our children and future generations." And while environmentalists applauded the president's pledge, they are encouraging him to use his executive powers rather than Congress on issues like stricter limits on carbon emissions. The EPA last year recommended limited carbon emissions from new power plants, but advocates now want Obama to expand that rule to include existing power plants, as well. Obama EPA kills power plant, 3,900 jobs in Texas. "Chase Power ... has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and is seeking alternative investors as part of a plan of dissolution for the parent company," Chase CEO Dave Freysinger told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Freysinger made it very clear who was responsible for the projects death. "The (Las Brisas Energy Center) is a victim of EPA's concerted effort to stifle solid-fuel energy facilities in the U.S., including EPA's carbon-permitting requirements and EPA's New Source Performance Standards for new power plants," he said. Where Fascism Lives: Food, Fascism, and Obama Rules. John Mackey, the feisty CEO of Whole Foods, says Obamacare is "fascist economics" and he regrets having said it, even though he insists — correctly — that it's a textbook case of Mussolini-style corporate statism. Private property continues to exist, but the state controls all business. That's why the fascists called their totalitarian system a "third way" between unbridled capitalism and Soviet-style Communism. $518 Billion in Regulations Since Obama Took Office. Despite Obama's promise to cut unnecessary regulations, his administration issued $236.7 billion in new rules in 2012. According to a report by the American Action Forum, headed by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the direct costs of the regulations force American businesses to waste 87 million man-hours to fill out regulatory paperwork. Fox News poll: 83 percent think government spending is out of control. More than eight in ten American voters (83 percent) think government spending is out of control, according to a Fox News poll released Friday [1/18/2013]. That's up from 78 percent who said so in 2010 and 62 percent in 2009. Some 11 percent think spending is being managed carefully. The poll also finds almost all voters rate the nation's economy negatively. The Darkest Design of Barack Obama. For some time, there have been unsubstantiated reports of the Obama administration engaging in clandestine negotiations with China toward satisfying America's debt to that nation via exchanges of land and resources. Such an arrangement would be illegal and treasonous of course, but given its deportment to date, that would not likely deter this administration. Also, in the face of having trillions of dollars in debt called by China, and the economic catastrophe that would ensue, it is entirely possible that Obama might request and be granted some manner of dispensation from Congress to legitimize this pact. The Editor says... The Jobs Scare. With unemployment stalled near 8 percent, it's tempting to skewer President Obama over the embarrassing news that his Jobs Council hasn't met for a solid year — 369 days, to be exact. And its future seems to be in limbo. That's just as well. Jobs councils don't create jobs, businesses do. The most lethal jobs-killer today is the uncertainty coming out of the White House. Ben Bernanke Has Betrayed Us All. [Scroll down] That weakening occurred in two stages. The first took place when Pelosi, Reid and Obama decided to ramp up spending from an already far too high $2.98 trillion in fiscal 2008 to a dangerous $3.57 trillion in fiscal 2010 (the "official" 2010 spending figure is lower because Tim Geithner's Treasury Department engaged in TARP-related accounting manipulation which made fiscal 2009 look worse than fiscal 2010, when that wasn't really the case), primarily by passing a "stimulus" program which stimulated nothing but massive levels of waste, fraud and abuse. Then, despite promising that the stimulus would be a temporary two-year operation, and that spending levels would come down after that, Obama and Reid made it clear to Boehner and the rest of the country that their previous pledges meant nothing, and that they would accept no meaningful controls on spending growth. Small Business Hates Obama's Washington. mall business owners think Washington has become increasingly hostile in recent years to free enterprise and thus to job creation, a survey conducted last week found. And his policies are part of the problem. America Should Declare Bankruptcy: Doug Casey. This week started with President Obama Monday [1/14/2013] demanding lawmakers raise the U.S.'s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, warning Republicans not to insist on spending cuts in return. The same day, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke advocated getting rid of the debt limit altogether. The Washington Post reports in a conversation at the University of Michigan Bernanke said the debt ceiling has only "symbolic value." Obama's Psycho Job Phobia. Good news everyone: Jobless claims on a weekly basis fell to a five-year low according to the Labor Department. Bad news everyone: Yet still more people remain jobless. And why is that? Because Obama doesn't care about jobs. When you reckon out the newest jobless figures using the Obama's best calculus, the weekly decline doesn't mean that fewer people are unemployed. Having killed the coal industry, Obama's next target is steel. Report: Obama officials issued $216 billion in regulations last year. The Obama administration issued $236 billion worth of new regulations last year, according to a report from a conservative think tank. The analysis from the American Action Forum, led by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, found that the administration added $216 billion in rules and more than $20 billion in regulatory proposals in 2012. Complying with those rules will require an additional 87 million hours of paperwork, the report said. Obama's spending adds $4 billion to the national debt every day. In 2009, the President pledged to cut the annual deficit in half by the end of his first term. Instead, we have seen four straight years of trillion-dollar deficits and a national debt exceeding $16 trillion. Rather than cutting wasteful spending, the federal government added $4 billion each day to our gross national debt. This path is not sustainable. Sorry, middle class. The VAT may be inevitable. If the government fails to enact structural reforms in spending, an entirely new source of revenue will be needed. The most likely one is a value-added tax that would crush the middle class. [...] If Washington gridlock persists, the big new tax is a virtual certainty. The most probable choice will be a VAT. Since the VAT is assessed on things people buy, not their incomes, it falls heavily on the middle class. Suddenly, the issue is sneaking into the fiscal debate. More about the VAT. Obama's Second Term Regulations That Will Destroy America. There are a large number of other planned EPA air and water regulations either in force or in the works. EPA's Boiler MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) standards are so restrictive that not even many of the best-performing sources can meet them. Such companies will have no choice but to shut their doors and ship manufacturing jobs overseas. The rule has been projected to reduce U.S. GDP by as much as 1.2 billion dollars, and to destroy nearly 800,000 jobs. EPA's Cement MACT rule could cause 18 plants to shut down, eliminating up to 80,000 road, bridge and building construction workers due to substantially increased cement costs. As with Boiler MACT, EPA had postponed decisions on certain aspects of the rule until after the election. Peeling Back the 'Cover of Darkness' on Obama's Regulatory Agenda. The Obama administration's long-delayed laundry list of the federal regulations it intends to pursue this year, released under what one lawmaker described as the "cover of darkness," looks to contain proposals that are more costly than those offered by the president's immediate predecessors. If fully implemented, the regulatory agenda as it is popularly known could wind up costing the public $123.2 billion, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum, a conservative, Washington-based think tank. The 2,387 tenders also are projected to result in at least 13 million paperwork burden hours. Obama EPA Forces Company to Cut Jobs, Spend $6 million on Green Agenda. A settlement forced by the Obama Administration's Environmental Protection Agency on a Wisconsin power company has forced an employer to prepare to cut jobs and spend millions paying for the Obama Administration's green energy agenda. In Obama's America, Only Debt and Dependency Grow. The Congressional Budget Office says the government is on track for another $1 trillion deficit year. That's the bad news. Worse is that most of it goes to programs that increase government dependency. 20 Ways America Has Begun to Reap What It Has Sown. [#6] We demonize big business, pile on the regulations, raise taxes on job creators and treat successful people like the enemy; then we're surprised that the economy's not growing. Obama EPA regulations kill 15 power plants, 480 jobs in Georgia. Georgia Power asked state regulators for permission to shut down 15 power plants yesterday [1/7/2013], claiming new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make the plants too expensive to run. The 15 coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants currently produce 2,061 megawatts (MW) for Georgia energy consumers. America was never supposed to be this way. Obama's New Economic Normal: Seven Devastating Facts. America is entering a new economic normal, a reality where almost everything that should be going up is going down, and everything that should be going down is going up. Apparently Obama has resorted to a Chicago-style shakedown after
failing to prove anything illegal happened. Krauthammer slams Obama for 'illegal and unconstitutional' regulatory overreach. As the number of regulations from the federal government is continuously expanding, the comment period for regulations has been shortened from 60 days to 45 days, a move that Krauthammer said overwhelms small businesses. [...] "So all of these things happened unilaterally. A lot of them, I think, are actually illegal and unconstitutional. But even if they are constitutional, they are incredibly destructive of small business." The Anecdotal Presidency. Every day of his first term, Barack Obama has overseen $3 billion per day in borrowing, which has added at least $4 trillion to the national debt — with trillions more still to be borrowed. The extraordinary figure is largely a result of unprecedented federal spending. [...] Like Louis XIV, the Sun King, he knows that his spending is bankrupting his country and, if unchecked, will destroy generations to follow — and yet he knows even more strongly that he cannot quit. The North American Gusher. Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has treated hydrocarbon production like an infectious disease to be eradicated. His administration had to commission a study to learn, as announced last week, that allowing American companies to export liquefied natural gas would be beneficial to the U.S. economy. Still, the Department of Energy says it can't make "final determinations" on export applications until it hears from those who object. Obama Wants 'Unlimited' Power To Borrow. President Obama has reiterated his demand to have Congress cede him the power to grow the debt unchecked by the legislative branch. Welcome to the Salazar Wilderness. [Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar] seems to think that turning a tiny portion of the lovely coastline of California's Marin County (part of the National Seashore) into the first marine wilderness in the continental United States also requires destroying a family-run oyster operation that has conducted business in the same spot for eight decades. So Mr. Salazar recently ordered the business to close within 90 days — a decision that will spell ruin for the Lunny family, owners of Drake's Bay Oyster Farm, which supplies 40% of California's oysters. Obama Playing Chicken With Economic Disaster. Many progressive reporters and bloggers have been pushing the idea that going over the fiscal cliff into January will have very little effect on the economy and will actually help President Obama achieve his legislative goals. Indeed, Republican Sen. Barrasso hypothesized that President Obama was "eager" to go over the cliff. Unfortunately, going over the fiscal cliff has real economic effects, and the progressives who are claiming otherwise are irresponsibly pushing the country to unnecessary economic pain. Harsher energy regulations seen in Obama's second term. Energy producers braced for tighter regulation in President Barack Obama's second term, with coal companies expecting more emissions restrictions and drillers anticipating less access to federal land even as his platform promotes energy independence. Why Are Some People Prone to Obey? Economists politely wonder why Mr. Obama doesn't come around and see the light and admit that his plans are not assisting America. Others like Bill Whittle state that Obama's incompetence is not the reason for our fiscal insanity; rather, the people running this country are (actively) trying to destroy the country, and they are succeeding. Thus, it is with malice aforethought that Obama and his cronies are bringing America to its knees. The Obama admin isn't incompetent, they seek to DESTROY this country and they are succeeding. A very passionate Bill Whittle says on this week's Trifecta that he's done entertaining ideas that incompetence is the reason for our fiscal insanity and that going forward he's operating under the assumption that the people running this country are trying to destroy it and they are succeeding. Obama's Policies vs. Free Enterprise. President Barack Obama began his answer with a strong statement: "I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known." I have no doubt that Obama believes he believes in free enterprise — except in the case of health care policy, the auto industry, the housing market, education, banking, job creation, manufacturing, green energy and so on and so forth. IRS rule threatens to shut down the small businesses that prepare tax returns. Small business owners who prepare tax returns for a living every year must either seek additional training or close their doors due to a new Internal Revenue Service regulation set to take effect at the end of this year. In Washington, the Goal is Control of Private Wealth. By taking more money away from "rich"people and by spending more money on "stimulus projects," the President is able to control more wealth that is currently in possession of private individuals, and then re-distribute that wealth to people whom he believes are deserving of it and spend it on things that are important to him. Obama's Stealth Redistribution Strategy. President Obama is using a shotgun approach to redistribute your wealth, with multiple attacks on your income, property, savings, and cost of living. These coordinated attacks started after the 2008 election and are now set to hit critical mass in his second term. Forward! US Drops Out of Top 10 Most Prosperous Nations. For an old curmudgeon like me, this is incomprehensible. Somebody somewhere made a big mistake and once they find it, all will be well and back to normal. Well, they've found the mistake; America elected a man dedicated to the proposition that Americans have too much, use too much of the world's resources, and needs to humble itself before the world and beg its forgiveness. Let America's Gas Industry Boom. Researchers at the Energy Department just released a comprehensive economic analysis, finding that the United States can reap massive economic benefits from allowing the export of natural gas. Will the Obama administration go for the gold — or continue yielding to anti-export hysteria? New air pollution standards restrict soot particles. The Obama administration announced a new air pollution standard Friday [12/14/2012] that would bring about a 20% reduction in microscopic particles of soot emitted by coal-fired power plants and diesel vehicles that contribute to haze and respiratory ailments. The new limit, fought by industry and welcomed by environmentalists, marks the first time the Environmental Protection Agency tightened the soot standard since it was established 15 years ago. The Coming Regulatory Black Hole. Just how many new regulations will business have to deal with? We don't know because the administration has failed to issue a report, required by law, that would set out Obama's regulatory agenda. Marxist EPA Wants to Regulate Water As a Pollutant in Virginia. Ken Cuccinelli likes to call the EPA the "Employment Prevention Agency." In addition to preventing job creation, the EPA wants other peoples' private property and their money for non-existant or minor problems. Ramping Up Government Control of the Energy Sector. [Scroll down] What Obama is promoting is not just the suppression of fossil fuels — it is the suppression of capitalism altogether. Despite the president's claims that he received a mandate for larger government spending, socialism is not what the American people voted for. Eventually, the public will realize what this administration is up to. At that point, it won't be just energy policy that is reversed. It will be everything Obama has done to our nation. 'Obama's "Plan" Adds $8.6 Trillion to the Debt'. [Scroll down] The $400 billion in deficit reduction would be achieved by a $1.6 trillion tax hike, which Obama has proposed as part of the "fiscal cliff" deal. With Obama's latest plan, debt in 2022 is expected to be $25.4 trillion; otherwise, in ten years, it is expected to be $25.8 trillion. Government eyes crippling climate-control measures. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ready to unleash its first wave of carbon-dioxide regulations. Some members of Congress want to tax hydrocarbon use and carbon-dioxide emissions. Moreover, United Nations climate alarmists are trying to devise a new treaty to regulate energy use at the international level. Even one of these government actions would send shock waves through the economy. If all three are imposed (or worse, imposed in conjunction with Obamacare and other tax increases on job and wealth creators) the impacts will be devastating. GOP Genius Of The Day: Senator Bob Corker. The biggest problem Republicans in Congress have (other than being jackasses who couldn't negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag) is they are acting as if Obama really wants a deal and to get the deficit and debt under control. Hint: he DOESN'T. An Administration That Will Live In Infamy. There was a time when people assumed that if America's future was under attack, it must come from a foreign source — like, say, Japan at Pearl Harbor. Those days are long gone. Now, our decline is no one's fault but our own. [...] When, in human history, has the government of any nation consciously set out to weaken that country? Sure, it has been done by accident from time to time, but on purpose? Spender in Chief. Obama's plan for a fiscal cliff compromise reflects his hostility to spending cuts. Instead, he wants to raise taxes by $1.6 trillion. That's a nonstarter. He wants another stimulus of $50 billion. It's already DOA on Capitol Hill. Worse, he's back with the most fraudulent spending cut of all, $800 billion in reduced funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a few years from now when they're no longer being fought. Obama: Give me Dictatorial Powers or I'll Take your Country out. Obama now demands full dictatorial powers over the US economy and the elimination of Congressional authority — or even input — in all economic matters. In exchange, Obama said he "may" consider spending less of the taxpayers' (aka "serfs") money — but, he did not say it was a guarantee. It's Time To Turn the Tables on this Presidential Bully. Our financial problems are overwhelmingly a result of excess spending, not of insufficient tax revenues. Increasing rates or decreasing deductions won't make a speck of difference, and Obama knows it. Our $16 trillion national debt and our $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities are going to destroy this nation in relatively short order if we don't take drastic remedial action. Yet Obama's plan is to increase taxes on the highest 2 percent of income earners while refusing to make significant reductions in discretionary spending or to restructure entitlements. Obama's Kingdom of Fairness. We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back. Obama would agree. He once alleged that George W. Bush's much smaller deficits were "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic." Obama himself vowed to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. Instead, Obama's annual deficits have never gone below $1 trillion. Obama Barreling Toward Real Fiscal Cliff. Obama is playing chicken, all right, but he's not driving his own car; he's driving the United States of America. People can quibble endlessly over whether he is intentionally trying to harm America. The better way to frame it is that Obama is, by his own admission, trying to fundamentally transform America. His transforming vision means continuing to expand the welfare state, major tax hikes, increased spending and obstructing reform of our already insolvent entitlement programs, the major debt drivers that are leading us toward the real "fiscal cliff." Obama Wants a War. The president is not interested in doing a deal on entitlements. He just wants more money in taxes to spend on his war on inequality. Obama 2: Even more reckless. His effort to eliminate [the debt ceiling] is something that happens in a banana republic. Is that where Obama wants to take America? Sadly, many Americans believe the answer is yes. A friend wrote to express that view forcefully: "Obama has deliberately destroyed the world's best medical system. He is deliberately destroying the world's strongest economy and currency. He has destroyed the world's best political system by governing by executive order. He has started destroying the world's best military." Obama has Now Borrowed More Than All Presidents from Washington to W. The federal government has now borrowed more money during Barack Obama's time as president than it did in the period lasting from the time President George Washington took the oath office until July 2, 2001, more than five months into the first term of President George W. Bush. Obama the Job-Killing Owl-Killer. Punishing loggers and bringing the timber industry to its knees have made vengeful environmental groups fat and happy. But the northern spotted owl they claim to care so much about is catastrophically worse off thanks to green zealotry. One root cause: habitat loss (thanks in part to raging wildfires resulting from poor forest management and green opposition to thinning/controlled burns). The other major, nonhuman culprit: the barred owl. Obama demands $1.6 trillion tax boost, and an unlimited credit card. President Barack Obama has dramatically upped his demands in the fiscal crisis negotiations: He wants Congress to levy twice as much in extra taxes from Americans as he urged during the election campaign, give up its control over the nation's debt limit, and fund an immediate $50 billion stimulus for his political priorities. In exchange, Obama offered to consider — but not necessarily accept — GOP proposals for cutting $400 billion from Medicare and other programs strongly favored by off-year voters. The Editor says... Pelosi: Give Obama Power to Personally Lift Debt Limit to Infinity. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Friday [11/30/2012] that Congress should hand over to President Barack Obama the power to unilateral increase the limit on the U.S. government's debt. In effect, under the plan Pelosi is endorsing, the only limit on the national debt would be President Obama's willingness to borrow money in the name of American taxpayers. Let's rein in 'food police' bureaucrats and get real about nutrition information. Here's food for thought! Despite the looming "fiscal cliff," a national debt standing at $16 trillion and counting, and high unemployment rates, our federal government continues to create heavy-handed, and often times unnecessary, regulations for our small businesses — the true engines of the nation's economic growth. A case in point is a pending federal regulation dealing not with America's many pressing financial needs, but the calorie count of food at your local restaurant. The Cloward-Piven-Obama plan is working! The Cloward-Piven way. If the Cloward and Piven agenda were being implemented, would it look any different? [...] This explains the Occupy Movement, and the tacit approval of the Obama Administration. This explains the gutting of the Clinton era Welfare requirements by the Obama administration. This explains the lack of diligence by administrators in determining who exactly qualifies for Disability. Encouraging people to get on unemployment, then when your 99 weeks are up, go to disability. We won't check if you meet the requirements. This explains why there is a concerted effort to get as many people as possible on Food Stamps, and the lack of oversight diligence here as well. Regulators R Us: Feds Crank Up Regulations — on Everything. Get set for the Obama administration's post-election tsunami of business-killing, job-killing, economy-killing federal regulations. It's already begun. Take a look at www.regulations.gov, the administration's regulatory website. The home page informs us that in the last 90 days, the administration has posted 5,934 new regulations. [...] A cost analysis by the Small Business Administration in 2008 found that the cost to our national economy of compliance with federal regulations was an astronomical $1.75 trillion! Did the U.S. Constitution Promise a Chicken in Every Pot? [Scroll down] So every time the liberals like Obama try to regulate an industry, they intentionally try to stop the flow of commerce. Obama thought he could make Green energy rise from the oceans and eliminate oil and coal and natural gas. Obama thought he could make an electric car that would run on hot air rather than coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Cap and trade is a tax on commerce. Obama and the commies want to hinder U.S. Commerce in the name of carbon emissions. Cloward-Piven Obama link: Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven published their blueprint for revolution in 1966. Everyone has known about this "Cloward-Piven strategy" ever since. Now, fresh evidence shows that Obama had a more direct link to Ms. Piven than he has ever let on. Obama Policies Copy Moribund California, Not Texas. The problem is that Obama's economic policies are pushing the country to be more like the California people are leaving and less like the Texas they're flocking to. "Every dream program that the administration embraces — cap and trade, massive taxes on the rich, high-speed rail — is either in place or on the drawing boards" in California, notes Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography. Feds Double Protected Habitat for Spotted Owl Despite Concerns of Job Losses. President Obama didn't just pardon a couple of turkeys at the White House yesterday, but unveiled a plan to nearly double protected habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl. Feds to double habitat for spotted owl. The full critical habitat plan will not be published until next week, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 9.6 million acres of Oregon, Washington and Northern California will come under its provisions, almost all of it federal lands. The amount is down from nearly 14 million acres proposed last February but still exceeds the 5.3 million acres proposed in 2008. President Obama Decrees 19 Laws of
Economics: Your Future in Obama World. This fall, a lot of companies kept on employees in expectation 'the jobs candidate' would get elected, but as soon as Obama 'won', thousands of people got the pink slip. Unless you buy the notion that government spending stimulates the economy, these jobs aren't coming back anytime soon. Dirty Secrets at the EPA. What do you suppose President Obama's initial instruction were to his agency heads: Lisa Jackson at the EPA, Dr. Steven Chu at Energy, Ken Salazar at Interior and Tom Vilsack at Agriculture? "Go forth and regulate. Wrap American business in enough red tape to hamstring their efforts to grow or prosper. Restrict energy wherever you can, favoring 21st Century green power, use lots of ethanol — fuel of the future, and try to get rid of dirty coal." One would hope that such orders were improbable, but the results would seem to indicate something along those lines. Treasury Secretary Geithner: Lift Debt Limit to Infinity. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday that Congress should stop placing legal limits on the amount of money the government can borrow and effectively lift the debt limit to infinity. On Bloomberg TV, "Political Capital" host Al Hunt asked Geithner if he believes "we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling." "Oh, absolutely," Geithner said. Does Obama Doom America? The words aren't coming from alarmists. They come in face-to-face conversations, or in emails, or on the phone. They come from Washington, from New York, from New Jersey, from Minnesota, from Alabama, from New Orleans — from all over. Serious, ordinary people, some of whom live and breathe politics and some of whom pay almost no attention to current affairs, aren't panicking or exaggerating. They are really worried about what this man in the White House will do now. And they're really worried about whether America as we know it can survive. The $4,000 Trash Can. Since January 1st, the federal government has imposed $56.6 billion in compliance costs. Caterpillar downgraded on Obama's energy policy. Caterpillar Inc.'s stock was downgraded to "Neutral" from "Overweight" by JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Ann Duignan Monday [11/12/2012]. Duignan, who had rated Peoria-based Caterpillar "overweight" since April 2009, cited pressures on the sector to reduce costs and the potential negative impact on the U.S. coal and energy sectors following the re-election of President Barack Obama in downgrading the stock. With Election Over, the News Flows Freely. We heard throughout the campaign of President Obama's "all of the above" energy policy. That was then. This is now. About 48 hours after he was assured of reelection, the president's Interior Department issued a plan to close to oil shale development 1.6 million acres of federal land in the West to oil. These acres were targeted for oil shale exploration and development by the prior administration. Instead, only some 677,000 acres would be open for oil shale exploration, and an additional 130,000 for tar sands production. The reason for excluding so much acreage from development includes a desire to protect sage grouse habitats and land with "wilderness characteristics." The Editor says... Obama Administration Hid Record Food Stamp Numbers Until After Election. The Obama Administration hid the record food stamp numbers from the American public until after the election. Also posted
under Obama manipulates the news media. Democrats Better Start Soul Searching. We can't know quite what a second Obama term will bring, but if his first term is an indication, there's little reason to expect his party will be crowing. [...] On Friday [11/9/2012], citing ecological concerns, the administration closed off 1.6 million acres of federal land in western states from planned oil shale extraction. An American energy boom lies in wait underground and Obama is determined to keep it there. GOP pushes back at White House for easing layoff alerts. Republican lawmakers are pushing back on guidance from the White House saying that the federal government will reimburse defense companies' liability or litigation costs for not issuing legally mandated layoff warnings to employees this year as deep spending cuts loom, with the companies maintaining postelection they are comfortable with the advice and have no plans to issue the notices this year. "They're intimidated by the White House," Sen. John McCain said Tuesday [11/13/2012] of the companies. "No more, no less." Boeing leads the charge in post-election layoff announcements. Boeing, a Las Vegas business, and 21 other companies announced layoffs following President Barack Obama's victory last week. [...] Immediately following the outcome of the election Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division. Boeing will cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities in California and consolidate several business units to cut costs, according to Reuters. Death spiral: Hours cut, workers pushed to part-time due to Obamacare. As Twitchy has been reporting, the layoff bomb has detonated. Many companies, both large and small, have been forced to lay off workers due to President Obama's re-election. With no hope of Obamacare being repealed, they are now forced to lay off employees in order to stay in business. Progressives Launch Revenge on Applebee's as Company Downsizes in Response to ObamaCare. The business community's had the writing on the wall for some time. The election simply cleared up the uncertainty in the decision-making environment. Calls to boycott Applebee's after CEO threatens hiring freeze and layoffs over Obamacare. Papa John's came under fire this week when CEO John Schnatter floated a plan to cut worker hours to reduce spiking employee health care costs under the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Now, Applebee's is being boycotted after a major New York area Applebee's franchise owner Zane Tankel threatened a hiring freeze and possible layoffs as a result of the president's healthcare plan. How Many Businesses Have Announced Closings or Layoffs Since Obama Won A Second Term? Do elections have consequences? If you have been paying attention to the financial markets, you might think so. Wall Street has had two horrible days since President Obama won a second term. However, stock prices are not the only thing taking a hit. It appears that the job market is also suffering. In the last 48 hours, [a number of] major corporations have announced layoffs in America. Private companies are too smart to hire. Sageworks Inc. recently polled accounting professionals and bankers who are in constant contact with the owners of privately held companies. Nearly three-quarters say the national debt is making it less likely that businesses will increase hiring. A similar proportion said the debt, which stands at about $16 trillion, makes it less likely businesses will boost other investments as well. Forward! To mass layoffs! Obamanomics grinds grimly onward, as CNBC brings word that on the day after the election, "Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division on Wednesday [11/7/2012] that will cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities in California, and consolidate several business units to cut costs." It was sweet of them to keep that under wraps until after the election, wasn't it? Who Is Barack Hussein Obama? And
What Is He Really Up To? After four years of trying to deal with the mysterious stranger in the White House, Americans are wondering
why they voted for Obama. Voter remorse has never been higher, and more than half of our electorate continues to be troubled by serious questions
that refuse to go away: Business Owners Warn Of 4,100 New Regs And The Administration's Secrecy About Them. Every administration is legally required to publish a report each April and October in the Federal Register to inform Congress and the public of the administration's regulatory agenda and its potential economic impact. The requirement is part of the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980. The Obama administration has missed its second straight legal deadline for disclosing its regulatory plans and their economic impact to Congress and the American public. No previous administration has ever failed to produce the report even once. Harsher energy regulations seen in Obama's second term. Energy producers braced for tighter regulation in President Barack Obama's second term, with coal companies expecting more emissions restrictions and drillers anticipating less access to federal land even as his platform promotes energy independence. November surprise: EPA planning major post-election anti-coal regulation. President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA. More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants. Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA's greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion. Barack Obama let America down. Obama vowed to cut in half the annual Bush spending deficit he inherited, but instead he tripled it. He called George W. Bush "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the total accumulated national debt in eight years, but then he added $5 trillion more in only four years, and would add an estimated $5 trillion beyond that in a second term. Today's $16 trillion national debt is the size of the nation's total annual economic output. That's like owing Master Card your whole year's wages, and still buying more on credit every day. White House data supports Romney claim that Obama will raise debt to $20 trillion. White House data supports Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's warning that if President Barack Obama wins re-election, the national debt will hit $20 trillion. America's gross federal debt will reach $20.3 trillion at the end of 2016 under Obama's budget path, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The national debt is currently $16.1 trillion. EPA Regs To Destroy 887,000 Jobs Per Year, Senator Says Citing New Study. EPA regulations the Obama administration is scheduled to unleash in its second term would destroy up to 887,000 jobs a year, Sen. James Inhofe announced today. [...] Inhofe's announcement comes a day after the Obama administration missed its second straight statutory deadline for publishing a legally-required report on its regulatory intentions and their economic consequences. Obama Administration Mandates Oil Firms Hire Sea Turtle Observers. The Department of Interior (DOI) is requiring private oil companies to hire marine mammal and sea turtle monitors if the companies are granted a lease to drill offshore. A marine mammal observer's job is to watch for whales, dolphins, and similar sea creatures and to advise on minimizing the underwater noise created by offshore drilling, which can affect the sea mammals. The Lord of the Flies administration. In the handling of the economy and national security, President Obama has shown he's not capable of being the adult in the room. After four years of perpetual campaigning and cheerleading for his pet projects, he still isn't prepared to deal soberly with the consequences of his ideological indulgences. His community organizing fantasy has been to remake America in his more socialistic image, and in the process, he's taken the nation dangerously close to financial ruin. The EPA's Planned Destruction of the U.S. Economy. If there was no other reason to defeat President Obama in November, it would be the planned destruction of what is left of the U.S. economy by the Environmental Protection Agency. In "A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2012" the minority staff (Republican) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has issued a chilling review of a massive rise in the costs of living for all Americans, massive layoffs in all sectors of the economy, and the destruction of the nation's energy and manufacturing sectors. Obama administration blocks oil production in Ohio: 200,000 jobs lost. If Obama isn't handing out $535 million of taxpayer dollars to Solyndra and $1.4 billion of taxpayer dollars to BruightSource, then he's busy blocking oil drilling in the Gulf and blocking oil drilling in Ohio and blocking the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. It's no wonder we have a 9% unemployment rate — this man doesn't want to create jobs. Obama's Reelection Will Ensure Complete U.S. Economic Collapse. This coming presidential election will determine whether the U.S. ends up in another Great Depression or pulls out of the economic slump. There are numerous signs indicating that the country is headed for economic Armageddon under Obama. Some analysts are predicting the crash could come as soon as next year. Obama is following the failed policies of President Herbert Hoover which led to the Great Depression. Obama's Trip to the Dark Side. If the Ahmadinejads of the world want to defeat us, they need inside help. They need leaders who loathe America as they do — leaders who will pursue destructive policies that progressively weaken us from within. America's enemies need an American president to adopt Carter-esque policies like these[...] Gas Prices Doubled, Obama Locks Up National Reserve. As the administration fast-tracks solar projects on public lands, it has locked up more than half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, preferring to continue outsourcing energy jobs and dollars. Debate Analysis: Did Regulation Quadruple Under Obama? The Numbers Say Yes. [Scroll down] Far more telling are the numbers of "major" rules: those that will cost the private sector $100 million or more each year. We found that 106 such major new regulations have been adopted during the Obama years, compared to 28 under Bush — a ratio of 3.8 to 1. In terms of cost, Obama's rules imposed some $46 billion in additional annual burdens, compared to $8.1 billion in new costs during the first three Bush years, a whopping 5.6 to 1 ratio. GOP: Obama always 'puts government first'. The unemployment rate in our state is 8.3 percent, more than the national average and unacceptably high. That figure doesn't take into account people who have given up looking for a job altogether. It doesn't reflect the struggles of families trying to keep up with higher prices on everything from gas to groceries. I tell my neighbors it doesn't have to be this way. We have employers who want to hire and workers who want to work, but government won't get out of the way. Name a single thing that has improved under Obama's rule. Obama's Big Tax Increases on Small Business. It is quite a stretch for President Obama to argue that he wants to cut taxes for small businesses. In reality, he is proposing to increase taxes on small businesses by around $49 billion. Obama's War on Nuclear Power. The Obama administration has shown, through words and deeds, a well-publicized antipathy toward domestic energy production from coal, oil, and natural gas. What has received lesser public awareness is the administration's concurrent war on nuclear power. No matter Obama's 2008 campaign's lukewarm endorsement of nuclear power, the administration's actions since 2009 have been anything but helpful to the production of nuclear power in this country. Do Americans truly understand 'redistribution of wealth'? The recently uncovered tape of Obama addressing students at Loyola University in 1998 has produced an uproar. In the tape, Obama expressed his admiration for redistributive government programs. [...] If he is elected, Obama's 1998 proposition will be reality in the next four years. When he proposed to redistribute wealth, Ibama meant that the system has to find a "trick" way to transform your wealth into government's hands. Government will then distribute that wealth to others of its choosing. 55 percent of small business owners would not start company today, blame Obama. Fifty-five percent of small business owners and manufacturers would not have started their businesses in today's economy, according to a new poll that also reports 69 percent say President Obama's regulatory policies have hurt their businesses. "There is far too much uncertainty, too many burdensome regulations and too few policymakers willing to put aside their egos and fulfill their responsibilities to the American people," said Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which commissioned the poll along with the National Federation of Independent Businesses. CEO Wynn: 'I'm Afraid of the President'. Steven Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, said on Monday [10/8/2012] that he was sitting on his thumbs with over a billion dollars tied up because he was unsure what government program the Obama administration would unveil next, and stressed that he was "afraid of the president." Where's Our Energy? When President Barack Obama took office, the average price for a gallon of regular gas was $1.84. That means gas prices have more than doubled on Obama's watch. But why? The primary reason is that the system is rigged. [...] Another reason Americans are getting hosed at the pump is that President Obama loathes the fossil fuel industry and does everything he can to inhibit production. Obama: 'We Don't Believe Anybody Is Entitled to Success in This Country'. "This country does not just succeed when just a few are doing well at the top," Obama said, according to a rush transcript of the remarks. "It succeeds when the middle class gets bigger. Our economy does not grow from the top-down, it grows from the middle-out. We do not believe that anybody is entitled to success in this country. Obama's childlike belief in the money tree. There is something at once fascinating and frightening in the Obama campaign meme that the rich should be forced to "pay a little bit more." [...] He told an audience at George Washington University that "the rich can afford to give back a little bit more." Notice that the wording is give back not give, as though tax revenues are monies that belong to the government in the first place. A "Mean Green", Obama Wages War Against Cheap Energy. Since abundant, relatively inexpensive energy has literally powered America's unprecedented economic development, naturally, one of Obama's principal goals as president has been to curtail Americans' access to cheap energy. He seems to agree with Holdren's some-time writing partner, Paul Ehrlich, who burnished his misanthropic reputation by fulminating, "Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." Obama's preferred strategy has been to implement whatever policies increase the price of energy to American consumers. Pat Buchanan: 'Fabian socialist' Obama 'is a drug dealer of welfare'. "This is the great conflict of our time," Buchanan said. "Are we going down the road? Barack Obama, in my judgment, is a Fabian socialist. You saw the 'redistribution,' and by that I mean he's not [Independent Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders, who is right out in the open and honest about it, but he's a Fabian socialist who wants to move through gradualism and reform, step by step, until a majority of Americans are dependent upon government. When that happens, the party of government wins every election." President Obama's creative math.
As President Obama takes time out of his busy [...] schedule to talk with David Letterman and hang with millionaires and celebrities at fundraisers,
let's take a look at his economic record. When talking with Letterman the President said of the $16 trillion national debt said, "we don't
have to worry about it short term." Seriously, he said that. Probably because he doesn't have a plan or a clue how to address the
problem. Or maybe he just doesn't care? Obama's moocher culture. Mr. Obama views government as a bottomless well of free handouts. Every idea, every proposal, every promise Mr. Obama makes involves the government giving something to somebody. His urgent focus is to expand and strengthen government's role in everyone's daily life. This was illustrated in the Obama campaign slideshow "The Life of Julia," a detailed roadmap for cradle-to-grave dependence on government. Every slide began with, "Under President Obama" — which the White House believes is the proper place for Americans. D'Souza Gets Boffo Results By Exploding Obama Story. The book and film [by Dinesh D'Souza] link Barack Obama with his estranged late Kenyan father and suggest the two share a deep-seeded hatred for colonialism and capitalism. [...] What the film is suggesting is that Obama's agenda is one of downsizing America in the world — downsizing our economy, reducing our consumption of energy, reducing our nuclear weapons and shrinking America's footprint in the world. My point is that these are not the accidental result of Obama's policies, they're actually his goals. The anti-colonial ideology helps to explain why they are his goals. QE3: Quantitatively Easing America Further Into Inflation. Everybody knew it was coming. With the economy continuing to founder, it was only a matter of time before Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve decided to turn once again — like the proverbial pig to its wallow — to printing money in a vain attempt to jolt the moribund American economy back to life. As with the first two such feckless efforts, they're dressing this one in fancy verbiage — "quantitative easing" — that fools no one. Obama's War on Middle Class: Median Income Lowest Since 1995. Obama is basing his reelection campaign on some strange fantasy that he and his policies are better positioned to "protect" the middle class. I say fantasy because by just about every measure, the middle class has done worse since he took office. His rhetoric may favor the middle class, but his policies decidedly do not. Regulatory Tsunami To Hit Business If Obama Wins Second Term. A Gallup survey earlier this year found that almost half of small businesses cite worries about new government regulations as a reason they're not hiring. Barack Obama is somebody's puppet. Obama Is Out Of Ideas. America is deciding in this election whether it wants to ditch the economic system that made us the richest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world, for the hope and change not for something better, but for something supposedly fairer, like socialism and communism is supposedly fairer than capitalism. Climate Change Is A Hoax, Obama, Like Your Presidency. The president who said he'd slow the ocean's rise says voters can regulate the weather and stop droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes by backing his re-election. Never mind wrecking the economy in the process. As We Approach the Final Battle to Save America. Obama is the most far-left-radical, racially polarizing, and anti-Christian president in U.S. history. Though once thought incomprehensible by many, Americans are beginning to accept the devastating truth that our president is intentionally undermining our country. Obama's Accelerating Downward Spiral For America. Obama never tires of telling us that the economy was in one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression when he entered office, as if he was the only President to have suffered a recession early in his term. But nobody expected that he would use the vast powers of the most powerful office in the world to make it worse. But that is what he has done. [...] The problem is that Obama has only greatly accelerated everything Bush did wrong, and reversed everything Bush did right. Why You Will Never Buy a Car Again. If you've been waiting around to buy a new car, better hurry up. If Obama gets his way, the only car you will be able to buy will be a small hybrid cube and will cost more than you can afford. [...] A 54.5 mpg increase could bring costs up to $15,000 extra per vehicle. That might not be such a big deal for Obama, but for millions of American workers and small business owners who depend on their car to get to work and to earn a living, this will mean the difference between being able to feed their families and not being able to feed their families. Obama order targets industrial efficiency, emissions. President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Thursday [8/30/2012] that would increase the number of cogeneration plants in the U.S. by 50 percent by 2020, a move that would boost U.S. industrial energy efficiency and slash carbon emissions by 150 million tons per year. The order is the administration's latest effort to deploy cleaner and more efficient energy production in the country by working around political resistance to climate change and "green" energy legislation on Capitol Hill. The Editor says... Obama's Best Kept Secret. How can a president presiding over the worst unemployment situation since the Great Depression have no jobs plan for his next term? And why is no one talking about this glaring hole in his campaign? On the presidential campaign trail this week, the GOP once again pointed out President Obama's failure to create jobs. But to fail at creating jobs, Obama would first have had to try. The president hasn't made a serious effort at that in a year. Love Him or Hate Him, You Don't Know Him: Obama's America — 2016. I attended a recent screening of the surprise box office hit "Obama's America: 2016." The documentary is narrated by Dinesh D'Souza and based upon two of his most recent books, including "The Roots of Obama's Rage." D'Souza's thesis is that Obama embraced his father's anti-colonial legacy and seeks to transform America into a second or third class nation as a form of retribution for America's past cultural and political imperialism. Obama is a proponent of failed economic policies that have left much of the Third World mired in poverty. Manufacturer: EPA against all fossil fuels, not just coal. "I firmly believe that this administration, including the EPA, has a very, very robust, anti-fossil fuels agenda," [Charlie] Drevna said in a telephone interview. "You guys in West Virginia should know this as well as anybody else. What is this administration trying to do with coal? Well, they're trying to do the same with oil and other fossil fuels. It's just an anti-fossil fuels agenda. One can argue whether it's noble or not. I don't think it is. Is it detrimental to the consumers? Is it detrimental to the economy and national security? Absolutely." Consumers stand to lose dramatically, whether they are driving a pickup truck or a passenger car, mowing the lawn or steering a motorboat, he said. Downsizing America: The Obama Doctrine in Action. Many of Obama's actions and policies can seem incomprehensible coming from the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. They are therefore often attributed to bungling and ineptitude. However, according to D'Souza, this is a President who did not seek the highest office in the land to preserve American greatness and leadership. Instead, Obama's core motivating philosophy is deeply rooted anti-colonialism. D'Souza sees the President as successfully pursuing a vision concealed by political rhetoric from most Americans who voted for Obama. From Obama's perspective, says D'Souza, America is too rich, consumes too many of the world's resources, is militarily too strong, and has to be reduced to its proper place among the eight or so major nations of the world. "He wants... an America in decline so that other nations might rise." Economy Stalls As Obama Targets Businesses. The President who claims he is saving us from oppressive healthcare bills, is the same President whose Administration is comfortable fining a small plumbing supply shop owner nearly half a million dollars. American businesses are living in fear of American government, and businesses owners are not in a position (financially or otherwise) to take more risks and try to grow and expand — they are "tapped out" just trying to survive. Obama Gas Prices Going UP-UP-UP. As president, Barack Obama has waged an ongoing war against domestic energy production, including offshore oil and natural gas. As a result, energy prices are skyrocketing, which in turn increase prices for food and other day-to-day essentials, taking yet more money from already struggling middle class Americans. This week sets an all-new record for highest gas prices. Number Of Unemployed Vets Drops — But, the Number Employed Fell Even More. Yes, according to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, the total number of unemployed veterans and spouses is down 223,000 from last year (July 2011 to July 2012). But, the number of EMPLOYED veterans and spouses is down even more — falling 239,000 — over that same time period. How? Well, 462,000 veterans and spouses have dropped out of the labor force (10,925,000, down from 11,387,000) — and their labor force participation rate fell from 52.7% to 51.6%. Why Isn't Romney Slaughtering Obama? By any objective standard, Barack Obama's presidency must be judged a failure. [...] Obama's Keynesian economic policies have forestalled the robust economic recovery that normally follows a steep recession. Instead, his profligate tax, spend and borrow policies have led to massive deficits, crushing debt, bloated and inefficient government, sustained high unemployment, financial uncertainty and a diminished standard of living. [And] Obama's "Chicago-style" of governing is characterized by the ramming through of major legislative measures (Obamacare and Dodd-Franks) without widespread citizen assent, a bigoted Justice Department, recess appointments when Congress is not in recess, executive orders that violate legislative intent and the bottling up of America's energy resources under insurmountable red tape. GOP: Unemployment has never been this high this long post-recession. You've probably heard the president say recently that the private sector is 'doing fine' and that his plan 'worked.' If only that were true. Just take a look at the chilling report the Associated Press issued a few days ago confirming our fears, that this is the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. Unemployment has never been this high for this long after a recession. Even those who have jobs are seeing their paychecks shrink. Rising prices on everyday things from gas to groceries certainly doesn't help matters. Yet, hard as it is to believe, the president and his party think now is a good time to raise taxes on small businesses. The Obama Administration is Killing the Internet. Bad policy after bad policy. Often illegally imposed. As a result, the Tech Sector — 1/6 of our nation's economy, as big as health care — is hemorrhaging jobs. [...] And our Internet service would be better, faster and cheaper were it not for this Administration. Obama's Shared Prosperity: A Euphemism Wrapped in a Lie. "Spread the wealth around" sounded like the casual remark of a tone-deaf authoritarian, someone used to speaking to rooms full of like-minded leftists. The problem lay chiefly in the word "spread": so impersonal, it gives the impression that someone — Obama obviously meant government — should just forcibly disperse the successful citizen's property to others, willy-nilly. Government will spread your wealth around. Aside from completely addle-minded, entitlement-besotted slugs, what American would approve of reconfiguring America in accordance with such a principle? President Obama's Smashing Success Story: Greatly Increasing The Power Of Government. The traditional measure of the success of an Administration's economic program has been real economic growth, employment growth, the unemployment rate and the like. Based on these criteria, the Obama Administration's economic program has been a dismal failure. Obama Promises 'Shared Prosperity' But Delivers Shared Misery. So what has Obama actually delivered? Precious little prosperity and it sure isn't being shared. All Obama's "shared prosperity" policies have done, in fact, is choke off economic growth, producing a stagnant economy in which businesses and investors hunker down because they don't know what's next. The Reddest of Presidents. Despite increasing worry over lack of economic growth, the administration has done little to get the economy moving and much to prevent it from growth. Offshore Drilling: Increase Access, Reduce the Risk, and Stop Hurting American Companies. The Obama Administration remains committed to strangling America's economic revival by doing everything in its power to prevent companies that obtain offshore leases from actually drilling and producing oil — a fact evidenced by a new lawsuit just filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims by an independent U.S. oil and gas company. The Childishness of the American Left. [Scroll down] Currently, just 58.4% of the civilian population is employed, as compared to 64.3% twelve years ago. Factoring in the growth of the population during that period, this drop represents over 22 million Americans unable to find work. Since January 2009, 74% of all new jobs created in the U.S. were in the lowest-paying sectors of the economy, thereby stifling any chance of upward mobility and growth in median income which has fallen by 9% since January 2009, and average household wealth that has declined by nearly 40% over this same period. This failure is a byproduct of a tsunami of government regulations, mandates, and taxes which has nearly destroyed the innovation and business and job-creation that made the American economy so vibrant over the latter part of the 20th century. If You Like Obama's Failed Policies, Vote for Him. [Barack Obama's] policies are enormously destructive to our coal, oil, nuclear energy and natural gas industries, but he shows no signs of letting up, even though these policies are also manifestly destroying American jobs and otherwise harming the economy. [...] While sabotaging our reliable energy sources, he is also throwing as much federal money as he can at failed green energy projects, which are so ill-conceived that a reasonable person might conclude his goal is to waste money. Solyndra wasn't the only such failed enterprise, as we've shown. There were a dozen others, and despite these failures and the unconscionable waste, he has revealed nothing but a defiant determination to double down and spend more on other such projects. It's mind-blowing. Debunking the myth of Obama's regulatory record. Today's resignation of regulatory czar Cass Sunstein has revived a myth about President Obama's record on regulation. Let's be clear: This president's regulatory reforms pale in comparison to the vast number rules he's imposed on Americans. In just the first three years of Obama's presidency, his administration added 106 new major federal regulations at a cost of more than $46 billion per year. Obama Is The Dr. Kevorkian Of Job Creation. Presidents actually don't create jobs, but their policies and programs can stand in the way of those who do. According to a chart produced using figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and compiled by the good folks at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, President Obama has made even former President Jimmy Carter look like Adam Smith. Obama's Solution To Our Housing Problems: Repeat The Exact Same Mistakes. The politicians in D.C. created the housing crisis that tanked the economy with regulations that practically made handing out high risk housing loans a necessity for Freddie, Fannie, and many banks. Of course, you wouldn't know that from listening to anybody in Congress because the politicians naturally point the finger elsewhere. Unfortunately, they're also pushing the same sort of policies that got us into trouble in the first place. The Editor says... Obama Economic Plan Would Explode Debt to $25.4 Trillion. A new analysis of Mr. Obama's budget reveals the president's plan would add $10.6 trillion in debt accumulation over the next decade, bringing the U.S. federal debt to a jaw-dropping $25.4 trillion. [...] In addition, the Obama budget contains $1.8 trillion in tax increases over the next decade. Specifically, the top marginal tax rate would jump to 39.6 percent, taxes on dividends would skyrocket to 43.4 percent (from 15 percent), and the death tax would leap to 45 percent. Census Shows 200,000 Small Businesses Shut Down From 2008-2010. According to Census figures, some 200,000 small businesses disappeared from the rolls between 2008 and 2010. Those businesses were responsible for some three million jobs. The Obama administration claims that they're moving in the right direction — but the direction of the economy is now reversing itself. Not surprisingly, Gallup finds that business owners are turning on President Obama. Obama Sets Drilling Limits, Continues War On Oil. President Obama has said that his administration has an all-of-the-above energy plan. Apparently "all" doesn't include offshore drilling. No president has ever offered fewer offshore leases. Obama's Legacy: $25 Trillion in Debt by 2022. The Obama administration quietly released a new budget report Friday afternoon [7/27/2012] at a time calculated to make sure it received minimal attention. The highlights of the new report are a pair of new estimates, the first of this year's deficit and the second of projected debt 10 years from now. Record number of coal-fired generators to be shut down in 2012. Facing declining demand for electricity and stiff federal environmental regulations, coal plant operators are planning to retire 175 coal-fired generators, or 8.5 percent of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States, according to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). A record-high 57 generators will shut down in 2012, representing 9 gigawatts of electrical capacity, according to EIA. In 2015, nearly 10 gigawatts of capacity from 61 coal-fired generators will be retired. While many of those coal plants are old and relatively inefficient, the scope of this new planned shutdown is unprecedented. Coal Comfort. About one train per hour. That's the target loading rate for the massive silos, conveyors, and hoppers at the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming, the most productive coal mine in the world. [...] The scale and productivity of the mine are difficult to imagine. It produces about three tons of coal per second. But despite its staggering output, the North Antelope Rochelle Mine — along with the other 1,300 coal mines operating in the U.S. — is being threatened by the Obama administration. More about Obama's war on coal, which is being put into effect by the EPA. A Guaranteed Minimum Income In The US? We know from the records that the welfare rolls have increased exponentially under Obama. Recently, changes were made by Presidential Executive Order to redefine "work" allowing even more applicants for welfare to be added to the welfare rolls. Why? Could it be the Obama Administration is deliberately attempting to "crash" the US welfare system? If so, why? I contend that is exactly what is happening. If I an [sic] correct, then we are actually seeing the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" at work. We are observing the foundation, the groundwork, if you will, for establishing a guaranteed annual (minimum) income for American citizens. Obama's house of cards. By pushing bad loans in the name of 'diversity,' the president is creating the mortgage crisis all over again. Affirmative Action In Bank Lending Policy Promises Economic Disaster. Welcome to the bizarre world of banking regulation. Despite the recent disaster wrought by affirmative action lending, Washington ratchets up still more politically correct requirements and shifts the measure of discrimination towards "disparate impact." Even unbiased behaviors are subject to penalty unless they benefit protected classes. It's no longer blind justice meted equally before the law. "Diversity" has become Washington's Holy Grail, discharging unequal justice in preference for specific outcomes. The burden on businesses expands beyond banning discrimination into virtually requiring reverse discrimination. Obama on the economy: 'We tried our plan — and it worked'. Discussing his economic policies at a fundraiser in Oakland, California, last night, President Obama, told supporters that "we tried our plan — and it worked." "We tried that and it didn't work," Obama said of Mitt Romney's proposed tax cuts and spending cuts, which he dismissed as a Bush-style "top down" economic policy. "Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked," he added later in the speech. "That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term." Obama made these comments in Oakland, where the unemployment rate was 13.7 percent in May 2012. It depends on what the plan was. Obama Energy Policies Are Working: Patriot Coal Goes Bankrupt. Patriot Coal Company filed for bankruptcy on July 9, 2012 as coal prices have plummeted from reduced demand resulting from low natural gas prices and new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There are several problems with President Obama's desire to eliminate coal from our energy system. First, there will be no carbon dioxide savings because the developing world needs to burn coal to grow their economies. And, second, U.S. electricity prices will rise as natural gas price increases along with its demand and as utility companies pass along the cost of meeting EPA regulations. Was Barack Obama Lying Then or Now? [Scroll down] But humoring the President, let's pretend he does think he has "fundamentally transformed" America into an "unbelievable system." If that's the case, we have a huge problem on our hands that the President of the United States thinks +8% unemployment, Canadians 20% richer than us, a growing number of people on food stamps, disability, welfare, and out of work is somehow the product of an "unbelievable system." I mean, I know it is unbelievable, but unbelievable not in a good way. That doesn't seem to be what he was suggesting.
House Report: Obama, the regulator-in-chief, is hurting the economy. President Obama has weakened the economy through an unprecedented rash of high-cost regulations that cater to his "environmental or union allies" but kill jobs, according to a new report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In 2011, Obama's regulatory agencies imposed 3,807 new rules on various sectors of the economy that Oversight staff expect to cost over $105 billion this year alone. As of the fall of 2011, federal regulators were considering 133 new "economically significant rules" — that is, regulations that would each cost over $100 million annually. Americans Lose Ground Under Obama's Failed Policies. The U.S. economy grew at a slothful 1.5% in the second quarter and way below the level needed to create new jobs. Workers and small businesses are losing hope. Yes, Mr. President, "you built that." Surviving Obama. Barack Obama is the worst thing to happen to America in my lifetime. Yet he lacks the work ethic and intellectual rigor necessary to destroy us — despite actions which are purposely malevolent or moronically unintentional. Obama's jobs panel is a sham and a farce. The Most Anti-Business President Ever. Obama's attacks against Romney are mostly grounded in Obama's antipathy toward Romney's success in business and Obama's innate hostility toward the private sector. Is President Obama Intentionally 'Destroying' America? [Scroll down] On the financial front alone, Obama is single-handedly preventing entitlement and discretionary spending reform, without which — as I've said dozens of times — America will face financial catastrophe. There is less than zero question that he is doing that on purpose, regardless of whether you think he is otherwise intentionally damaging America. There is no question that he is acting as though he has a vendetta against the oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power industries. There is also little question that he is intentionally dividing Americans on the basis of race, economic class, gender, sexual orientation and, sometimes, religion. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize the damage Obama is doing to the republic, and we haven't even touched on his unconstitutional and lawless usurpations of authority. Caught in a green crossfire. President Obama has waged war on fossil fuels for three and a half years — and American consumers and families are caught in the green energy crossfire. They are getting hit with higher energy prices, dismal employment prospects and a floundering economy, as billions go to unfriendly overseas countries for oil we could produce in the USA, and billions of tax dollars are wasted on subsidy schemes designed to make "green" energy more competitive — by raising the cost of electricity and fossil fuels that really power our economy. Even worse, his policies are actively killing jobs and preventing job creation: in the oil patch, coal country, and hundreds of industries whose survival depends on reliable, affordable energy. Obama's Interior Department Still Going Rogue. The Obama administration's loathsome cowboy, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, won't take no for an answer. He's been smacked down repeatedly by federal courts for imposing a draconian, junk science-based moratorium on the oil and gas industry. Yet, the job-killing zealot and his boss just introduced another ruinous offshore drilling ban two weeks ago. The White House rationale for the renewed crackdown? Because we said so. Offshore drilling under fire from latest energy plan. A new plan by the Interior Department that critics say would lock up more than 85 percent of America's offshore areas to energy production is drawing negative reviews from congressional Republicans. The restrictive five-year proposal only allows for 15 new offshore leases in the Gulf region and Alaska, but blocks new drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, including the much sought after Virginia and South Carolina region. How Fossil-Fuel Democrats Became An Endangered Species. President Obama's heavy-handed regulation of the booming old-energy economy — the moratorium on offshore drilling following the BP spoil, the decision to block the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the prospect of a fracking ban — and his embrace of green-energy policies has played well in the solidly-Democratic post-industrial coastal economies that he also depends on for fund-raising. But it's left him with few friends in the energy belt that spans the Great Plains, the Gulf Coast, Appalachia and now some parts of the old rustbelt, despite his election-year claims of an "all-of-the-above" energy policy. A Second Term Will Be Terminal. With a second term for Obama, the world-leading America we have known and hoped to leave to our children will be gone. Last Friday's jobs report confirms that Obama is well on his way to transforming America into a third world country, with declining living standards and perpetual economic stagnation. The Court Breathes New Life Into the Great Destroyer. In a little more than three years in office, President Obama has distinguished himself as the Great Destroyer of our liberties through a comprehensive set of policies that are at war with the American idea and are succeeding in fundamentally transforming America, in fulfillment of Obama's promise. Just in the past few weeks, we've witnessed multiple body blows against our freedoms, in areas ranging from immigration to "Fast and Furious" to Obamacare to the economy to race relations to state sovereignty to our very social compact itself. Obama's socialist designs. Last week, the administration announced that it will stop deporting young illegal aliens. The policy shift affects as many as 800,000 illegal immigrants. Mr. Obama's order lifts the fear of deportation. [...] His goal is simple: to destroy the American nation. For decades, our supposed betters have encouraged open borders and unlimited Third World immigration. Corporatist Republicans seek to import cheap labor; liberal Democrats want to import millions of potential voters. The middle- and working-class, however, have been decimated. Their wages have eroded, crime has skyrocketed, border states in the South are overwhelmed, and hospitals, schools and welfare services have been strained to the breaking point. Illegal immigration is slowly bankrupting America. Deliberately Destroying America. The economic model that propelled America into a superpower would continue to provide prosperity if the nation's "entitlement" programs were reformed, if the obscene government spending and production of regulations were reduced, if government housing finance entitles such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were eliminated, if the federal government's purchase of the nation's land mass was ended, if environmental laws without any basis in science were struck from the books, and if government control over the exploration and extracting of its vast energy reserves was greatly reduced. 7 Reasons Obama's Amnesty For Under 30 Illegals Is Terrible Policy. [#7] Americans will lose jobs: We have an unemployment rate that's over 8% and the economy seems to be stalling out again. In a rational world, we would probably dramatically slow down the number of legal immigrants we're allowing to come here in order to give our soft economy more time to absorb already unemployed Americans. Instead, Barack Obama wants to give hundreds of thousands, if not millions of illegal immigrants work permits so they can take jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. Atlas Still Shrugging.
If one wanted to ensure permanent 8 percent to 9 percent unemployment, one might try the following: The Cloward-Piven strategy applied to border enforcement: Alaska sues to block low-sulfur fuel requirement for ships. The state of Alaska sued the Obama administration on Friday to block environmental regulations that would require ships sailing in southern Alaska waters to use low-sulfur fuel. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, challenges the new federal regulations, which require the use of low-sulfur fuel for large marine vessels such as cargo and cruise ships. 'Republicans Want More Debt' and Other Democratic Propaganda. [W]ould other presidents have deliberately extended unemployment benefits as long as possible despite evidence that these extensions exacerbate unemployment? Would they have incentivized states to expand the food stamp program to make more people dependent on government assistance? Would they have amassed anti-business regulations at an unprecedented rate and presided over the largest tax increase in the nation's history, which is set to occur in January — especially during tough economic times? Would they have engaged in the systematic undermining of our domestic energy resources, destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs and diverting billions of dollars to corrupt, doomed-to-fail green energy projects? [...] Of course not. In fact, liberal policies largely caused the recession that Obama keeps complaining about, not George W. Bush. But irrespectiveof who caused it, Obama has done everything in his presidential power to avoid fixing it. Why Obama Could Be a Communist Mole: [Scroll down] I see no reason to believe that Obama has any feeling for America, its traditions, or its Constitution beyond sheer lip service. Nearly everything in his past and in the present points otherwise. Obama's willful conduct domestically and in terms of foreign affairs point to the programmatic unraveling of the strictures of the U.S. Constitution. His concessionary and disadvantageous actions towards China and Russia in particular are very troubling to say the least. Obama Has Lied to Us For Years About Jobs Reports! Once again we get a dismal jobs number from our government. So few jobs were created that we aren't even keeping up with population growth! And once again Obama tells us not to pay any attention to those numbers. Obama's war on guns and oil. The Obama administration is using more than just the Environmental Protection Agency to "crucify" businesses it doesn't like. Congress won't enact any gun-control measures, and the American people aren't interested in paying more at the pump. So President Obama has to get a lot more creative in pushing his anti-gun, anti-affordable-energy agenda. His latest technique is dispatching the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to wage small-scale battles against guns and oil. [...] It's obvious what the White House is up to, and the American people shouldn't stand for it. The bad job numbers are Obama's fault. The weak June jobs numbers are a fitting and ironic ending to President Obama's so-called "Betting on America" tour. By any measure, there is little reason to bet on the economy improving during an Obama presidency. If he had a realistic economic approach, good policies or even the willingness to drive growth, he would. And make no mistake, the low jobs numbers are Obama and the Democrats' fault. The Last Socialist in America. At the end of July [2011] the Heritage Foundation detailed in Red Tape Rising the mounds of red tape that the Obama administration had subjected the country to from 2009 when he was inaugurated to mid-year 2011, not including pending Obamacare and Dodd-Frank regulations, which will tower over all other government tape bales. "Overall, the Obama Administration imposed 75 new major regulations from January 2009 to mid-FY 2011, with annual costs of $38 billion," reports Heritage. Obama's subsidies: Private profit, public risk. President Obama, picking up where President Bush left off, is quietly expanding the federal government's role as the financier of America's economy. A top Obama export official told reporters recently that the administration is preparing "a paper" to lay out when the U.S. government can use export-subsidy programs to promote even domestic sales. Obama plans to use the Export-Import Bank — a federal agency that gives taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign buyers who buy American goods — to subsidize U.S. manufacturers even when they are selling to other American companies. Obama's Perverse Plan for Permanent Recession. President Obama told the nation in his June 14 economic policy address in Cleveland that his economic policy plans for a second term would "create strong sustained growth;... pay down our long term debt; and most of all... generate good, middle-class jobs... ." He then spent almost an hour describing policies that would do just the opposite. The Obama Derecho. Exotic, vaguely menacing, and evoking senseless, abrupt calamity, "derecho" is an especially apt description of America in the age of Obama. If You
Were A Socialist and Wanted to Overthrow the United States Government... If you were a socialist or even a communist looking to
overthrow the United States government, what would you do? You might: Barry Soetoro's plan is working smoothly so far. Wages Drop, Only 5th Time In 33 Years.
While the corrupt media coordinates with the White House to attack Romney using the work of a high-profile Occupy Wall Street supporter, not only is
unemployment increasing, but three years into Barack Obama's term and for only the fifth time in 33 years, wages fell. NBC,
CBS, ABC, The Washington Post, Politico, The New York Times, NPR, CNN... None of them want to talk about the beating the middle class and the
unemployed and under-employed are taking in Obama's failed economy. Census: 36,800 Fewer Businesses in 2010. A new report out Tuesday [6/26/2012] from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that American businesses and workers took a beating in 2010. [...] Total employment in 2010 dropped 2.5 million workers. The number of U.S. businesses in 2010 was 7.4 million, a plunge of 36,800 from the previous year. Number of U.S. businesses fell in 2010: Census Bureau. The number of U.S. businesses with paid employees fell for a third straight year in 2010, but the rate of decrease slowed, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday. U.S. Employer Businesses Show Declines in Establishments and Employees in 2010, Census Bureau Reports. [Scroll down] In 2010, total employment from all sectors was 112.0 million, a decline of 2.5 million employees from 2009. In comparison, between 2008 and 2009 there was a decline of 6.4 million employees. Obama's national ocean policy threatens jobs and economic activities onshore and off. President Obama is using the ocean as his latest regulatory weapon to impose new bureaucratic restrictions on nearly every sector of our economy. While marketed as a common sense plan for the development and protection of our oceans, it is instead being used to create a massive new bureaucracy that would harm our economy. Established through Executive Order, Mr. Obama with a simple stroke of a pen took unilateral action to impose a massive top-down federal bureaucracy with broad regulatory control over our oceans, Great Lakes, rivers, tributaries and watersheds. Undercover Community Organizer. [Scroll down] If our undercover community organizer were president for only a day or two we wouldn't be in the debacle we currently find ourselves in. But after more than three years of Obama's "leadership," we're left with six trillion in new debt, a failed so-called stimulus, real unemployment in the double-digits, food stamp usage at an all-time high, the failed creation of "preferred" green energy jobs that filled the pockets only of Obama's crony donors, and a health care law that will only accelerate our road to bankruptcy if not overturned. This level of incompetence would never be tolerated by the American people if the mainstream media were doing its job and truly informing the public. Romney says Obama's policies are most 'anti-business' in modern history. Mitt Romney on Wednesday [6/13/2012] castigated President Obama, telling the chief executives of 100 of the nation's biggest corporations that the president has ushered in "the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs series of policies in modern American history." The presumptive Republican presidential nominee ticked through a series of proposals that he said would foster a friendlier business climate — repealing Obama's health-care law, authorizing more oil and natural gas drilling, halting all Obama-era regulations and lowering corporate and individual tax rates. Obama is incapable of assuming any responsibility. Never in American history has the nation been saddled with such an unethical and ideologically rigid administration, whose ultimate goal is to tear apart the fabric of society and to recast the United States into the socialist model originally formulated in Italy of the 1920s and '30s. The guiding principle of this system is socialism with a capitalistic veneer — thus leaving an appearance of a free market while centralized government agencies plan all economic and societal activity as well as control all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, banking, health care, energy, and agriculture. EPA Proposes Stricter New Standards for Soot Pollution. Adding to the Obama administration's mounting heap of regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed Friday [6/15/2012] new air quality standards to curb the purportedly fatal repercussions of soot emissions. In reducing the emission of such particles, which environmentalists say are one of the most hazardous air pollutants, oil refiners and large manufacturers will be forced to invest in costly pollution-reduction upgrades. Another Feckless Attempt to Change the Conversation. So, what to do when your Keynesian-cuckoo economic policies are running the country into the ground? Change the subject, certain in the knowledge that our lapdog media will more than accommodate you. And so it is that the Obama administration has announced that it will once again bypass Congress, and stop deporting illegal aliens who come to America at a young age. Make no mistake: this is classic sleight-of-hand, designed to get the country roiled up about something — make that anything — that will obscure the monumental failure best labeled Obamanomics. Democrats, Media In Denial Over Obama's Socialist Beliefs. It should come as no surprise that President Obama stands farther left on the political spectrum than any president in history. After all, his $831 billion stimulus, TARP, auto industry takeover, crackdown on Wall Street and the banks, housing market manipulation, ObamaCare, wealth redistribution, and demonization of American business and profits are only a few examples of Obama's abiding belief in leftist principles. Obama Belonged to Radical Socialist "New Party" in 1996. Stanley Kurtz, in his June 7 article "Obama's Third-Party History" for National Review Online, reports that Barack Obama's connection to far-left radicals is much more recent that had been previously thought. On January 11, 1996, Kurtz notes, Obama joined the New Party, a radical socialist political movement deeply opposed to capitalism and of the opinion that the Democratic Party was far too moderate. The New Party sought to transform America into the sort of socialist democracy that is common in Europe. Obama's devastating disability-hiring quota. Political appointees at President Obama's Labor Department are getting ready to issue an edict compelling government contractors to adapt a 7 percent hiring quota for disabled job applicants. This radical personnel change approved by the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) is pushing a radical personnel policy that could ravage the productivity of more than 170,000 companies with government contracts, including most of America's largest corporations. Obama Administration Over-Regulating Farms Out of Business. The Obama administration is no friend of farmers, and the recent stunt involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sending spy planes over the state of Nebraska to keep an eye on where cows drop their patties is the latest example of overreach by an administration that is bent on controlling every aspect of our lives, but farming in particular. Export Natural Gas to Create Jobs. Forty-five million Americans are now subsisting on food stamps. But when the president has the chance to put 750,000 of them to work almost immediately by signing a single piece of paper, he puts his own self-interest first. That was the message of Obama's veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have created an estimated 200,000 jobs. It is the message of Obama's ban on Gulf drilling, and his opposition to exploration of the continental shelf and of arctic Alaska. It is the message of his shutdown of mountaintop mining in Appalachia, and of his blocking of the giant Resolution Copper mine near Superior, Arizona. Obama's Wages An Unending War On American Capitalism. The president has made Mitt Romney's Bain Capital a target of his re-election campaign. That's one way to divert attention from poor performance. It's also a way to undermine capitalism. The Election Over Capitalism. This election has come down to whether you support capitalism, or socialism. For the first time in my lifetime, capitalism is the enemy as far as the President of the United States is concerned, and to win his reelection, he is launching attack after attack against capitalism, and the capitalists that dare to make a profit. Whispering the Truth in Obama's America. The other day, I called a friend and interrupted her mid-cry. She'd just returned from putting her only son on a plane to China, where he was moving after giving up on getting a job here. The next day in the supermarket, I bumped into another friend, looking downcast. She told me her only son was planning his move to Hong Kong, after a fruitless year-long search for a job in the financial sector. "Obama's destroying the economy," she told me; then she looked nervously around at our hyper-Blue State neighbors. "I feel like I have to whisper, or they're going to come and arrest me." Progressives Without Progress. On the economy, it is hard to think of policies that have done more harm to the future of the United States than those that have come out of left field. Every day more and more debt is put on the shoulders of future Americans at a record pace. Of course, Democrats argue that this is all done in order to save the economy and get us out of the economic crisis. If government spending was the clear solution there wouldn't be any economic problems in Europe. Why Wright Matters: Obama's on a Mission from God. [Scroll down] What motivates Obama is so simple to explain, if only a free media would bother to expose it. Cockamamie, but simple. Obama believes he is on a mission from God to upend our oppressive free-market system and replace it with mystic utopian "fairness" as yet to be determined by enlightened ruling-class elites like him. Under Obama: 30 Worst Months of Employment in the Past 25 Years. Among those who are living in America and are free to pursue employment, what percentage are employed? (The bureau excludes those who are under 16 years old, are active-duty military, or are — in the bureau's own words — "inmates of institutions (for example, penal and mental facilities, homes for the aged)," from its tallies.) Over the past quarter of a century (a total of 300 months), dating back to May 1987 and the Reagan administration, here are the 30 worst months (that is, the bottom 10 percent) for the employment-population ratio, along with the president who happened to be in office at that particular time. Actually, the Obama spending binge really did happen. Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946. Obama Is a Spendthrift — And Here's the Proof. You wouldn't think that, after adding $5 trillion to the U.S.' debt, President Obama would seriously claim he's a fiscal hawk. But thanks to a misleading article on CBS' MarketWatch site, that's just what he's doing. The stunning chart that shows the Obama spending binge really happened. Nutting's methodology assumes spending in the first year of a presidential term should be credited to the previous president. OK, fine. But he attributed a $410 billion spending bill in March of 2009 to George W. Bush even though it was signed by Barack Obama. Nutting also didn't use inflation adjusted numbers. Obama's big deficit lie. On Wednesday [5/23/2012] at a Denver fundraiser, Mr. Obama said he was "running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible." He claimed that "after inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law" and that since he has been president, "federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that." It doesn't take much thought to see that this is the most absurd claim in political memory. [...] The "savings" Mr. Obama signed into law were all based on rosy economic projections, none of which has come true. Marketwatch's Rex Nuttting On Obama Spending. It's been going around Facebook and the Twitters. It's been rated "mostly true" by Politifact. It is the MarketWatch piece on how Obama hasn't really increased spending all that much. And I'm [very] tired of picking it apart 140 characters at a time, so I put together this sarcastic infographic showing exactly how sloppy this piece really is. The Obama Administration's War on Poor Blacks. The EEOC ruled [in April 2012] that employers risk violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act by considering the job applicant's past arrest or criminal conviction record, since blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites or Asians to have run afoul of the law. [...] One prudent response is to hire fewer employees, especially entry-level ones. Chains like Walmart are now able to restock their stores with minimal help, and thanks to repeated scanning, little gets "lost," while the janitorial staff consists of a few employees and an expensive floor-cleaning machine. You can now rent movies at vending machines. Grocery-baggers are now nearly extinct. Airlines have reduced thievery by encouraging travelers to carry on their own luggage. The phrase "jobless recovery" reflects this approach. Obama Stalls U.S. Energy Independence, Enemies Smile. Do America's enemies wish us well? It's an important question because they've made a big push to halt U.S. energy production. So why does the Obama administration's policies support their aims? The global-warming fight is a thinly disguised anti-capitalist movement. Obama Wants Power, Not Jobs. Natural gas is a feedstock for the production of fertilizer, plastics, and many chemical products. Fortunately, America possesses vast reserves of recoverable natural gas. The low price of this gas is one factor spurring companies like Dow Chemical to expand production in the United States rather than send jobs overseas. [...] It all sounds like an economic miracle, and it is. So why is Obama trying to kill it? Anti-Capitalist Obama Administration Targets Debt Collectors. Socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven suggested in 1965 that "collapsing current financing arrangements" could unleash "powerful forces" generating "major economic reforms at the national level." Could Obama and his fellow redistributionists be targeting private debt collectors? These companies recover billions in lost revenue for large corporations, thereby increasing their profit margins. To the anti-capitalist, excess wealth is the root of all evil; any surplus must be taxed, seized, fined, or litigated. Sky-high Electric Bills Courtesy of Obama EPA's War on Coal. If Congress doesn't act to rein in the EPA's all-out war on coal, we will all be paying much higher electrical rates — and higher prices for just about everything else, since virtually everything we eat, drink, wear, and use requires energy for production and transportation. Thousands of coal-mining jobs are on the chopping block, of course, but hundreds of thousands of other jobs spread across all sectors of our economy are on the same chopping block. For businesses that are struggling to remain viable in this ongoing recession, energy costs are critical and even a slight uptick in rates can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Barack H. Obama is using the Cloward-Piven strategy to bring down this country. Mining permit backlog leaves U.S. dependent on China for widely used rare minerals. Strategic minerals that are essential components in green and high technology such as hybrid cars, iPods and solar panels are readily available in the U.S. but efforts to mine the elements are being stalled by bureaucrats for years, industry officials say. Obama Energy Policies Have Cost Economy $358 Billion. President Obama likes to say that oil production is up and that the rise in gasoline prices is not his fault, but the facts challenge his words. Energy production is up, but only due to policies and practices set in motion ten years ago by the George W. Bush administration, and production is up only on private fields. Exploration and production on public lands has declined under Obama, and the facts are simply getting in the way of his rhetoric. Obamanomics: Legacy of failure. President Obama has spent his term in the White House trying to tax, spend and regulate the nation into prosperity. Obamanomics, Keynesian economics on steroids, has been an abysmal failure. 10 dubious records set
under Obama's reign of terror. What exactly is historic about Obama's reign of terror? How about these 10 items: Obama's Delays Of Keystone Pipeline Have Cost North Dakotans $573 Million Since January. Rep. Duane DeKrey requested that Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Industrial Commission's Division of Mineral Resources[,] calculate the fiscal impact to North Dakotans of President Obama's decision to sandbag the building of the Keystone XL pipeline. Will Obama Be Re-elected By Turning the U.S. Into Detroit Writ Large? Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free class warfare. Some people may be inspired by President Obama's talk about making "the rich" pay their undefined "fair share" of taxes, or taking away corporations' "tax breaks." But talk is not always cheap. It can be very costly to those working people who are looking for jobs that the Obama administration's anti-business policies are driving overseas. Obama's war on business continues to rage on. I hate everything about Walmart, particularly their method of underpricing local stores to drive them out of business — or so it is frequently alleged. After getting all this off my chest, I am now free to say that they are getting a raw deal from the US Justice Department. The Justice Department is accusing Walmart of paying bribes to Mexican officials in order to get shortcuts to obtain the permits and licenses required by Mexican authorities. Such bribes are illegal under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signed into law in 1977 by — who else? — President Jimmy Carter. Vigilante President, Liberal Fascist. I have come to the terrible realization, that we have a vigilante president in the White House, surrounded and supported by a cast of vigilantes. Barack Obama openly decries the system once it stops working his way, and insists he will find ways to work around it for that very reason. [...] He is using laws for purposes never intended for them, in order to push through an agenda which the elected representatives rejected (the FCC's activism and EPA's "global warming" agenda, for example); he subverts the rule of law to the benefit of cronies, from Solyndra to Chrysler; he ignores the Constitution and precedent; and he decides not to enforce laws he is sworn to uphold (New Black Panther case, DOMA). The List Could Be Longer. Fifty ways the Obama Administration has hurt the economy and job creation. "If I Wanted America to Fail": Internet Video Sensation. The video has become an Internet phenomena [sic] with over one million views in just five days, and there have been numerous requests for its publication as a guest column. Obama Solves Illegal Immigration by Destroying the Economy. The good news is President Barack Obama has solved the illegal immigration problem. According to the Washington Times, a study suggests the outflow of Mexican illegals has exceeded the inflow for the first time since the Great Depression. The bad news is the reason for this outcome is that under Obama there are not enough jobs, even those that native-born Americans will not do. Mexican illegal immigrants are increasingly braving their own country's drug violence in lieu of braving the bad economy in the U.S. It's Romney versus Carter. Mr. Obama took over in the throes of a reeling economy. He made it worse. His stimulus plan was taken hostage by Democrats in Congress, who loaded it up with pork and precious few sources of actual economic stimulus. Then, $787 billion later, our deficit reached record heights while our economy listed. Sure, the Obama administration says we are in recovery, but it's the kind of recovery no one can believe in. Five Devastating Numbers That Show Obama's Incompetence. The average unemployment rate during George Bush's time in office was roughly 5.3% as compared to 8.2% today, which is part of the longest streak of over 8% unemployment since the Great Depression. [...] There are 5 million Americans who not only lost their jobs, but who became so discouraged trying to find a job that they just gave up. Obama wants 469 million to fight overseas global warming. The science remains divided, but the Obama administration has gone all-in with endorsing man-made global warming, even funding efforts to help quell the potential for climate changing catastrophes — including terrorism — in Africa and South America. The White House is seeking $469 million in tax dollars to dump into green programs on those continents, initiatives ranging from helping farmers preserve pastureland to helping women who can't afford to move from hot and dry areas made worse by global warming. What's U.S. Citizenship Worth? [During President Obama's] tenure, the number of Americans renouncing citizenship has taken a sharp upward turn, from an average of 482 per year under George W. Bush to 742 in 2009, to 1,534 in 2010 and to 1,788 in 2011. At the least, his calls for hiking taxes on the wealthy can't be doing anything to discourage this trend. Where Are the Rolling Heads from NOAA? [Scroll down] A special master appointed by the IG found that [Larry] Yacobian had been treated unfairly. The government returned $400,000 to Mr. Yacobian, and the Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, apologized personally. But nobody has ever been punished. Why? Because the NOAA outrages are based on cronyism and fully condoned by our current brand of Big Government. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the person who decides on reward or punishment at NOAA, is an environmental superstar and Obama's favorite eco-zealot. Dr. Lubchenco, with the cognizance and support of the president, has filled the upper management of NOAA with like-minded eco-zealots. They are knowingly and purposefully shrinking the fishing fleet, driving hardworking Americans out of business and out of work to consolidate the industry. Obama's Springtime of Discontent. [Scroll down] There is no possible way to stop fraud and abuse with this unfathomable amount of spending combined with a convoluted, unanswerable, and bloated bureaucracy. So what is the president's solution? Propose a budget that accelerates spending to $5.8 trillion within ten years and seizes more control over the economy through regulations, mandates, and a further expansion of the bureaucracy. The result: the national debt will be $26 trillion by 2022, as compared to $10.6 trillion when Obama took office in January of 2009, and waste, fraud, and abuse will be more rampant than ever. How Obama and Friends Are Stifling Our Economy: [Scroll down] The principal answer is Dodd-Frank. The recession left very few players on the field, and, while there used to be multiple sources of financing, the nation's ten largest banks now control between 75% and 80% of the market. Dodd-Frank may not officially be in effect, but [Steve] Gold explained how each of these banks is acting as if the law is in full force. The $5 Trillion Man: Debt Has Increased Under Obama by $5,027,761,476,484.56. In the 39 months since Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States, the federal government's debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56. Although he has served less than a term, Obama is now the first American president to see the federal government's debt increase by more than $5 trillion during his time in office. During the full eight years that George W. Bush served as president, the federal government's debt increased by $4,899,100,310,608.44. "A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." Mr. President, It's All of the Above. The Obama campaign problems go beyond the tone-deaf community-organizer politics on the stupid Buffett Rule, the Rosen flap, and the naughty boys at the Secret Service. It's all of the above — and then some. It's the stupid stimulus, which is turning into a real bust now that all those female schoolteachers are losing their jobs. It's the corrupt green energy swamp, where the latest scandal has green corporate officers loaning themselves the company green. It's the war on Big Oil, just as we are entering a new era of fossil-fuel exploration. It's the death sentence on Big Coal just as coal is getting priced out of the market by fracking natural gas. It's the utter stupidity of ObamaCare when everyone knows it's going to raise health care costs. The 'Obama Factor' and Unemployment Statistics. The state-controlled Democrat Media Complex (DMC) loves to tout tiny improvements in the unemployment rate as evidence that the "President's plans are working". I have to agree — those plans are working just fine — if what the President wants to do is reduce the number of makers, and boost the number of takers. On that score, Obama has made undeniable progress from Day One of his administration. An Anti-Energy Energy Policy. Obama's energy policy — which is unique in the sense that it is hostile to the actual production of energy — is fundamentally harming the US economy, at the cost of trillions in GDP and ten million jobs. How (and Why) Obama has Impeded Recovery. Like Roosevelt, Obama has impeded a rebound in the growth of the economy and he has done it by applying all the wrong Socialist "solutions" that extended the Great Depression from 1929 to 1941. For Obama, this has truly been a crisis that would not be allowed to go to waste. What he has done has been to impose Obamacare in the face of massive rejection, overseen the loss of two million jobs, and increased the national debt to levels that put the U.S. on a crash course to financial collapse. It would be naïve to think he did not know what he was doing. Five Ways that Barack Obama has Decimated the American Economy. The government has been going into debt for years, but Obama has ramped this up to levels never before seen in human history. At a time when even Barack Obama admitted we needed to cut back on spending, he racked up bigger deficits in just 3 years and 2 months than George Bush did in two terms. Now America has lost its AAA rating, Obama is still adamantly opposed to making any spending cuts, and for the first time, it seems entirely possible that America will end up defaulting on its debt within a decade or two. 'O' Canada! President Obama must be planning to skip this year's presidential election and run for prime minister of Canada instead. Why else, after all, would he be working so hard to help Canada open new markets for its oil outside the US and attract higher prices — even as motorists here are increasingly socked every time they fill up their tanks? U.S. Announces New Cutbacks on Shale Oil Leases. The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced new cutbacks in the amount of oil rich federal lands on which the government will allow energy production. The Interior Department is reducing available lands for oil shale production in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming by more than 75 percent. Barack Obama and the End of the Progressive Era. [Scroll down] During this two-year period, ObamaCare was passed using unprecedented legislative trickery and political bribery. An extraordinary number of "czars" were appointed to enact policy in the dark of night and avoid oversight by Congress. A litany of grants and loans were given to political cronies ostensibly to develop green energy companies — many of whom have now declared bankruptcy. Additionally, the regulatory agencies, such as the EPA, have issued a tidal wave of regulations geared to strangle the free market and centralize economic control in Washington. Three failed stimulus packages were passed, none of which came remotely close to creating the jobs promised. Since 2008, over $5 trillion in national debt has been accumulated with no end in sight, and financial insolvency a real possibility in the not too distant future. Obama's Sign of Madness. You might think that a man who is on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era and is presiding over the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression — not to mention the first credit rating downgrade in American history, the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression, chronic unemployment that is worse than the Great Depression, a housing crisis that is worse than the Great Depression, a standard of living for Americans that has fallen further and more steeply than at any time since the government began recording it five decades ago, and a record increase in the number of people who are in poverty — would be a little more careful when it came to lecturing the rest of us when it comes to what works in economics. We're No. 1: In highest corporate taxes. Come Sunday [4/1/2012], America finally has something to crow about in its economic war with China and Japan: It will have the highest jobs-killing corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. No, it's not an April Fool's joke. When Japan officially slashes its rate to 36.8 percent Sunday, America's will be tops at 39.2 percent. Obama's lotto ticket. Most people consider the hourly rates some plumbers charge to be excessive, sometimes reaching up to $100 per hour. The best-paid government employee in California, a prison doctor, took home the equivalent of $370 per hour in pay. Trial lawyers at the nation's most prestigious firms can command an impressive $1,200 per hour. They have nothing on Mr. Obama, who leaves taxpayers with $177,297,247 in new debt for each and every hour he bears the title of president. Obama Expands War on Energy to Coal. Enviro-Whack jobs are celebrating the demise of America's most abundant energy resource, coal. Because coal has just been given the death sentence by Obama and the EPA just as Obama planned. [...] The EPA has issued new proposed rules on carbon emissions that will help Obama keep one campaign promise: Builders of new coal fired power plants won't be prevented from building coal-fired power plants, they'll just go bankrupt if they try. War on coal escalates. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama said that as president, he would pursue a "cap-and-trade" program to make electricity rates "necessarily skyrocket" and "bankrupt" builders of new coal power plants. He has never recanted those words. Yet America runs on coal. We have the world's largest coal reserves — we're the Saudi Arabia of coal. Coal fuels nearly 40 percent of U.S. electric power generation. New coal plants typically have lower overall costs per megawatt hour than new wind, solar and nuclear power. And all those shiny new electric cars the president is so fond of run primarily on electricity from coal. Obama Moves in to Kill Coal Industry With Onerous New EPA Regs. Barack Obama continues his war on cheap American energy. In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: "Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers." He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. Obama kills coal — as promised. Carbon capture and storage technology allows carbon-dioxide emissions to be stored in the ground instead of being released into the atmosphere. But the technology is, for many coal-energy producers, prohibitively pricey. Even assuming new coal plants are actually built under this regulatory regime, to whom do you think those new expenses will be passed on to? That's right — energy consumers. Rich people will be able to pay those extra costs, though they may gripe about it. But middle-class households will see a rise in their energy bills that will put them in even greater financial distress than they already are under in this abysmal "recovery." Why the EPA's new regulation will increase electricity prices significantly. If you can't get Congress to pass a "cap and tax" law, then simply go it alone and direct executive agencies to implement regulation which will cap CO2 by making it too expensive to operate if the plant produces CO2 above the arbitrary limit you set. ... And that's precisely what Obama's done here. Result? Well it gives lie to the "all-of-the-above energy plan" that Obama has been pushing in stump speeches around the country. Obama's Real Oil Agenda. During a speech in Miami, President Obama planted himself firmly in the use less oil camp. Amidst laughter, he said efficiency was one of the "easiest ways to reduce our dependence on oil." Missing from the phrase was the word "foreign." Was it simply just a slip of the tongue, or something more revealing? Well, just a month earlier when President Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, he claimed the rejection was part of his commitment to policies that reduce our "dependence on oil." President Obama does not just want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, as he frequently states, but all oil. Senators Call Obama On His Energy Lies. The Obama administration's energy policies have been a disaster for America. Obama appointed a Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, who shared Obama's desire that fossil fuel prices increase, so that it would be more expensive for you to drive your car, heat your home, buy groceries, power your laptop, and so on. Obama wanted higher prices in order to reduce carbon emissions and to enrich the Democratic Party fat cats who dominate the "green" energy industry. The administration has carried out its policy of higher fossil fuel costs by reducing exploration for oil on federal lands, imposing draconian standards on coal-fired power plants, banning normal light bulbs, and countless other measures large and small. Obama is most anti-business president I've ever seen. With rhetoric not befitting a president he has attacked oil companies, banks, airplane users, Wall Street and anyone who makes money. Yet, he seems to forget that if you are making money you are in the best position to create jobs. When the president of the United States is using the bully pulpit to excoriate business at every turn and push the 99 and one percent rhetoric, he is leading by dividing. CEOs are understandably reluctant to invest and hire when they believe the nation's CEO is out to get them. National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush. The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency. The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office. Unleashing the government parasite. President Obama wants to dispense with prohibitions on government spending taxpayers' money to lobby for bigger government. Encouraging Signs in Maryland. The left wants you to despair. It is part of their game plan and a partial explanation for why President Obama has been throwing so many awful, intolerable new offensives our way. From demanding that Catholics pay for abortion services to offering our most critical military secrets to our enemies, his goal is not merely to destroy this country, but to disable our resistance with an overwhelming string of demoralizing offensives. Real inflation: 7.2 percent and rising. The killer question of politics, asked by Ronald Reagan when he ran against Jimmy Carter, was "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Everything is worse today than it was four years ago. It's increasingly difficult for Barack Obama to hide the damage from people who are being told to stock up on toothpaste, and eat beans instead of meat to offset rising gas prices. Cut, Cap, and Balance Returns. It seems like only yesterday that the "debt ceiling" — which is really more like a fiscal alarm clock with a snooze bar — was raised to $16 trillion. The President was counting on getting through the 2012 election without having another debt ceiling battle, but alas, his free-spending ways have caught up with him. Obama Requests $770 Million to Fight Global Warming Overseas. The Obama administration has requested $770 million in federal funds to combat the effects of global warming in developing countries, a new congressional report details, continuing its policy of using foreign aid to combat the effects of global warming in the developing world. The Editor says... The Worst Economic Recovery Since the Great Depression. The record of President Obama's first three years in office is in, and nothing that happens now can go back and change that. What that record shows is that President Obama, with his throwback, old-fashioned, 1970s Keynesian economics, has put America through the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression. The American people are much poorer now because of that, and will remain poorer, falling farther and farther behind, until we change course and restore traditional American prosperity. Top 10 Obama energy blunders. Of course energy prices are exploding. That's what the President wanted all along. Remember his famous utterance, saying that under his policies, "electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket." Also telling was his selection of Steven Chu as energy secretary. Chu once said that it was important for U.S. gas prices to mirror Europe's sky-high petrol costs. It looks like he may be getting his wish. Enviros Whack 100 Coal-Fired Plants. While we are all looking at gas prices, there is another dramatic energy price increase going on that is totally optional; one that is within the President's power to completely reverse. Coal-fueled electricity generation is the lowest cost. Yet, due to cost-increasing regulations, coal-fueled power plants are being shut down at an alarming rate — killing jobs, raising rates, and putting the reliability of the electrical grid at risk. Removing the Keystone (Pipeline). The Keystone XL pipeline's demise tosses another shovel full of dirt onto the lid of this country's coffin. Keystone's termination was not just a kickback to the urban dwelling, loony-left environmental voters, though that was a nice bonus. The demise was also not just a payoff to Warren Buffet's rail companies that currently ferry unrefined North Dakota oil, though that too was an added benefit. No, killing Keystone XL forwards two radical anti-American agendas deeply coveted by the hard-leftists occupying the White House. How Obama Is Choking Off U.S. Oil Production. The news wires are reporting that President Obama actively lobbied Senate Democrats to defeat the Keystone pipeline yesterday. The effect of blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline is to defer 700,000 barrels of oil per day. And as I reported at The Weekly Standard recently, the president's policy of choking off oil production under federal leases will prevent another 1 million barrels of oil per day this year, and even more next year. Obama will soon be personally responsible for preventing some 2 million barrels per day of possible North American crude oil production from reaching the American economy. Obama's Driving Americans out of Cars. Do rising gas prices distress the leading intellects in the Obama administration? There is good reason to believe the opposite. John Holdren is Obama's White House science and technology adviser. In 1973, he joined with population control advocates Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich in writing an environmentalist manifesto titled "Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions." It called for government action to find "alternative activities" for the auto industry. Legitimizing Anarchy. Talking heads, bloggers and pundits who repeat the cop-out falsehood that "Obama is in over his head" are leading the masses astray and lulling them back to sleep. ... Barack Hussein Obama is no accident. He's the slick and well-trained lead Agent of Change, handpicked by the far left to force Free World leader America into a socialist state. Obama's failed energy policies. No one's talking about it yet, but Obama also appears to be fulfilling his campaign promise to drive up home power bills by aggressively regulating America's industries that produce electricity. It will be difficult for Obama to escape his positions, which are heavily rooted in ideology. In today's speech in New Hampshire, he made clear that he knows he has a problem and he doesn't know what to do. Networks Skip Obama Administration Admission: 'Overall Goal' Not to Get Price of Gas Down. The three networks have, thus far, skipped Tuesday's revelation by Energy Secretary Steven Chu that the "overall goal" of the Obama administration isn't to get gas prices down. This is despite the fact that ABC, NBC and CBS have previously focused on the rising gasoline prices in general. Politico reported, Tuesday [2/28/2012], "The Energy Department isn't working to lower gasoline prices directly, Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday after a Republican lawmaker scolded him for his now-infamous 2008 comment that gas prices in the U.S. should be as high as in Europe." Like the Price of Gas? Just Wait! Obama's controversial EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, has pushed through the agency a passel of new regulations that will raise the cost of electricity dramatically over the next three years. ... Obama himself forewarned us when he was running for office. As he said in January of 2008, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Gov. Daniels: Obama administration 'wanted higher gas prices'. "Let's give the president credit for one domestic policy that works. He wanted higher gas prices and he got them," said [Indiana Gov. Mitch] Daniels on Fox News Sunday [2/26/2012]. "Secretary Chu said $8 are about what they pay in Europe. It would be great. Secretary Salazar said $10 and it still wouldn't be for drilling in the places where we know there's an awful lot of domestic production. And so, they have gotten the doubling of gas prices and perhaps worse, it's a conscious policy of this administration. Maybe the one thing they set out to do and actually accomplished," he said. SEC joins running for worst rogue agency. The alphabet-soup federal bureaucracies seem to be engaged in a contest to see who can do the most to steamroll the legitimate legislative process and compromise freedom and economic growth. To date it has been a neck-and-neck race between the EPA, which is pursuing a head-spinningly aggressive anti-energy and anti-development agenda, and the NLRB, which is rewriting federal labor laws to allow union bosses to force workers into unions and infamously sued Boeing for locating in a right-to-work state. Of course, the FDA, HHS, IRS, FCC and the rest also have been in the act. Obama's
Marxist Faith Is Legitimate Campaign Issue.
BLT [Black Liberation Theology], in fact, is the Rosetta stone for understanding Obama and his agenda,
decoding his rhetoric, and divining where he plans to take this country. Here is a primer: The Editor says... The High Priests of Eco-Destruction. It's not just big-ticket scandals like the stimulus-subsidized Solyndra bankruptcy or the Keystone pipeline debacle bedeviling America. In every corner of the Obama administration, the radical green machinery is hard at work — destroying jobs, shredding truth and sacrificing our economic well-being at the altar of environmentalism. Showdown at the EPA corral. Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multibillion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public-health benefits, like the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury Air Toxics Standard (MATS). The EPA will soon propose its greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants — rules that will attempt to make it financially impossible to construct new coal-fired power plants in the United States. Top 10 reasons to elect anybody but Obama. [#3] The Republican candidates are all, to varying degrees, free-market capitalists. Not so with the current White House occupant, who favors picking winners and losers out of "fairness" or "to help the environment." So we sink billions into Solyndra and other bankrupt companies in the Utopian hope that creating green jobs will save the planet. As Chevy Volt sales indicate, consumer engineering is best to be left to the marketplace. World Economic Forum ranks U.S. financial
stability 38th, currency stability 50th globally. Obama, the Great. The great man chooses not to help the poor earn more, but to make the non-poor more poor. His energy policy seeks not to make green energy cheaper, but to make all other energy more expensive. Jobs are not created; the workforce is shrunk. He talks peace, leads from behind, kills from afar, and makes war more likely. Despite his handily destroying our present, and making a hefty down payment on destroying our future, the legacy media is still all-in on Barack Obama. The gasoline trap. Over the long term, high gas prices fuel the "transformation" of the populace, which has always been one of Obama's most important stated goals. For one thing, it's easier to hide a few more cents of tax in $4 gas than $2 gas. More insidiously, expensive gas begins changing public expectations about the ability to travel, and the ability of average people to afford automobiles. From the
Folks Who Brought You Cloward-Piven. Yesterday's [2/16/2012] infamous run-in between Geithner and
Ryan brought dueling potential quotes of the year. ... Gradually, Then Suddenly. The Republican leaders note that for four straight years, the federal government's budget deficit has "eclipsed $1 trillion," with the national debt now exceeding the size of the U.S. economy. President Obama's budget basically "concedes" that, in the years ahead, the nation's "fiscal position gradually deteriorates." This, write Ryan and Sessions, "is reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's explanation of how one goes bankrupt: 'Gradually, then suddenly.'" US Government Is Financing Our Foreign Competition. Here's a a question: If tax dollars were being used to make prices cheaper for companies overseas while simultaneously forbidding American companies from enjoying the same luxury — would that be fair? $2 gallon gasoline and energy independence. When President Obama took office in January 2009, the average price nationwide was $1.89 a gallon. Three years into the Obama presidency, the average is $3.47 a gallon. Today, prices like those we enjoyed three years ago seem like a fantasy — and under the president's current policies, they are. An economy drowning in Obama's 'fairness'. "If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes," asserted President Obama in his State of the Union speech. That would effectively double the tax rate on income from capital gains from the current 15 percent rate, producing a triple negative impact on U.S. economic growth and job creation by reducing the incentive for domestic investment, increasing the incentive to move more jobs and capital overseas and reducing the amount of capital available in the private sector by way of greater transfers of income to the government. The Editor says... An Economy Built to Crash. President Obama described his fiscal year 2013 budget — the most expensive in United States history — as "a blueprint for an economy that is built to last." But even his own Treasury Secretary does not agree with that assessment. Obama's war against success. President Obama is waging war against personal success and economic prosperity. Raising taxes on Americans is the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, a plan that respects no earthly or heavenly bounds. Obama Says He Deserves a Second Term; Let's Consider. When he crammed through Obamacare against the people's will, he adroitly claimed he was acting on our behalf. Every year he's been in office, his deficits have greatly exceeded $1 trillion, and he is on course to double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10. How many presidents could pull that off? Clean-energy hostages. After failing to crush the coal industry with the ill-fated Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, Mr. Obama has since loosed his regulatory agencies, especially the thuggish Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is on the verge of proposing its greenhouse gas emission rules for power plants — the "cap" part of cap-and-trade — despite ongoing litigation over their legality. One concern is that the rules as implemented will block the construction of new coal-fired power plants — the very same sort of power that safely provides about 45 percent of U.S. electricity. An example of how government can become an obstacle to economic recovery: It's hard to get a handle on how many businesses have been discouraged by such a permitting and regulation regime, but you have to assume they are plenty. It should not take two years for a government to say "okay" to a business. Nor should there be exorbitant fees associated with it. San Francisco Red Tape Nearly Strangles Small Businesses. The leftists in charge of the City by the Bay have made it next to impossible for anyone to start a small business in that town. Just ask Juliet Pries. In January Pries opened the Ice Cream Bar, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. But before she could start serving up hot fudge sundaes and banana splits, she was forced to spend two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars — supplied by family and friends — navigating the city's labyrinthine planning codes and otherwise satisfying the bureaucrats' whims. CBO: Obama's Policies to Increase National Debt 47 Percent to $21.7 Trillion by 2022. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the national debt under President Obama's policies will rise to $21.665 trillion by 2022, according to its updated budget outlook. The updated outlook, released Tuesday [1/31/2012], found that current Obama administration policies will result in a 50 percent increase in debt held by the public and a 40 percent increase in intra-governmental debt held in the trust funds of entitlement programs. $5 Trillion and Change. The political strategy behind Obamanomics was always simple: Call for "stimulus" to rescue the economy, run up the debt with the biggest spending blitz in 60 years, and then when the deficit explodes call for higher taxes. The Congressional Budget Office annual review released yesterday [1/31/2012] shows this is all on track. Our "Interesting" President. Americans need jobs, but Obama is just out to save his. This detachment is nothing new. We saw it in the State of the Union — when the president repeated old, broken promises but gave no mention to the millions of unemployed Americans he's ignored or the trillions of dollars in debt he's created. We saw it also with the Keystone energy pipeline. America had an opportunity for a source of affordable, secure energy, but the president blocked it. President Obama's Civilian Soldiers. To me, everything about President Obama makes sense. ... He is doing exactly what his liberal base wants him to do. He is doing Keynesian stimulus, taking care that most of it goes to Democrats. He is doing clean energy, regulating the environment, canceling pipelines, carrying water for unions, cutting defense. He has held off Republicans that want to cut and slash spending. He is a liberal dream. Let's Honor, Not Stretch, the Buckley Rule. As we march inexorably toward socialism by incremental steps, the need to elect political leaders to take steps to reverse it increases on a linear plane. But with President Obama, we're advancing not by incremental steps, but by giant leaps, hurtling toward statism with alarming alacrity. Every day that passes before we implement entitlement reform, for example, the geometric accumulation of vested benefits makes reform more imperative — and more difficult. ... Based on the cavalier manner with which Obama is lawlessly thwarting the Constitution and the people's will, it is hard to imagine what kind of tyrannical executive power grabs he'd try (and accomplish) if re-elected, even with an opposing Congress. Rejection of Keystone XL a Hammer Blow to Economy. Obama has blocked a project that would have given the United States a secure and safe pipeline that would have fed our economy with 700,000 barrels of oil every day — and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. And this from our most trusted and closest trading partner, Canada. That's nearly half of what the United States receives from the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, which is shaping up to be the next global flashpoint for military conflict. If that does happen, Obama will learn just how it feels to be "rushed" into a decision about energy policy. Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy. It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world's greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business. It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Obama loves oil! Not! Without his nose growing visibly, the President claimed the government was behind the technological advances that led to the current shale gas boom, and even suggested that he might take credit for the rise in domestic oil production. In fact, Mr. Obama's administration has hampered and castigated oil companies at every turn. In the light of the hysterical grandstanding over the BP Gulf spill (whose impact proved to be greatly exaggerated), it was ironic indeed to hear the President now declare a great opening up of offshore exploration. Natural gas sector set up by Obama to be sabotaged? President Obama spoke of the role natural gas must play in America's energy future during his State of the Union address last week, but industry insiders fear it's merely lip service designed to distract from what they consider the administration's behind-the-scenes plan to sabotage the sector. ... At the same time the president boasts of the nation's vast shale gas deposits, his EPA is poised to make extracting that fuel much more difficult. The agency will this year release a widely anticipated study on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the use of water, sand and chemical mixtures to crack underground rock and release huge quantities of gas. Obama's Social Justice Capitalism. Certainly the Obama administration will stoop to anything to get votes for the next election. The latest outrageous example is using the U.S. Export-Import bank (taxpayer-funded) to channel funds to attract business to the swing states of North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia. So, yes, from crony capitalism to vote-buying capitalism, the Obama administration will use any siphoning of taxpayer funds to pump capital where it sees political advantage. But to leave it at that — self-interest — is to miss the narcissistic sense of moral superiority. Obama's next bailout. The fraudulent practices of the mortgage servicers have injected an untold number of forged documents into the legal system, jeopardizing the clean titles to millions of homes around the country. The costs of cleaning up this legal mess will most likely be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, yet this settlement would let Wall Street settle up with the state AGs for just $25 billion. Worse yet, most of this money would come from the pockets of investors who now own the mortgages, not from the perpetrators of fraud, and the rest would come out of the pockets of bank shareholders rather than from the miscreants who perpetrated the fraud. Keystone XL and Obama's Subjugation Economics. What needs to be appreciated is that, concerning Keystone, Mr. Obama and the left aren't just blinkered ideologues with good intentions. Seriously, how can the president not know that stopping the Keystone XL pipeline will cost thousands of jobs along with many collateral economic benefits to the nation? Doesn't Keystone equal improved energy independence and doesn't that consideration cross Mr. Obama's radar? On both counts, yes. Mr. Obama isn't a useful idiot; he's a user of idiots. Obama chooses American decline. Which nation will be the world's leading superpower a few decades from now? I fervently hope it is the United States, and I have great faith in American ingenuity. But the Obama administration's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is a reminder of why our No. 1 position is in jeopardy. A pipeline gift to China. Disappoint our closest geographic ally (and biggest trading partner), maintain dependence on OPEC oil — and give America's biggest global rival a boost in its quest for precious oil resources? Not a bad day's work, Mr. President. Obama the Job-Killer. Republicans shouldn't let a single day go by without reminding voters of the Keystone pipeline, the most visible symbol of the Obama administration's hostility to economic growth and job creation. Who is the Real Barack Obama? According to our President's new view of history, capitalism is a theory that has "never worked." He argues that its appeal can't be justified by results, but its popularity is based on Americans' preference for an economic ideology that "fits well on a bumper sticker." He feels that capitalism speaks to the flaws in the American DNA, those deeply rooted creation myths that elevate the achievements of individuals and cast unwarranted skepticism on the benefits of government. He argues that this pre-disposition has been exploited by the rich to popularize policies that benefit themselves at the expense of the poor and middle class. But Obama's knowledge of history is limited to what is written on his teleprompter. Obama rejects the Keystone XL pipeline and blames Congress. Obama 'End of America-Ism": Sad Variant of Global Warming Alarmism. Obama's presidency has been very unfortunate for his embrace of nearly every fallacious economic argument under the sun. Obama believes we're made better off economically when the most productive around us have their wealth redistributed away from them, he believes a cheap dollar that erodes our savings/paychecks in concert with reducing company-creating investment is a positive, and perhaps scariest of all, he believes that productivity (think computers, factory automation) is the source of our nosebleed levels of unemployment. Obama is an embarrassment (as was his dollar-cheapening, bailout loving predecessor in the White House) to this great nation... Dems propose 'Reasonable Profits Board' to regulate oil company profits. Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits. The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit. Inside the latest debt limit fracas: Well, that didn't take long. We've run out of money again as a country and need to borrow another trillion or so. Remember that end-of-the-world scuffle last summer over the debt ceiling ...? Obama's War on U.S. Energy. If a foreign nation had launched an attack on America to destroy its coal-fired plants, to shut down its coal mines, and to thwart its ability to drill for oil and natural gas, we would be at war with it. Obama is at war with America. Between the waste of billions squandered on "Green" energy and the attacks on all aspects of the energy industries in America, the one reason to defeat Obama is your ability to turn on the lights, turn on your computer, and ensure that American business and industry has the energy necessary to exist and compete. Obama asks Congress for $1.2 trillion increase in nation's borrowing limit. President Obama formally notified Congress on Thursday [1/12/2012] of his intent to raise the nation's debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, two weeks after he had postponed the request to give lawmakers more time to consider the action. Congress will have had 15 days to say no before the nation's debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion. Expert: Obama 'spending us into poor house'. President Barack Obama is seeking another $1.2-trillion increase in the debt ceiling, and one expert on the subject isn't surprised. Brian Darling, senior fellow for government studies at The Heritage Foundation, says the request for a debt ceiling increase is something his organization has expected from the White House for quite some time. Our Trojan Horse president. I was thinking about writing a novel about what might happen if a man who hates America and wants to bring it down is somehow elected president. What would he do? ... First, the Trojan Horse president would initiate unprecedented spending, driving the debt up by more than $4 trillion just in the first three years. Much of the money would go into the pockets of political supporters and people who donate heavily to his campaigns. He would ram through an unreadable law allowing the federal government to seize the health care system, which would transform citizens into beholden subjects. Obama's Poverty Politics. Americans should have comprehended Obama's redistribution agenda back in 2008. As is so often true of Barack Obama, one hears only rare flashes of truth from him when his teleprompter is Missing in Action. He has slipped more than once. There was his "spread the wealth" comment to Joe the Plumber. Before that widely noted revelation, there was his 2008 declaration that he would hike capital gain taxes even if it failed to raise revenues because of "fairness." He was — and is — willing to trade losses in jobs and wages to advance his leveling ideology. Obama's Job-Killing Machine Rolls On. President Obama tells anyone who'll listen that from dawn until dusk he's focused on job creation. Apparently, no one in his administration listens, since day after day they keep making job-killing decisions. Running the USA into the Ground. Why are we holding our breath hoping that Congress will let us purchase Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulbs, one of the greatest inventions of the modern era? Little wonder that the polls demonstrate the record-setting low esteem in which Congress is held. It is running the nation into the ground. To the belated astonishment of everyone, the nation is led by the President whose greatest achievements have been to destroy jobs and plunge the nation into unimaginable debt. Obama is achieving his goal of higher energy costs. As CNBC reported earlier this week, the typical American family will spend the largest portion ever of its budget — 8.4 percent — on gasoline this year. Economists expect the average price of a gallon of gas to be $3.53, a 76-cent increase over 2010. Growing world demand for gas caused by economic expansion in China and India only partially explains this increase. Obama's environmental and energy policies are also a key reason why prices are constantly heading higher. Obamacare Abominations. President Obama says his health care "reform" will be good for business. Business has learned the truth. Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding. Obama's Regulatory Burden. In the next few days, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration's runaway rulemaking. More about the EPA. Incompetence and downgrade. [Scroll down] Thanks to Obama, chronic unemployment is now worse than it was during the Great Depression. Only one President since 1890 has a worse record on unemployment than Barack Obama — and that is because the first two and a half years of Herbert Hoover's term in office was during the Great Depression. President Obama promised "fundamental transformation," and he has certainly delivered on that score. This was written in January, 2009: The Corporate Psychopaths Among Us. A return to a culture of corporate stability and long term employment would help. We certainly cannot continue in the direction the Democratic Party is taking us without becoming as broke as Greece, or the Soviet Union. All tools, including the ballot box, should be used to correct the financial disaster that threatens. Obama's Regulatory Burden. In the next few days, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration's runaway rulemaking. The destroyer of the American Nation. From the beginning of his Administration, Obama has had one primary goal: the willful and deliberate destruction of the American nation as it was founded. Sounds incredible? When one considers his words and actions, it is the only conclusion one can reach. Obama is the Jobs Grinch. Labor Department numbers came out recently showing soft job-creation for the month of November. This is nothing new, of course. Job-creation has been weaker than expected ever since Obama began his attack on capitalism. Obama's Keystone cop-out. President Obama has done everything in his power to keep oil from flowing through the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada says this $13 billion project would put 20,000 to work immediately, but the Obama administration wants none of it. Obama's Tax Policies Have A Depression-Era Look. Pushing his agenda for higher taxes on "the rich," President Obama kicked off his Dec. 6 speech in Kansas by saying his Kansas grandparents "shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression." In fact, the 1929 stock market crash turned into the long-running Great Depression because the counterproductive soak-the-rich policies of the federal government hadn't "triumphed" in reversing the downturn. A Country Music Star's Take on Obama's Budget Plan. My song, "The Obama Budget Plan" (which you can see here on YouTube), explains that President Obama's budget plan is to spend as much of our money as he wants, on anything he wants and pay for it by just printing more money. The fact is, President Obama doesn't really seem to have a plan at all. His administration has been working without a budget for almost three years now. Not only that but the president seems to view having to consult with Congress as an inconvenience and he tries to go around them at every turn. Obama Blocks The Biggest Shovel-Ready Project Ever. The president says that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than an oil pipeline from Canada. There are at least 20,000 members of the 99% who would disagree. Americans Have Endured Enough. The Republican argument, it seems to me, goes something like this: virtually every economic indicator is worse since Obama took office. That's true whether we're talking about unemployment, the deficit, the debt, America's credit rating, consumer confidence, the housing market, health care costs, poverty, food stamps, and more. We're setting records we haven't seen since the Great Depression, and in some instances records worse than the Great Depression. But if you don't feel like America has suffered enough — if you are thirsting for more stagnation, less growth, higher unemployment, and more misery — then Barack Obama is your man. Obama's Design for Defeat. Obama has assembled a re-election track record that only Hugo Chávez could envy. Casually presiding over the nation's deepest economic catastrophe since the 1930s. Twenty million hopelessly unemployed. Blithely deconstructing the nation's health care system, while bankrupting providers and consumers. Relentlessly enabling the assault on energy production and industrial competitiveness through a suffocating regulatory autocracy. Gleefully declaring war on private property, trumpeting his alliance with the OSW anarchists. Obama's Job-Killing Global-Warming Agenda Continues Under the Radar. With little attention and fanfare, the United Nations kicked off its latest global-warming conference — this time in Durban, South Africa. Their mission: to extend the Kyoto Protocol. But as Bloomberg reports, Japan, Russia and Canada will not renew their commitments, and, of course, the United States will never sign on without commitments from China and India. The Kyoto process is essentially dead — and even President Obama is acknowledging it, much to the chagrin of his left-wing environmental base. FATCA: A Ticking Time Bomb for the Economy. Buried in an ostensible jobs bill signed by President Obama last year is a little-noticed job-destroying government regulation that threatens to trigger a massive outflow of capital from the American economy. Fast Trains and Slow, Puny, Expensive Cars. Because the Obama EPA has declared carbon dioxide a 'pollutant,' and because cars emit CO2, [EPA administrator Lisa] Jackson is citing the Clean Air Act in her bid to commandeer Detroit." The Journal reports that even the EPA's own (no doubt low-ball) estimates show that the rule will cost $157 billion and raise the price of cars by $3,100 per vehicle. Bye Bye Biden? The declining economy has hit people on both ends of the economic spectrum, with the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million of income declining from from 400,000 back in 2007 to just 235,000 in 2009, and the number of people 16 older who have been unemployed over a year going from an average of 1.3 million in the last three recessions to 4.3 million in 2010. The Obama economy is the worst America has seen in four decades, with payroll employment today 5% lower than it was 41 months ago. Over the past three years, federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product has been higher than at any time since World War II, adding $4 trillion to our national debt. Obama's Disastrous Energy Record: The U.S. State Department recently delayed approval of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline until at least early 2013. This pipeline was to have run from Western Canada's Alberta province all the way down to the U.S. Gulf Coast. It would have provided for 500,000-700,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies. But the Obama administration cowered to some protests of extremist environmentalists in Nebraska and thus decided to punt the decision until after the 2012 elections. It's been estimated that the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline would have produced 20,000 jobs across the Midwest and South as well as 118,000 spin-off jobs. Obama's Job-Destroying Machine Grinds On. I can't figure out whether it is due to malice or incompetence; all I know is, if you wanted to hurt America's economy, you would do pretty much everything the Obama administration does. Energy policy is the absolute worst. ... In the unlikely event that Obama is re-elected, the only constraint on his economically destructive policies will be gone, and we can expect him to do everything possible to kill energy production and destroy job creation. Obama's Energy Plan: Chevy Volt. We hear much these days about all the jobs "saved or created" but hear little about jobs slashed or destroyed. In many ways, the Obama administration has become a job-wrecking machine. According to Forbes in the same Politico op-ed piece, the six-month gulf drilling moratorium alone cost 8,169 jobs and $487 million in wages, not to mention the sweeping effects on the trucking and agriculture industries. 'Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone'. A west Georgia business owner is stirring up controversy with signs he posted on his company's trucks, for all to see as the trucks roll up and down roads, highways and interstates: "New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone." "Can't afford it," explained the employer, Bill Looman, Tuesday evening. "I've got people that I want to hire now, but I just can't afford it. And I don't foresee that I'll be able to afford it unless some things change in D.C." If you cross Obama, expect a visit from the secret police. Georgia Businessman Refuses to Hire Until Obama Is Fired. A Georgia businessman has an ultimatum for America: Fire President Obama, or he will not hire any more workers. Bill Looman, owner of U.S. Cranes LLC, said he is fed up with the bad economy and D.C. politicians who do nothing to solve the problem. So until there is a change of leadership, his company trucks will bear the message: "New Company Policy: We Are Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone." "The message that I tried to put in there is that I cannot afford it," Looman told ABC News. "I just cannot afford to hire anybody right now." What Change Looks Like Under Obama.
Since the president raised the issue himself, why don't we sketch out what "change looks like" under the stewardship
of Obama. Some of the highlights: There Are No Longer Any Excuses For Obamanomics. Before this last recession, since the Great Depression recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously lasting 16 months. Yet here we are 47 months after the last recession started, and we still have no real recovery. Instead, unemployment has been stuck at 9% or above for the longest period since the Great Depression. Unemployment for blacks has remained over 15% for over 2 years, with Hispanic unemployment stuck well into double digits over that time as well. Teenage unemployment has persisted at nearly 25%, with black teenage unemployment still nearly 40%. 'Lazy' Isn't America's problem. President Obama was wrong to say at the Asia-Pacific economic summit that America has gotten "lazy" in the last few decades at attracting foreign investment. What he should have said, in light of his administration's handling of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is that America has become quite adept at blocking it. Powering Down: Federal regulation is killing energy development. American energy policy is increasingly defined in terms of what is prohibited, not what is promoted. Coal, nuclear, and natural "shale" gas all have been hampered by the current administration. Stop the spending. President Obama is burning a hole in Uncle Sam's pocket. Since he won the White House in 2009, the public debt has swelled by $4.3 trillion. Instead of trying to stem this flow of red ink, Mr. Obama is campaigning for more spending with a $467 billion stimulus bill. He doesn't get it. The Editor says... President blames America while running economy into the ground. President Obama is overseas on a nine-day Blame America First tour. He's ostensibly spending time on the other side of the Pacific to explore ways the United States can work better with Asian economies. Instead, he's using his time in the spotlight to criticize the nation he's supposed to be leading. Obama's New Job Plan: Kill 400,000 Jobs Immediately. The decision by the Obama administration to delay any action on the XL Keystone pipeline until after the election is a fitting development for an administration that has pursued a bankrupt energy policy, a bankrupt jobs policy and is quite literally bankrupting the country with politics thinly veiled as policy. Obama delays oil pipeline plan, discards 20,000 jobs. Roughly 20,000 oil industry construction jobs are being thrown under Obama's 2012 campaign bus, largely because the president needs to pump up his sagging support among the environmentalists. Sticking Our Head In Tar Sands. The administration plans to study rerouting the Keystone XL pipeline until after next year's election, delaying needed jobs and energy. By that time, Canada's oil will be on its way to China. Canada Looks to Asia after Oil Pipeline Delay. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is disappointed with the Obama administration's decision to delay construction of TransCanada Corp.'s $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The delay is designed not to ruffle environmentalists feathers before next year's election. Harper says Canada won't wait and will start selling more of its energy products to Asia. Purposeful inaction is a form of passive-aggressive
behavior.* The Editor says... The very same day... 1,000 Days Of Economic Destruction. So, how are we doing economically in the 1,000 days since Obama took office? Here's the Scorecard: The government has spent more than $9.6 trillion in 1,000 days, which is about 60% more than the revenues it took in. GNP (the Gross National Product has fallen 9%. Industrial production has plunged 30%. ... The National Debt sits at $15 trillion, up $4.2 trillion just since Obama took office. The national debt is now at 98.2% of GNP. And for the last three years we have spent $4.2 billion more than we take in — every day! Over 2.2 million jobs have been lost. 4.5 million people have been unemployed for more than one year; the jobless are now out of work an average of 40 weeks — twice as long as they were before Obama took office. The only real jobs gain had been in the government sector — 140,000 jobs that add nothing to the economy. 12 million more people are on food stamps, and 3 million more Americans live in poverty than when Obama took office. There've been 4 million bankruptcies and 2.4 million foreclosed homes. ... Seventeen of Obama's most senior economic advisers have quit. President Obama Promotes Plan to Raise College Tuitions. By limiting student obligations to repay, and by passing more of the repayment burden onto taxpayers, colleges and universities will be able to continue to raise tuitions at a rate that outpaces nearly every other cost center in the American economy. Does America Deserve Obama? Ronald Reagan used to say that liberals know only how to tax and spend. If there was ever a man who embodies that aphorism, it is Barack Obama. He has no clue as to how a free-market economy works or why it produces economic prosperity. Obama continues to insist that government should determine what energy technologies we're going to have. Thus the debacle of Solyndra. Five hundred million dollars went down the drain needlessly. Government can't pick winners because it doesn't know how to do so. If a centrally planned socialist system worked, it would have produced prosperity in China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. It didn't. Only a free-market system knows how to efficiently distribute resources. Obama's Economic Record: The Worst Since Hoover. It's reasonable to assume that Mr. Obama will face re-election with the highest unemployment rate of any post-war president. If the current rate of hiring continues, under Mr. Obama's stewardship the nation will have actually lost jobs, a stunning achievement in its own way. Indeed, Obama is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era. The unemployment rate will be significantly higher than when he took office. Chronic unemployment is worse than it was during the Great Depression. And during the Obama presidency the United States saw its bond rating downgraded for the first time in history. There's more. Professor Obama's Investing 101. Here's a great business model. Start your company with the idea that it's going to go bankrupt. Then, when it folds, inform your investors that the business was a success because it did exactly what you expected. That's more or less what Obama has done with every "investment" government has made over [the] past three years. ... Obama's socialism has produced nothing, in fact, except the prospect of permanent unemployment for 25 million Americans and declining incomes for the rest. This is what happens when we have a president who thinks that profit is a dirty word and capitalism is evil. Obamaland:
American Mules Must Eat Certified Weed-Free Hay. In Montana's Finley Basin there are known tungsten
deposits. An Australian company wanted to bring revenue and jobs to the state by developing the resource.
While the property was successfully drilled and recognized by Union Carbide in the seventies, it is now about
200 yards inside a roadless study area. The Forest Service was willing to offer a conditional drilling
permit. Among the conditions were these requirements: Monster Prediction From BofA: Another US Debt Downgrade Is Coming In Just A Few Weeks. In an analyst note, Bofa/ML Ethan S. Harris drops a bit of a bombshell prediction: ["]We expect a moderate slowdown in the beginning of next year, as two small policy shocks — another debt downgrade and fiscal tightening — hit the economy. The "not-so-super" Deficit Commission is very unlikely to come up with a credible deficit-reduction plan.["] Obama promised to bankrupt coal in 2008. Imagine if John McCain had whispered somewhere that he was willing to bankrupt a major industry? Would this declaration not immediately be front page news? Well, Barack Obama actually flat out told the San Francisco Chronicle (SF Gate) that he was willing to see the coal industry go bankrupt in a January 17, 2008 interview. The result? Nothing. This audio interview has been hidden from the public... until now. Obama Is Occupying America. The scope of Obama's undertaking has been breathtaking, as has been his level of deceit in promoting and implementing it. ... He loaded his omnibus spending bill with earmarks after promising he'd radically reduce them, took over auto companies, crammed through socialized medicine and pushed through a staggeringly problematic financial reform bill that further empowered the government to engage in the same types of tyranny that led to all this. Though he failed to pass his cap-and-trade measure, his Environmental Protection Agency has engaged in a systematic pattern of circumventing Congress to impose further smothering regulations on American businesses. Liberal Conceit And The Havoc It Has Wrought On Our Nation. Obama and the Democrats stand atop a growing, potentially permanent pile of economic and political rubble for which they must account to their own consciences. Risking the nation and messing up the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people for generations to come is a moral outrage. There is nothing smart or compassionate about running up government debt to record levels at record speed and having nothing to show for it except an impaired credit rating, chronic 9% unemployment, the home ownership rate at its lowest point since 1965 and the smallest portion of the population actually working at jobs since 1983. OSHA is another Obama agency gone rogue. [Scroll down] OSHA has issued this directive under the assumption that a vague clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act gives OSHA the power to cite employers for something as specific and unpredictable as workplace violence. Known as the "General Duty Clause," this provision requires employers to keep their workplaces "free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm" to employees. Congress intended for this clause to be used only as a temporary measure, until OSHA could draft rules regarding specific hazards that had the agency had not yet addressed. It was not intended to be used as a means for OSHA to issue citations for anything under the sun. Obama versus Alinsky. Rep. Allen West said the other day that he believes Barack Obama is intentionally destroying our economy. He said, "It's intentional because that's who this President is. The President is a Marxist who believes in the separation of classes." Let's talk about this idea that Obama may actually be engaged in a conscious attempt to damage the American economy. If so, there's actually a manual for that! Complete step-by-step instructions on how to wreck a private capitalist economy. It was written by a Marxist named Sul Alinsky, and it's titled "Rules for Radicals." The Demander-in-Chief Bus Tour. Obama proposed a tax on business jets earlier this year — has he ever really backed off that demand? — showing that he doesn't understand what business jets are used for. Business jets are used to increase productivity in a global world. The ability to get to and from somewhere across the globe quickly is often the difference between doing business and losing business. This is why businesses order jets. They help increase sales. A Disastrous Presidency. Barack Obama is a perfect storm. If he had intended to destroy the economy and trash employment while exploding the deficit and the national debt, he couldn't have done a better job. The Editor says... Obama's premeditated murder of America. It is now crystal clear that Obama is pushing America into the certainty of a socialist state. Pretending it isn't happening is not doing anything to stop the greatest nation ever paid for in blood and sacrifice from disappearing forever from a predator weary world. It is patently clear that Obama is as much "your agent of change" as Raila Odinga, the despot he actively campaigned for one year before he ran for his own presidential election in 2008. How much is too much profit? Ask Obama. Barack Obama believes he should decide how much we should earn. ... Only in a government-controlled economy does the leader get to decide how much someone can earn. We are not there yet despite our President's seeming agenda to take us there. But this is not the first time he expressed his belief that he can decide how much someone should earn. Obama Might Be a Socialist. [Recently], Howard Dean gave a speech where he insinuated that anyone who says "Obama is a Socialist" is crazy, ignorant, racist, or extreme. Funny, a recent national poll shows that a majority (55%) of Americans believe "Socialist" best describes Obama. Another poll shows the Democrat Party is filled with people who identify with Socialism. I say, it's time for them to come out of the closet. I ought to know. I was Obama's college classmate at Columbia University Class of '83. Our college was dominated by Socialists and Marxists who hated capitalism and America. Obama: Banks Don't Have 'Inherent Right' to 'Certain Amount of Profit'. President Obama suggested on Monday [10/3/2011] that the nation's banks should "take a little bit less of a profit" rather than raise fees on customers. In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama was asked if the government can stop banks from imposing a new debit card fee on their customers. Sen. Inhofe: Obama's EPA Waging War on Fossil Fuels. "The President of the United States wants to destroy American energy," said Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee. "His intention is to kill fossil fuels, which we rely on for 99% of the energy in America. "All of this killing of our energy supply is not by accident. It's on purpose." Let Them Eat Windmills. The White House recently announced a "jobs plan" that will cost American taxpayers about $500 billion starting in 2013 for a government spending spree today. We knew what to expect: green-energy subsidies, tax breaks for people who already pay no income tax, further stimulus for non-shovel-ready projects, increased taxes on the wealthy — in short, most anything except what would actually create jobs, namely lifting the prohibitive regulatory and tax burdens on the nation's job creators. Obama's policies — particularly his heartless energy policies — promise to eliminate many more jobs than they create. 5 Major Ways The Obama Administration Is Killing American Jobs. [#4] Spending: Even though Barack Obama promised to "cut the deficit in half by the end of his term," he's gone on the single biggest wasteful spending spree in recorded human history. Obama didn't start the bailouts, but he continued them, he pushed through a trillion dollar stimulus that did almost nothing for the economy, and he created a new entitlement program that, despite phony budget projections, everyone knows will add trillions to the debt. Now the government is recommending against the use of concrete and steel. Barack Obama, Democratic Wrecking Ball. It may be that Barack Obama will do to the Democratic Party what no one, not even Ronald Reagan, could achieve — which is to bring it to its knees. Obama's Fascist Economy. Barack Obama and his minions in the administration as well as many Democrats in the Congress are often described as Socialists, or in the extreme as Marxists. However, their actions and strategy are straight out of the fascist economic playbook. ... Socialism/Marxism seeks the total control of a society's economy through complete state control of the means of production and income. Fascism seeks that same control, indirectly by the state domination of private ownership, as well as controlling individual income and wealth through taxation and regulation. CEA president Gary Shapiro calls Obama admin 'most anti-business' in his lifetime. [Gary] Shapiro, who is the president and CEO of the Consumers Electronics Association, told The Daily Caller in a recent interview that President Obama is presiding over an administration that is the most hostile to business in his memory. "You have investigations and breakdowns of companies like Gibson. You have monopoly investigations of great American companies like Google. You have an attack on American business which is unprecedented by this administration at different levels. This is the most anti-business administration in my lifetime," he said. Trucking Industry Collapsing Under Regulation. One of the most regulated industries in the United States is over-the-road trucking. Nearly anything you have in your house, from light bulbs, to toilet paper, to your flat-screen television, was delivered to where you bought it by truck — indeed, 70 percent of all goods travel by truck. And every year, more regulations are piled on top of one of the key industries for the American economy. Green Twilight. It's often been said that Obama is a closet Marxist out to transform the U.S. into something resembling a people's republic. I've never completely agreed with this contention. For one thing, he's not precisely a Marxist; he's a Marxisant, a useful French word denoting someone who has memorized all the slogans while not bothering his head with any of the theory. "Spread the wealth around" is a pure Marxisant statement, just as his attempts to stir up class hatred against private jet-owning billionaires is pure Marxisant behavior. An actual Marxist would be far more subtle and convoluted, thanks to his grasp of theory and revolutionary tradition. Obama has neither. Obama's Anti-Rich Crusade. Apparently, politicians around the world now want to tax the rich, because they believe, or say they do, that's where the money is. They're wrong. The simple fact is that there aren't enough of the "millionaires and billionaires" who are now the target of President Barack Obama's campaign trail scorn to make the tiniest dent in America's deficit. Recipe for disaster: Ayers, Alinsky, Cloward & Piven. In their own words from the "Weatherman" manifesto, they explained that drawing the U.S. into multiple costly overseas wars would go "hand in hand" with a domestic strategy also intended to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury. That strategy saw an opportunity to take advantage of what it called "the urban crisis around welfare, the hospitals, the schools, housing, air and water pollution." These social services and social protections were a much easier sell to the American public than either bombs at home or wars abroad, but they had just as dangerous an impact on the viability of the American government. Our Overregulated Economy: Murder By 1,000 Paper Cuts. Overregulation by President Obama and his administration is crippling our nation's economy. By the government's own estimation, the annual cost of regulations is $1.75 trillion. Since taking office, the Obama administration has instituted 75 new major regulations, meaning that each has an expected economic impact of at least $100 million per year. Over a 10-year period, these regulations will cost the private-sector over $400 billion. Keep in mind these are government cost estimates, and we all know how actual costs are often much higher. CEO: 'A Modern Industrial Revolution' and its Enemies. "The understanding of business is not there. The president has no business people around him. The fundamental understanding is not there." So said J.J. Mulva, CEO of Conoco-Phillips, to the Detroit News editorial board this week — another warm body in an extraordinary parade of American CEOs who are complaining that a major obstacle to their business today is Washington and our anti-business president. Why Gold Is So High and President Obama So Low. Since President Obama took office, the price of gold has more than doubled to about $1800 an ounce, and public approval of his handling of the economy has more than halved. We're Sinking Under Obama's Policies. Hardly a day goes by without some bit of bad news the media calls "unexpected." But investors have noticed. After selling off 2.9% on Wednesday, the S&P 500 dived another 3.2% Thursday [9/22/2011]. Wednesday's drop came after the Fed unveiled its new plan for reviving the economy and as President Obama hit the road to sell his new but unimproved $447 billion stimulus. President Obama and the EPA's War on Jobs. For some time now, I and others have been documenting the relentless assault on economic growth by the EPA under President Barack Obama. I feel like a broken record at times trying to beat this drum and get people to realize that while Obama doesn't keep all of his campaign promises, destroying the coal industry is one that he has done everything he can to stay true to. For anyone that paid attention during the 2008 presidential cycle, Obama made it clear that it was his intention to bankrupt the coal industry through regulation and legislation. Obama's Bizarre Tax Attack. It could almost make your head spin. With an economy on the front end of another recession, President Obama's tax attack on the folks who are most likely to succeed, invest, start new businesses, and create jobs is nothing short of staggering. Only liberal-left class-warfare ideology can explain this. Enough With The Deficit-Fueled Stimulus. In his speech Thursday, the president is expected to announce a stimulus 2.0 package said to cost $300 billion. But why should anyone expect this to work any better than the $4 trillion in stimulus already in the economy? ... So far, Obama has run deficits that are more than twice as large as any president since Truman. And by the end of his first term, he will have borrowed more money than the federal government spent over the nation's first 200 years. Obama's Deficit Plan is All Tax Hikes, No Cuts. Today [9/19/2011] President Obama's released a deficit-reduction proposal that was actually written down on paper, the first time he has done so since introducing his laughable 2012 budget back in February (the Senate voted it down 97 to 0). The White House claims that the president's plan represents a "balanced approach" that, relative to its current policy baseline, will increase the federal deficit initially by $300 billion in fiscal year 2012 (to pay for his "jobs plan"), but will reduce deficits by $3.2 trillion over the next decade. The claim is outrageously misleading. Obama's employment policy alter egos. When it comes to putting Americans back to work, President Obama has two distinct alter egos. One acts to systematically dismantle one of the most productive sectors in the economy while the other speaks passionately in favor of job creation. Business-Killing Obama Is No Candyman. Sustained growth cannot transpire under the Obama administration. The big-government "help" that the president offers won't spur the economy, entice entrepreneurship, or engender consumer confidence. Obama's ridiculous "tax incentives" for hiring new employees, for which only a tiny fraction of businesses qualify, could have been dreamed up only by someone who has never made a payroll and whose only associates are leftist ideologues. Obamaesque socialism has a deadening effect on innovation, entrepreneurism, and the economy. Is Obama Insane? A frank assessment of Obama's fiscal stewardship of our country would conclude the following: 1) He is committed to long discredited economic theories, in spite of their utter and repeated failures, and 2) he is unwilling — or unable — to consider any other course of action. Having tried the only thing he knows — spend, spend, spend — Obama is now at a complete loss. His flawed theory is now our failing economy. I'm exactly what's wrong with Barack Obama's America. Barack Obama would prefer we all be wards of the state rather than active producers. How else can you explain the incentives he champions: endless jobless benefits, cradle-to-grave welfare handouts, "tax cuts" for non-taxpayers, and on and on. Thus proclaims the president who himself raked in a cool $7.2 million over the past two years, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." The key word there is "you." A New Obama Milestone: ZERO Jobs Growth. President Barack Obama made history again today, as today's new Labor Department report shows zero net jobs created for August. CNBC notes this makes "the first time since World War II that the economy had net zero jobs created for a month." Thank you, Obama voters! We couldn't have done this without you. The Zero Growth Economy. Zero growth is a good thing for socialists. This means the actualization of two things they cherish: Equalization and dependence on government handouts. Labor Day 2011 Has Bad Case Of The Blues. There was no job growth in August, and the overall numbers are stupefying: 14 million unemployed; nearly 9 million part-time workers wanting full-time jobs; 6.5 million who want jobs but are so discouraged that they've given up looking and are, therefore, not counted in the official labor force. Obama's dirty job. The president will deliver a major speech on the employment situation only days after his government reported that no jobs — that's none, nada, zilch, zero — were created last month. For the first time since 1945, when World War II came to an end, not a single new job was created in the United States. No New Jobs Means No New Growth. Zero net new jobs last month and a downward revision of 58,000 jobs in the preceding two months are bad enough. So is the 9.1% unemployment rate, unchanged from July. But perhaps most worrisome, the data suggest an economy sputtering beyond its ability to create enough jobs. Two numbers from the Labor Department's report now show that GDP may well be taking a dive. Obama Lays a Goose Egg. "The U.S. economy added no [net] new jobs in August — the worst showing in a year — as employers cut back hiring and trimmed work hours of existing employees," the Los Angeles Times reports. "The nation's unemployment rate in August stayed at 9.1%, as more people reported that they found part-time work, many of them because that's all that was available." Read his lips: No new jobs. For President Obama, with job growth stuck near zero, the simplest question is a domestic one. How do you think jobs are created? This has never been asked of Obama and never answered, so far as I know. Obama's anti-jobs agenda. The president will present that jobs agenda to a joint congressional session, but meanwhile, his policies — such as tolerating the National Labor Relations Board's dictating where a firm can build a plant — actively rip jobs away. Sadly, the primary job-planning happening now in the private sector is planning to cancel job creation and to de-employ. The Job Wrecker in Chief. President Obama often tells us that his No. 1 focus is creating jobs, but his record makes you wonder what he might have done differently if his goal were to destroy jobs. Answering Jonathan Alter's Challenge. It's the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It's Obama who joked there weren't as many "shovel-ready" jobs as he thought. It's Obama who promised to cut the deficit in half. It's Obama who said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down rather than up. It's Obama who promised us recovery and prosperity, hope and change. What we've gotten instead is the opposite. Obama is a Bad President. Despite having big majorities for the first two years of his presidency, Obama has failed to get any budget passed. Ever. His last budget didn't even get one vote in the Senate. Not one. Obama's Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt said in 2006 "If you can't budget, you can't govern." An Economics Lesson Even a Liberal Can Grasp. [Scroll down] Why did the world's largest and most powerful economy create zero jobs in August? It's because our country's entrepreneurs lack confidence in the future. They cannot calculate what taxes they'll pay, they cannot calculate their costs for health care, they have no idea what new regulations may suddenly appear that will cripple their investments, and they don't believe the customers they'll need to buy their products and services will be there. Most of all — and this is anecdotal rather than statistical — many of our country's entrepreneurs have come to believe that the president and his liberal allies in Congress are out to get them — that their ultimate objective is to turn our free-market economy into a command economy. Three NLRB decisions 'will kill jobs and force business closures,' critics say. On Tuesday [8/30/2011] the National Labor Relations Board announced three new decisions that industry experts say will likely hurt the economy and cost American jobs. Obama's proposed regs would cost billions annually. All told, the seven proposed rules on the environment and transportation cited by Mr. Obama would cost U.S. companies at least $38 billion per year and could cost as much as $100 billion annually in compliance costs. The hope and change hangover. This is an Obama-made becalming of the economic waters, an inevitability when Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, an out-of-control federal regulatory blob consisting of the Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Department of Interior and more, combined with massive deficits to create the perfect storm for the private sector. National debt has increased $4 trillion under Obama. The latest posting by the Treasury Department shows the national debt has now increased $4 trillion on President Obama's watch. The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion. We The Stupid. Obama is going to be handed something in excess of $2 Trillion — and he has made it perfectly clear that he will spend every penny of it before the November 2012 election. That's why he kept saying, "...so we don't have to do this again", meaning raise the debt ceiling again. The debt ceiling would only need to be raised if all of the money had been spent. Therefore, he has stated very clearly that he will spend every penny of any debt ceiling increase. He is going to burn through $2 Trillion-plus in the next sixteen months. This was the Obama regime's plan from day one. Cantor calls for repeal of Obama administration's 'job-destroying regulations'. In a memo to GOP members on Monday morning [8/29/2011], House Majority Leader Eric Cantor outlined what he and other Republican leaders consider the "top 10 most harmful" Obama administration regulations. Citing recommendations from committee chairmen, Cantor called for the repeal of those regulations and offered a "selective calendar" timeframe for doing so. Memo On Upcoming Jobs Agenda. On April 20, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint against The Boeing Company for the alleged transfer of an assembly line from Washington to South Carolina. Yet, not one union employee at Boeing's Puget Sound facility has lost his or her job as a result of the proposed South Carolina plant. Still, the NLRB is pursuing a "restoration order" against Boeing that would cost South Carolina thousands of jobs and deter future investment in the United States. Regulation Booming Under Obama. If the federal government's regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald's, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined. He's destroying America, but I respect him. Huh? Obama's Real Energy Policy. [Scroll down] The real battle is being fought under the radar. The administration is using regulatory power and permitting to choke off conventional power. Last year, I sat in a packed conference center at China's largest solar power conference as I listened to one of Europe's leading solar power executives state that the industry needed to work to make conventional power so expensive that alternative energy sources can compete. This has been a part of the plan all along and the current administration seems to be working along those lines. Obamanomics: The Gift that Keeps on Giving. In just barely two years [President Obama] has driven the economy into a ditch yet has the gall to blame our economic troubles on President Bush, who has been out of office for two years. Moreover, during the last four years of the Bush presidency, Congress, which controls the purse strings and thus the economy, was controlled by the Democrats. It wasn't George Bush who overspent; it was the Democrats on Capitol Hill who did their best to imitate the most drunken of the legendary drunken sailors. A Leaderless Nation. The disastrous and nationally humiliating downgrade of our country's credit rating was not an inevitable consequence of uncontrollable misfortune. It wasn't the result of gridlock or political wrangling between two parties that have bickered over our national debt and credit since the days of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. It was a remarkable failure of leadership by the man chosen to be the country's economic caretaker. Eric Holder's Newest Witch Hunt. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem! In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008. Playing the Obama Death-to-the-USA Game. Are you as exhausted as am I from hearing 'journalists' and supposed expert talking heads telling us "If only Obama would 'X' (you fill in your own solution) he would put us back on the right track toward beginning to save our economy" or asking "Why doesn't Obama do 'Y' to help the economy?" The problem with these comments and questions is the presupposition that the dictator-in-chief actually wants to save the United States of America. That assumption is false. Obama is using every federal agency
to choke the life out of the country. Bam's great PR bus-t. The bad news for President Obama is, he's lost his mojo: The rock star of 2008 has become just another workaday politician. The worse news is, this is all he's got. So fasten your seat belts, America — it's going to be a bumpy ride. Especially if you're unemployed — because help is most definitely not on the way. Obama's Vacation from Economic Reality. Two and a half years after the election, after the imposition of a heathcare plan, a Fin Reg bill, two rounds of quantitative easing, and one gargantuan stimulus plan, President Barack Obama is once again promising to "pivot" towards job creation. A Crushing Political Blow. Standard & Poor's downgrade of America's credit rating is a crushing political blow to President Obama. It reinforces, perhaps like nothing else has, the impression Obama is overseeing, and in some respects engineering, the decline of the American republic. ... The downgrading of our credit rating isn't an isolated event; for many people it will be seen as the nearly inevitable outcome of an extraordinarily reckless set of policies, implemented by a man of unusual incompetence. Obama's downgraded America. The Obama administration has made history by presiding over the first-ever downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. President Obama has outdone all his predecessors in wrecking America's good name. His answer to this problem: Spend even more. Flirting with the Great Depression 2.0. When a nation's debt equals its entire annual gross domestic product, it is bankrupt. It can still produce goods and services, but it will likely encounter fewer customers worldwide as they too are drawn deeper into their own debt crises. Dow Down 500: Should Obama Resign? The worldwide market plunge since the signing of the U.S. debt agreement tells us one thing above all: Almost no one on the planet has confidence in the leadership of Barack Obama. A CEO with such a disastrous first three years as our president has had probably would already have been called upon to resign or been pushed out by his company's board of directors — more than likely for some time. Obama has failed in virtually every direction, foreign and domestic. His policies indeed are almost non-existent. He is completely rudderless, unless you accept the view that he is following the prescription of Cloward-Piven and has set out to destroy American capitalism from within. How Stupid is Obama? Events of recent days have called even the "average" rating into question. Consider the "debt crisis," so-called. It was actually no such thing. In Obama's own words, it was an "unnecessary crisis" — that is to say, not a crisis at all. He should know, having triggered and shepherded it every step of the way. What kind of mentality deliberately arranges a brawl over government finances in the midst of a sensitive and fragile recovery? Obama was obviously out to steal an issue from the GOP and wreck their 2012 campaign plans. But at what cost? Wrecking the national economy? The U.S. unemployment rate, measured several ways. Here's a hockey-stick graph, if ever there was one. There are the unemployed, then there are discouraged and "marginally attached" workers, and those "employed part time for economic reasons," meaning that a part-time job is all they can find. Each and every category of unemployment took off like a rocket when Socialist Democrat Barack Obama took office. Presidential master of economic disaster. President Obama still doesn't get it. ... It isn't political rancor that is killing the American economy; it's the president's economic policies and beliefs. The United States of America is clearly much too big a community for the community organizer to organize. The president knows that. It's also becoming abundantly clear to the producers of this country that Mr. Obama is not on their side, which is why the free market has never trusted him. Speak with any small-business person, and he or she will say the same: Mr. Obama is bad for business. Obama is Determined to Destroy America. At this writing, it looks as if Obama intends to deliberately implode the nation's ability to meet its obligations and he has used the most raw fear tactics to achieve his goal, falsely claiming that Social Security checks would not be sent, that the military would not be paid. If ever a President was begging for impeachment the time for such action has arrived. ... Impeach Obama. America must be set free. Jacking up your electric bill. America faces a European-style debt crisis, but you wouldn't know it from observing what's happening on Capitol Hill. At a Senate committee's request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday [7/26/2011] issued an analysis of proposed renewable (RES) and clean-energy standards (CES). The federal government has grown so large that it's actually studying how to spend money to make electricity more expensive. In fact, it's a White House priority. Alinsky Is Winning. By handing Obama a crisis on a silver platter, with the conservatives now in the position of being the ones who caused it, the 25 hold-outs against the Boehner plan are playing right into Obama's Alinskyite playbook. Read Rules for Radicals and you see that this is exactly what Obama wants. In fact, it might be too late to reverse the damage. Obama may have already won. The Man Without A Plan. President Obama's been taking a lot of flak lately for not having a plan. ... The minute the president evinces a budget plan, the game is up. No liberal budget will stand up to scrutiny. There is no money left for deficit spending in our aging society. The welfare state is kaput. It's gone — probably for generations to come. It's Obama's Economy. This is what policy failure looks like. And no matter how hard the White House and its allies try to convince us other-wise in the coming months, there is no escaping the central fact of the 2012 election. It's Barack Obama's economy. More Obama Spending Won't Help the Economy. There he goes again. Out on the campaign trail, President Obama is proposing more federal spending as his answer to sluggish growth and jobs. That won't do it, Mr. President. He wants more infrastructure spending, undoubtedly in the form of an infrastructure bank. That's a terrible idea. It's borrowed from Latin America, where bloated and corrupt bureaucratic construction agencies have helped bankrupt any number of countries in the past. Obama's economic collapse. Smack in the middle of the debt-ceiling crisis comes word that the economic situation is worse than everyone thought. New Commerce Department figures show the gross domestic product (GDP) growing at an anemic 1.3 percent rate in the second quarter of 2011. Obama to blame for S and P downgrade, former Cabinet nominee says. The man President Obama once wanted as his Commerce secretary blames Obama the most for the nation's loss of its AAA bond rating (in the eyes of Standard & Poor's, at least). While the White House and Treasury Department blast away at what they claim was S&P's faulty math and logic, former Republican senator Judd Gregg says they should look inward instead. Obama's downgraded America. The Obama administration has made history by presiding over the first-ever downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. President Obama has outdone all his predecessors in wrecking America's good name. His answer to this problem: Spend even more. The Democratic Wrecking Machine. After 2¾ years in office, President Obama's policies have failed to revive the U.S. economy, and have actually made things worse. Reckless actual deficit spending for the first 2¾ fiscal years plus estimated spending for the final year of 2011 will aggregate to $4.864 trillion. The President Is Actually Trying to Talk the Markets Into a Panic. An enraged Barack Obama just took to the nation's airwaves to announce his effort to strike a deal with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has fallen apart. Perhaps for the first time in American history, this president is literally using this press conference [7/22/2011] to create a financial panic over the weekend about the opening of the markets on Monday. Is Obama deliberately trying to cause a financial panic? Frankly, I'm not sure that Obama thinks about it one way or another. His depthless knowledge of economics point to a sublime ignorance of how his words are heard by the markets. His only purpose is political — to make Republicans look bad. Congress Reminds Obama He's President, Not King. [Obama's] vanity and naivete — a dangerous amalgam — are causing the modern presidency to buckle beneath the weight of its pretenses. ... The faux deadline, reportedly invoked at a Saturday White House meeting by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who should resign, inevitably seeped into the media and invited overseas panic, thereby risking the nation's currency, for brief tactical advantage. The Worst Steward of the Economy in American History. While the debt ceiling dance continues in Washington D.C. and the Republicans in the Senate are going wobbly, they need to understand they are dealing not only with an intransigent party in the White House but also someone that is the most incompetent president in modern history, and the worst steward of the American economy since the nation's founding. Obama's Intent to Gut the Military. President Obama continues to push the notion that he wants a "balanced approach" to budget cuts, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the only spending cuts he is willing to contemplate are cuts in defense spending. The vast entitlement system that now eats the majority of tax dollars is, by contrast, not only on his list of programs to be sustained, but expanded. The Tea Party, Right About Everything. This jobless recovery is not some mystery. It is very clearly the result of decisions — decisions made by Obama and the Democrats. At every opportunity they grew government, shrank the private sector, and viewed budding enterprises as little more than beasts of burden — something to whip while healthy and carve up and eat when not. As Robert Mugabe viewed white-owned farms, Obama views corporations not yet in Chapter 11. Rep. Allen West Says 'Marxist,' Now Who Else Will Tell the Truth? Lost in the blow-up between Representatives West and Wasserman Schultz is that only two days earlier, Allen West said something much more significant and more massively belligerent — about Barack Obama — something the left would prefer drowned out. Home Depot Co-Founder: Obama Is Choking Recovery. Bernie Marcus co-founded Home Depot in 1978 and brought it public in 1981 as the U.S. was suffering from the worst recession and unemployment in 40 years. The company thrived, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and redefining home improvement retailing. But Marcus says Home Depot "would never have succeeded" if it launched today due to onerous regulation. America's Financial Restoration vs. Obama's Ideology. Alinskyite revolutionaries feed on crises, real and perceived. Obama fundamentally rejects the American ideals of economic liberty and equality of opportunity. He's determined to use government to redistribute and equalize incomes (and wealth, truth be told), and neither the Constitution nor catastrophic debt consequences will deter him. He doesn't even appear worried about the debt itself, only the hassle he's getting from Republicans who are getting in the way of his spending and tax hikes. President What's-His-Name. There's a millstone hanging around the neck of the US economy. And his name is Barack Obama. Our Ten-Trillion-Dollar Man. The Congressional Budget Office not long ago forecast that Barack Obama's $1 trillion-plus annual deficits — scheduled over the next decade — would result in almost another $10 trillion in aggregate debt. Going back to the pre-Bush tax rates this time won't balance the budget. Slashing discretionary spending will not. So large has the splurge become, and so hooked are the constituencies of federal money, that massive cuts to entitlements necessary to stave off financial implosion may well prompt Greek-like protests. Barack's bumbling breakdown. President Obama is on the verge of a crackup. The debt-limit talks are beginning to take their toll. ... Mr. Obama is to blame for the current political crisis. He refused to engage in discussions about lifting the debt ceiling until very late in the process. He has not been serious about controlling runaway deficits. In fact, the budget he proposed earlier this year dramatically boosted federal spending. It was voted down in the Senate 97-0. Even Democrats considered it irresponsible and reckless. Obama: Unneeded Income Belongs to the Government. President Obama's press conference yesterday [7/11/2011] — in which he only took questions from left-leaning reporters apparently — contained an amazing statement. ... Where does Obama think new capital comes from, the tooth fairy? It's nothing more than the excess of income over outgo. Take away the income the rich "don't need" and spend it on social programs, and capital formation in this country drops to zero. Nobody Should Believe A Single Thing Obama Says About the Budget. Granted, nobody should believe a single thing Obama says about anything — (including his denials that he knew anything about Fast and Furious), but in light of his press conference today, ahead of his budget negotiations with John Boehner and the Republicans, I thought it would be good to count the ways Obama has been duplicitous and disingenuous in his actions re the economy, (which he really and truly seems hellbent on destroying.) As always with him — you have to look at what he does — not what he says. Obama's Petulant, Passive Aggressive Leadership Reveals a Fixed Adolescent Mindset. More than any other problem, America is suffering a crisis of a loss of revenue over jobs that have disappeared because of inept decisions, or purposeful government sabotage of the economy. Yet, Barack refuses to acknowledge, in his typically adolescent manner, that any decision he has ever made could even possibly damage the marketplace. Further, Barack has seemed to put literally zero effort into actually helping create jobs. In this sense, his passive-aggressive hatred of capitalism may be strategically aiding his adolescent sense of irresponsibility in breaking the back of the US economy to usher in a golden-age of American socialism. Rep. West: Obama 'Needs to Admit' His Economic Policies 'Have Failed' America. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said President Barack Obama "needs to admit" his economic policies "have failed" America. To back up his assertion, West cited the national debt increase under Obama's watch. An Industry Maligned. The president won't let go of his obsession with the corporate jet tax break. Eliminating the tax break is fine. But there's no excuse for using the bully pulpit to beat up an industry struggling to recover. Obama and the Left's Not-So-Hidden Agenda. [Scroll down] The concept of social justice (government making everyone's life equal) is insane, absurd, and evil. It completely nullifies the human spirit, ambition, freedom to be all one can be, and American exceptionalism — all the things which have made America great. ... As I said, the concept of social justice, government attempting to manufacture equal overcomes, is totally un-American and just plain nuts. And yet, this is obviously Obama's agenda. Remembering Pre-Obama America. It is pretty much common knowledge by this time — except to his diehard supporters — that President Barack Obama is ill-equipped to occupy the highest office in the country. The only campaign promise he has not broken is the pledge to "fundamentally transform" America, which he has done in record time, at great cost to both America's solvency and its standing in the world. Feeling depressed? I have been a keen student of American history and politics for well over 50 years and I have never seen the country in such poor shape or been this discouraged. President Obama is to blame for this. In trying to fundamentally change America and remake it in his own image he has, among other things, ruined the economy, flouted and ignored the rule of law (especially as it pertains to him and the office of President), allowed an Islamic fifth column to take root which wants to change our way of life and make America into a country ruled by Islam, practiced politics of sleaze and division, failed to defend our civil liberties and basic values and run roughshod over our institutions, denigrated us on the world stage, turned us into an international laughingstock... Debt Increased More Under Geithner Than Under Any Treasury Secretary. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner oversaw the largest increase in the national debt of any Treasury secretary in American history, presiding over a $3.7 trillion increase in the debt. According to data from the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt has increased $3,723,575,990,130.10 from Jan. 26, 2009 until June 30, 2011, Geithner's entire tenure to date as Treasury secretary. We Can Do This Unless We Don't. President Obama is eminently beatable. ... His religious adherence to the Cloward-Piven Plan to collapse the economy as a means to fundamentally transform America has brought us to the brink of financial disaster. And his in-your-face golf-while-Washington-burns party at the end of the age lifestyle has made him vulnerable to any candidate who will actually stand for everything the President is against. Less Regulation = More Hiring. The unemployment rate ticked up again in June and has been above 8% for a record 29 straight months. Cutting tax rates is one way to put America back to work. Lifting the regulatory burden is another. Residing In Speechworld Lets Obama Fake Reality. The Democrats seem to have given up on budgets. Hey, who can blame them? They've got a ballpark figure: Let's raise $2 trillion in revenue every year, and then spend $4 trillion. That seems to work pretty well, so why get hung up on a lot of fine print? President Quixote's Legacy: Confused, Ill-Educated and Not Too Bright. In Obama's world, success and failure are moral rather than economic outcomes. Success is a marker for evil. Failure is due to someone else's success rather than personal shortcomings. ... For Obama, economics itself is inconsistent with morality. Hence economics itself must be evil. This view of the world is both simple and ignorant. No, it is beyond that. It is a sign of stupidity! Recognition of this stupidity is the key to understanding Obama's behavior and policies. CBO: Stimulus almost doubled U.S. debt. The 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook, released Wednesday morning 6/22/2011], reports that the "the combination of automatic budgetary responses" and Obama's stimulus "had a profound impact on the federal budget." According to CBO projections, before Obama's stimulus became law, federal debt equaled 36 percent of GDP and was projected to decline slightly over the next few years. Instead, thanks in large part to the stimulus, debt reached 62 percent of GDP by 2010. Our Reactionary President. Barack Obama is the most reactionary president in the recent history of the United States. Obama seems intent on turning back the clock to the good old days of the 1960s and 1970s, when rigid political orthodoxy, not an open mind, guided government. ... Almost every key indicator of the current economy — unemployment, deficits, housing, energy — argues that Obama's reactionary, all-powerful statist approach has only made things far worse. Ayn Rand Was Right: Wealthy Are on Strike Against Obama. [Ayn] Rand prophesized a country dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize the fleecing of innovative business owners and job creators, the looter class demonized the wealthy, just as Obama and his socialist cabal are doing in real life today. Obama's America: Prosperity Lost. President Obama, the fellow leftists in his administration, and the Congress, nearly none of whom have ever made a viable contribution to the Gross Domestic Product, are hell-bent on seizing complete control of the economy. They are making the same foolish and arrogant mistake Marxists and Socialists have made since the mid-1800s, and the citizens of the United States will pay an overwhelming price for their folly unless the people begin to grasp the true cost to themselves and the country. Spending your way out of a recession is not such a great idea. Worst. President. Ever. ... Team Obama promised that US GDP growth would be 4.0% in 2011. The Fed announced last week that they see GDP at 2.7% to 2.9% this year. Obama Backs EPA War on Coal, While Networks Ignore Harm to Industry. It is no longer a secret that President Obama's administration is willing to allow electricity prices to "necessarily skyrocket," in order to accomplish his green energy agenda. Is It Incompetence or Ideology? [Scroll down] Just as the Democrats were rejoicing in the fruits of their cynicism, in came the latest economic numbers. They were awful. Housing-price declines were the worst since the 1930s. Unemployment rising again. Underemployment disastrously high. And as for chronic unemployment, the average time for finding a new job is now 40 weeks, the highest ever recorded. These numbers gravely undermine Obama's story line that we're in a recovery, just a bit slow and bumpy. Suddenly, the election theme has changed. The Republican line in 2010 was: He's a leftist. Now it is: He's a failure. How Obama is Creating a Great Depression of His Own. Franklin Delano Roosevelt ... was more destructive to the economy in his own time than Obama has been in his... thus far. Roosevelt responded to the recession he inherited with a combination of massive spending on new government programs and sweeping controls over private industry, (sound familiar?). His thinking was that government spending would get people back to work, and controls over private industry would end deflation. Rules and regulations over private industry were put in place designed, incredibly, to increase the prices of goods. The President and his advisors thought deflation was a cause of the recession. But of course it wasn't a cause; it was a result. 2012 Obama Victory: Reaching Socialism's Tipping Point. In a recent meeting with a leading Republican presidential hopeful, I asked the candidate why he's running for the nation's highest office. He looked me in the eye and stated flatly his belief that America may not survive a second Obama term — that President Obama's policy agenda is so radical, and his willingness to circumvent congressional authority so flagrant, that America might never recover. Obama's Jobs Plan Takes a Page From Marx. The president has unveiled a plan to cut joblessness with an industrial policy from the 19th century. In this "new" economy, government will pick winners and losers for industry. It didn't work then, it won't work now. Taking a cue from classical Marxist theory as well as vintage union organizing doctrine, both discounting the value of service work over manufacturing, we now see President Obama touting training for factory jobs over all others, pushing government spending in that area and calling it a jobs recovery plan. To Retire Our National Debt, We Must Retire Obama. Obama's ever-changing proposals, allegedly designed to tackle the problem, simply could not work. One of the following must be true: He doesn't agree that the crisis is grave, doesn't understand that his policies can't work, doesn't have the same vision about America as most of us, or doesn't intend for his policies to work. Some people believe he's intentionally damaging America, because they believe he's too smart not to know that we face a crisis and that his policies can't work. 600 More Days of Obama. He is the 44th President and, while we have had incompetent Presidents in the past, we have never had one determined to destroy the nation. It has taken more than two years for most sentient Americans to grasp this extraordinary threat. He has not solved problems. He has exacerbated them. Huge increase in electric bills seen in the next few years. [A recent] Chicago Tribune article pretty much confirms what President Obama promised; that our electric bills would "necessarily skyrocket" as a result of new environmental regulations that will make coal-fired electric plants virtually a thing of the past. ... Has there ever been a great nation that committed economic suicide for no real reason? Salazar's War On Jobs. The plight of the prairie chickens, smelt fish and dunes sagebrush lizards is not just a policy cause for environmentalists anymore, but the weapon of choice in a war on jobs by the Obama Administration, say critics in Congress. The policies in effect at the Interior Department, now led by Secretary Ken Salazar, are supposed to protect endangered species against certain annihilation. But they're also turning farmlands into dust bowls and running oil and gas development off the land, out of the water and out of the country. Obama's Job-Killing Jobs Council. President Obama says he's 100% focused these days on creating jobs. So why is he taking advice from a bunch of CEOs whose companies have been shedding jobs for years? Read this article: Democrats' Tax-And-Spend Insanity. You have to wonder who's advising Democrats these days. With the economy stuck in a two-year, Obama-dug rut, their only new economic growth idea is to raise taxes and hike federal spending. Obama's Plan To Make Your Electric Bills Jump 60 Percent. Obama campaigned on forcing us to pay that 60% more on our electric bills. Obama wants to bankrupt the electric industry, he wants us to lose jobs, he wants us to be soaked to pay more for our energy. He wants this because he feels America should be taken down a notch or two. He wants to hobble this country. It's what he's said since day one. Obama promised to bankrupt our energy producers, he wants us to pay through the nose, he insists that our nation be burdened with multiple layers of regulations, and he wants us to be hurting. Obama's New EPA Rules Would Destroy Our Energy Sector. Half of America's energy comes from coal-fired power plants but Obama's new EPA rules would about destroy the coal industry driving our energy costs through the roof. That's not all they would do, either. Obama's Egghead Economic Saboteurs. White House aides have lamented that the economic team is "exhausted." Apparently, Obama is tired of hearing from them, too. The Hill newspaper reports that he has stopped receiving daily economic briefings that were once treated with the same emergency status as national security briefings. So, the central planners continue to be paid to fail — while their boss looks the other way at the destruction, whistling into what he calls America's temporary "head winds." It's Obama's economy, stupid. No president 'runs' the U.S. economy, but President Obama talks like he does more than any in recent memory — yet none of his economic promises or job predictions have panned out. The Energy Disaster Continues. The Obama administration's energy policies have been a disaster, assuming that American decline is not your objective. We have written many times about the administration's efforts to suppress development of our oil resources, but coal is equally important. The United States is blessed with extraordinary deposits of coal, but Obama is determined to prevent us from using it to generate cheap and plentiful electricity. Obama's Undeclared War on America. Apart from James Buchanan, no president has been so ill-prepared and willfully ignorant as Obama when presented with an unprecedented national crisis. We are now mired in the 21st century Great Gloom, our nation's 2nd Great Depression, having identical features with the first one: millions of Americans are out of work with few prospects for any; millions more Americans have lost their homes with even more facing foreclosure and owing more on their mortgages than the homes are worth; the private sector is calcified; high taxes and regulations frustrate capital formation and job creation. Obama's inability or unwillingness to read history, compounded by his stubborn big government ideology, has led him to adopt or advocate for the single most devastating tactic that doomed Herbert Hoover when the Great Depression began and plagued FDR as the wretchedness of the 1930s persisted for nearly another decade: higher taxes. Government Doesn't Create Jobs. In a joint op-ed with the British prime minister, President Obama admits that jobs are created by an innovative private sector. So why is he strangling ours with regulations, rules and taxes? Some Jobs To Save. A Gulf Coast governor tells Congress that the administration's inept response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has done more damage to the local and national economy than the crude itself. Alfred E. Obama: What, me worry? Blaming Americans for being "skittish" and "nervous" with a subtle implication that its still all Bush's fault, Obama tries to tell Americans that their task is to "not panic, not overreact". Meanwhile his promised anti-energy policies, job killing Obamacare, ever increasing debt, failed stimulus, payoffs to union supporters and Utopian "green" revolution are collapsing the US economy. But as Alfred E. Newman said "What, me worry?" Obama's Economic Experiment Has Failed. The president clearly inherited a difficult fiscal and economic situation when he took office. But his response to the crisis has been woefully inadequate. The president and his party's leaders have made it their mission to test the hypothesis that more government spending and greater government control over the economy can jump-start a recovery better than the private sector can. Professor disaster: Bam's theories killing economy. No billions or trillions needed — here's the simplest number to describe the dismal state of the US economy: One. With the departure of chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, that's the number of members from the original Obama economic team still working for the administration, not quite three years into the first term. Government: No. 1 job destroyer. Taken as a whole, the Small Business Administration estimates that total federal regulatory costs in America amount to $1.75 trillion annually — a number that dwarfs the federal government's entire discretionary budget for 2011 and exceeds Canada's gross domestic product. The cost of compliance is stunning, and it speaks to the heart of the employment issue in manufacturing and every sector of our economy. It's clear that to create more jobs, government at the federal and state levels must change course and embrace policies that drive down the cost of doing business in America. Ben Bernanke is the Chief Architect of Dollar Destruction. It seems that everyone in America understands this except the Chairman. Even the European Central Bank has expressed its deep concern at America's weak dollar policy. In the private sector, the University of Texas has invested $1 billion in physical gold. This represents an unprecedented vote of no confidence in this Administration's stewardship of fiscal and monetary policy. Fed Chairman's grand scheme, QE2, has failed miserably. In short, the Fed's plan to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities was an attempt to speed up the slow (perhaps nonexistent) economic recovery and make investors happy again. So, in light of the ever deteriorating economic conditions we are still experiencing, the obvious question would be, how'd it work? Dems Blame Business For Own Bad Policies. President Obama says he wants businesses to "step up" and hire more. If he's really sincere about wanting more jobs, he should stop demonizing and punishing American corporations for their success. Putting principle ahead of popularity. You remember how, during the last presidential campaign, it was Sarah Palin who unflinchingly drove home the point that Barack Obama was a socialist. "Senator Obama said he wants to quote 'spread the wealth.' What that means is he wants government to take your money and dole it out however a politician sees fit," Palin said in October 2008. "But Joe the Plumber and Ed the Dairy Man, I believe that they think that it sounds more like socialism. Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism. To me, our opponent's plans sounds more like big government, which is the problem. Bigger government is not the solution." Of course, the left-wing media (oops, I mean the mainstream media) said Palin was an extremist for such views — despite the fact that Barack Obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and thus was essentially a self-avowed... (drum roll, please!) ... socialist. Gas Prices Are High Because the Liberals Want It that Way. [Scroll down] Increasing domestic exploration, drilling, and production is the simple solution to what we are paying at the pump. Yet our president has repeatedly misled us by alleging that there is no "silver bullet" for lowering gas prices. What the Obama administration and his liberal machine have been doing is just the opposite — and it is beginning to look intentional. President Obama follows the liberal playbook about energy independence — code for wind and solar energy which won't fuel our automobiles, jets, ships, or the war machines he has sent into Libya. He misleads the American people about ethanol leading to energy independence. Green Energy Fantasy. The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today's pitiful "green energy" industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today's fossil-fuel-dominated industry. This view is a fantasy — one that could devastate America's economy. The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program. Holder's Anti-Bank Witch Hunt. Before the mortgage crisis, Attorney General Janet Reno accused banks of racism for failing to market mortgages to poor minorities with weak credit. Fear of prosecution set off a stampede of risky inner-city lending that led, in part, to today's record home foreclosures. Now Reno's deputy — current Attorney General Eric Holder — is prosecuting banks for doing too well what he and Reno ordered them to do before the crisis: "targeting of minority communities" for subprime and other high-cost loans. Killing Manufacturing: One of the greatest threats facing our country today doesn't come from outside our borders. It's not the possibility of a terrorist attack. It is not the continually increasing illegal immigration across our southern border. It's not even the likelihood of a disrupted oil supply. The greatest problem we face is the self-imposed cost and regulatory burden placed on the development of manufacturing businesses. Obama policies choking growth. Obama, with no shortage of audacity, is betting he can blur the connection between the decisions of his administration and the still wheezy performance of the economy and convince voters that soaring prices for essential goods and anemic job creation are not his fault. Punishing the producers. Our president is oblivious to the fundamentals of business. He wouldn't know how to handle a business risk if it knocked on the door of 1600 Pennsylvania and introduced itself. ... My gut says the president doesn't really care about growing the private sector and improving the economy. His goal is to expand the entitlement class because he knows the most effective way to con people into voting for him and the Democratic Party is to buy their votes with the tax dollars provided by the hard work of others. That's standard operating political procedure for the Democrats. What Professor Obama Doesn't Understand. President Obama does not understand the basics of economics. What he says repeatedly is that increased government spending is the foundation of economic recovery and growth. But the economic reality is that incentives for increased production are the foundation for recovery and booming growth. As a result, what we are witnessing is a historical reenactment of the 1970s, if not the 1930s, with the same throwback economic policies that caused the dismal economic downward spiral of those years. Obama's Hockey Stick: The Federal Debt. The national debt is calculated in two ways: gross debt and net debt. Net debt is primarily gross debt net of the various government "trust funds" the largest of which is Social Security. Exactly the opposite is true. Admit it, Obamanomics has failed. The only thing dropping faster than President Obama's poll numbers is America's economic future. Only one in five believe the country is headed in the right direction, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey released Thursday [4/28/2011]. More than half of those responding to Gallup's queries believe we are either in a recession or depression. The grim mood reflects growing disenchantment with administration policies that have sucked the life out of the economy. You Call This a Recovery? Obama Offers More Excuses Than Solutions. President Obama and his administration have been warning for the last week that the just announced first quarter GDP growth rate of 1.8 percent would be weak, and they have been quick to blame it on the recent spike prices in oil. The problem is that this whole recovery has been anemic, not just one or two slow quarters of economic growth. The Editor says... The Gas Price Freakout. Mr. Obama usually begins his gas price narrative, now a campaign trail staple, by explaining that there aren't easy solutions. That's true — there's not a lot the political class can do to change gas prices in the short run — but then the President goes on to mention that there happens to be one easy solution: raising taxes on the oil and gas industry. This is also his stock answer on the budget deficit, world hunger and everything else. Who is running Boeing? Imagine you own a company and a five unelected appointees of a government board, among them two unconfirmed appointees, tell you where must open your new manufacturing plant. Would you ever consider opening another manufacturing facility in the United States? Is this the tyranny that Thomas Jefferson warned us of? Can Boeing Really Fight The US Government? When Boeing announced that it would be moving part of its 787 manufacturing capability from Washington State to South Carolina, it was only a matter of time before the Obama Administration would retaliate. It wasn't a long wait. The National Labor Relations Board last week filed a complaint against Boeing, saying that its decision to build a manufacturing facility in South Carolina amounted to unfair bargaining with its labor unions. Everyone denied that politics were involved, an assertion believed by exactly no one. Ex-Labor Board Chairman: Union-Backed Case Against Boeing 'Unprecedented'. The former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board told FoxNews.com that a board attorney's bid to stop Boeing from opening a production line at a non-union site in South Carolina is "unprecedented" and could have serious implications for companies looking to expand. NOAA Fisheries Management — Masters of Mendacity. The 2011 Annual Catch Limits (ACLs) for the New England fisheries go into effect on 1 May 2011. They are essentially unchanged from the extremely low ACLs that virtually crippled the fleet in 2010. ... The catch limits for haddock, a major contributor to fishing revenues, are decreasing 25%. Obama's Regulatory Tsunami More Destructive than Taxes. As Obama travels about the country, speaking of the need for "shared sacrifice" and the need to increase taxes, he doesn't say a word about the tsunami of new Obama regulations ranging from light bulbs to ozone pollution to painkillers to foreign travel to vending machines that is about to hit America. Their impact will be huge and do serious damage to our economy. Obama's regulatory tsunami began during his first month in office and has continued relentlessly since. We have a committee for that. The President has a great deal of faith in committees, except when he doesn't. For example, last year he created, by executive order, the debt commission — a committee designed to provide recommendations on how the country can balance its books. The commission's report came out in December of 2010, and was promptly ignored by the White House. Instead the Obama administration offered a budget that still spent more than a trillion dollars of deficit spending. The rhetoric was that Obama was cutting a trillion over 10 years. The debt commission was all but forgotten. Obama publicly declares war on capitalism. It's official. President Obama has declared war on capitalism, which is funny because he never officially declared war on Libya. But our fearless Marxist-in-chief reserves a special brand of hatred for capitalism, entrepreneurship and rich people. Just days ago, Mr. Obama publicly blamed "speculators" for the rising price of gas. Mr. Obama publicly announced a war on speculators and speculation, imposing the Justice Department, government lawyers, Cabinet heads and the whole Big Brother kitchen sink on this "evil" bunch of capitalists. What's Behind The Donald Trump For President Campaign? [Scroll down] Given Barack Obama's less than enthusiastic support of this nation's history is it any wonder that there are questions arising about his past? What we know for a fact is that Marxists were present there and thus must have had some influence on his political positions. His longtime mentor and father figure was Frank Marshal Davis who was an active member of the Communist Party. His father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was a Marxist. Obama attended the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright who is an ardent advocate of Black Liberation Theology, a movement drawn heavily from Marxism. ... If Obama isn't a Marxist, he's nevertheless done an excellent job completing their goal which is the demise of our capitalist system. Did someone mention Frank Marshall Davis? Obama's Third World America. President Obama warns Republican policies will turn America into a Third World country. Look who's talking. On a campaign fundraising trip to Chicago, Mr. Obama quipped that under the proposed Republican budget plan, "we would be a nation of potholes, and our airports would be worse than places that we thought — that we used to call the Third World, but who are now investing in infrastructure." He failed to elaborate on which developing countries he thinks should be models for the United States, but his policies have secured America's status as part of the declining world. Obama Links America's Greatness With Government Spending — Again. President Barack Obama said that federal government spending makes America great — a claim he has made before — while speaking to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) gathering in San Francisco. Moocher Society. This growing trend can only lead to one thing: crippling our society. There comes a point when the few producers can no longer support the growing masses of moochers. We are rapidly approaching this point. As Paul Ryan says, this is the most predictable crisis in our history that we are facing. ... Congratulations Barack Obama for achieving a majority moocher society on your watch! A society where households are receiving more income from the government than they are paying in taxes. A liberal hack Community Organizer wouldn't have it any other way. Will consumers revolt against the Volt? [Scroll down] Whether the economic damage already wrought through action and inaction by Mr. Obama can be undone remains an open question. With his political wings clipped by a Republican House, Mr. Obama plainly intends to do by executive mandate what the law and legislature will not allow, and this end run around free enterprise is but a single recent example. With projects like this vehicular "advanced technology" boondoggle, it seems ever more likely that economic ruin is the future — a future into which Mr. Obama is plunging the nation with advanced technology, at warp speed. EPA's train wreck could leave many in the dark. Even with 14 million Americans out of work and an economy still searching for light at the end of the tunnel, the EPA is poised to enact a series of back-door mandates that will stifle economic growth. And with the speed that this runaway train is traveling, people in states like Ohio should be scared of the "train wreck" headed towards a town near you. Unfortunately, everyday Americans may not realize the impact of the EPA's "train wreck" of new regulations on jobs, the economy and the price of essential energy until it's too late. Exactly the opposite is true. Did We Hitch Our Wagon to a (Death) Star? No reputable economist believes that raising the tax rates will either improve the economy or make a substantial dent in the shortfall. To the contrary, many credibly believe a rise in taxes will further stifle growth and, relying on experience, argue it will result in a revenue reduction. When this was posed to Obama some time ago he responded that even if higher taxes result in lower revenue, the rich nevertheless had to pay more taxes for "fairness" sake alone. Obama is a Quantifiable Disaster.
Let's take a look at the numbers. Obama: Incorrigible Statist and Debt Menace. Hindsight confirms what many of us predicted: The stimulus did not stimulate. Unemployment became much worse, and the debt continued to explode. Obama's solution was to ignore the entitlements issue and devise new ways to bankrupt the nation, from cap and trade to Obamacare to reversing welfare reform. Finally, everyone started to recognize our impending national financial crisis, thanks to the alternative media and the tea party. How we will end up paying $6 a gallon for gas: Someday, you will be pumping gas, staring at the digital numbers racing by, and you'll wonder: "How could I possibly be paying $6 a gallon for gasoline?" You also will be wondering why so many of your friends and relatives are still looking for work. Or why America is more dependent on foreign oil than ever before. If you look back to today, you'll remember why: President Obama's de facto moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama and the Debt Limit. As America rides the great glass elevator of irresponsible spending toward the ceiling of its national debt, many have noted Barack Obama used to be adamantly opposed to raising the debt ceiling. That was back in 2006, when some other guy from some other party was President. The hot new excuse for this change of heart, trotted out by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, is that President Obama "now believes it was a mistake" to stand against limitless debt. It is impossible to "soak the rich"
enough to pay for Obama's level of spending. Obama Continues Fight to End American Prosperity — while he golfs and vacations. When something consummately horrific happens to the United States of America, its people or a US ally, Obama celebrates by going golfing. ... When an unprecedented number of tornadoes hit six US States and killed at least 45 people, Obama went golfing. When his misadventure (aka "war" without any Congressional approvals) against Libya was in full swing, Obama went golfing. While the Japanese people were dying from a massive earthquake, tsunami and radiation Obama went on vacation to Brazil with his family and hangers-on. Michele Obama took her daughters to Spain for another lavish trip and the Obama's trip to India (although the Obama regime still refuses to disclose the actual figures) is said to have topped the scales at $200 million/day. Is Obama Intentionally Damaging Our
Economy? What I think emerges here is President Obama's astonishing ignorance of economics,
which is to say, how the world works. I don't think he is intentionally trying to damage our economy,
simply because he knows that he has no chance of being re-elected unless the economy rebounds. The Editor says... Obama's 'Let them eat cake' moment deep sixed by media. As gasoline prices soar, while domestic oil production struggles under regulatory and permitting burdens imposed by the Obama administration, the American public is suffering, and so are Obama's reelection prospects. The sad fact is that Obama wants high energy prices. ... When do suppose the last time was that Obama filled the tank on his own car? Red tape recession. On Monday [4/18/2011], the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released its analysis of the federal regulatory burden, which noted that the $160 billion annual cost of complying with the tax code represents less than a 10th of the $1.75 trillion burden of complying with the rest of Washington's red tape. About 12 percent of the nation's entire productive output is devoted solely to appeasing bureaucratic fiat. For a small company, meeting all of the various environmental, economic and workplace-related regulations takes an estimated $10,585 out of the pocket of each employee. Obama's vision of a redistributive America. Higher taxes historically have not always yielded more in tax revenue to government. The opposite is true. As economist Thomas Sowell noted this week, "Cuts in very high taxes ended up bringing in more revenue to government in the Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 administrations." President Obama's approach is not a vision consistent with our nation's founding. Perhaps, as foreseen by Benjamin Franklin, "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." President Obama is correct that there are two competing visions for the future of the nation; one born of our nation's founders and that honors individual achievement and prosperity, or one that extorts from it. And the Beat-Down Goes On. Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to "skyrocket" and "bankrupt" any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping. President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies, to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece — most of them in China. His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via "wild lands" and other designations, and dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits. ... Oil, gas and coal provide 85% of the energy that keeps America humming, but the administration is doing all it can to take it out of our mix. Barack the Barbarian. The Obama administration has been able to inflict a great deal of damage to the nation and, if it was an invading army, Americans would have taken up arms long ago against it. Obama's Dreamland. Barack Obama just gave a belated but stern warning about escalating debt — a few weeks after he presented a 2011 budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit, the largest shortfall in American history. Obamacare is crony-care. From energy mismanagement to refusal to be fiscally accountable to blatant job-destroying policies, the president has gone off in a gung-ho leftist direction that leaves many Americans shaking their heads in confusion. A recent poll found that more than 60 percent of Americans believe the country is heading off a cliff. The President's New Energy Plan: If you want to lower the price of something, the best solution is to produce more of it. This is basic Econ 101 stuff. But nowhere in the administration's new energy proposals, presented by the president this Wedesday in a speech at Georgetown University, is the idea of pumping more oil in the United States addressed, except to say it is impossible. 5 Things That Will Happen To You When America Goes Bankrupt. People have to realize that this country is on pace to go bankrupt — and it could happen relatively soon if we don't start taking serious steps to control our spending. Mike Pence thinks we could just be ten to fifteen years away. Tom Coburn is less optimistic and thinks it could happen in as little as five years. If that happens, we're not a tiny country like Greece — we're the biggest economy in the world. That means there's no cavalry coming to pay our bills for us because we ARE the cavalry. What happens then? Revenge of the Deficit Commission? By rights, Obama's deficit commission should be dead and gone. Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of the first meeting of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, chaired by former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.). The deficit commission released a final report in December of last year, but failed to garner the 14-of-18 supermajority vote needed to mandate congressional action. Since then, President Obama, who created the commission by executive order, has been content to proceed as if it never existed... An Emperor With No Clothes. It pains me to write this article, as our country's highest representative is making our country a laughing stock to the world and what is even worse, to our most deadly enemies. Our community organizer President may have been able to fire up a few union thugs, sign a few hundred new ACORN members, and act as a lawyer in his home neighborhood of Chicago, but his leadership of our nation has become an embarrassment, whether you are a far left Democrat, or a far right Republican, and everyone in between. I cannot even mention our president's name anymore... America's Accelerating Downward Spiral. In the past four decades in the U.S., every substantial increase in the real price of oil (meaning in excess of general inflation) has been followed within a couple of years by a sharp rise in unemployment. So with oil now surging past $100 a barrel, what does that suggest about unemployment over the next two years? And what does it say about President Obama's economic IQ that the goal of his energy policy has been precisely to raise the price of oil, through cap and trade and restrictions on supply? The man can be well-spoken, as President Obama undoubtedly is, and still not have the slightest idea what he is talking about. The incoherence of Obama's energy policies: As Americans watch skyrocketing gasoline prices (up an average of nearly 80 cents a gallon from this time last year) frustrate their hopes for economic recovery, they should be outraged by a new report on America's energy resources from the Congressional Research Service. The report shows that the United States is sitting on the largest batch of energy resources on the planet. In fact, these vital fuel sources add up to more than the resources of energy-rich Saudi Arabia, China and Canada combined. Time to Expel the Flunking Education Department. The Wall Street Journal recently uncovered "billions in bloat," confirming what we all suspected: There are hundreds of overlapping, duplicative, and wasteful federal programs. We could probably eliminate half of them and no one would notice. But President Obama nonetheless is piling on the pile, adding more waste. His 38.5% proposed increase in education spending is just one example of how Obama is proving he is no Ronald Reagan. His bloated budget for the federal Education Department was $49.1 billion in 2011. He wants to hike that to $68 billion in 2012. What is Obama trying to hide? Small businesses are responsible for over 90 percent of net new jobs, half of GDP, over 90 percent of U.S. exports, and over 90 percent of all innovations. It's irrefutable. Small businesses are America's economic backbone, and its chief job creators. Despite these facts, the Obama administration has given virtually none of the stimulus funds to small businesses and continues to give an estimated $100 million an hour in small business funds to some of the biggest companies in the world. Since President Obama moved into the White House, some of the firms that have received small business contracts include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Dell Computer, Xerox, SAIC, General Dynamics, Bechtel and John Deere. Blue Over Green Energy Promises. We know Democrats are philosophically comfortable with using their power to artificially skew demand in favor of their preferred sources of energy. During the presidential campaign, Obama boasted that opening a coal-fired plant would be a bankrupting proposition, and he has otherwise allowed as how he has no problem with gas prices increasing (so people will be forced to consume less). His transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, has said he wants to coerce us out of our cars, and the administration is prepared to bludgeon this society into some high-speed rail system. We also know that they intend to foist their environmental edicts on us irrespective of the damage they would almost certainly cause to our economy and standard of living. The Energy Choke. Jobs and economic growth are being deliberately strangled. Our economy is just beginning to feel the choking grasp of soaring fuel prices around its throat. Obama Boldly Continues his Energy Deception. President Obama finally held a press conference on the subject of rising gas prices last week that required anyone who has been watching his administration's war on domestic energy to suspend disbelief. Instead of announcing a reversal of his anti-domestic energy policies, he explained that on his watch, oil production is actually up and imports are down. What the President failed to explain was that his energy policies have nothing to do with this, and that the U.S. would actually be producing more oil today if his administration had not been doing everything in its power to stop domestic energy production since they walked into office in January of 2009 when gasoline was $1.80 a gallon. 'Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?' Ronald Reagan's poignant question to then President Jimmy Carter during a debate in 1980 clinched the presidential election. Carter presided over one of the worst economies. The economy had tanked and inflation had skyrocketed. ... But that's nothing compared to our nation's economic malaise brought to you courtesy of Obama's presidency. Obama's War on the Middle Class. It should be obvious that Obama and the left wing of the Democratic Party are not struggling to defend the middle class. Most of the time they are struggling to disenfranchise it by ignoring the basic rights of human liberty and of property that are guaranteed under our Constitution. The 18% real rate of unemployment during Obama's first two years in office has not done much for the middle class. At the same time, there has been an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class to the underclass. More Obama energy moves that will cripple the economy. Not satisfied with its efforts to regulate carbon, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is beginning a two-month comment period on proposed new rules that would tighten emissions restrictions on power plants that burn coal and oil. If adopted, these new rules will raise power production costs, perhaps forcing the closure of the oldest plants, and making new ones more expensive. ... These rules are projected by EPA to cost $11 billion per year in 2016 to American households, who will eventually pay the higher costs of producing electricity. Tea Party senator says White House is 'hell-bent' on 'suicidal' energy policy. Sen. Mike Lee and other Republicans say Obama has placed too many restrictions on oil production as gas prices rise. Freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who won office with Tea Party backing, is adding his voice to the chorus of Republicans alleging the Obama administration is placing too many restrictions on domestic oil production.
The counteroffensive to President Obama's war on fossil fuels begins. At long last, Congress is launching a counteroffensive to President Obama's war on fossil fuels. ... Obama has been undeniably consistent in his unrelenting and unapologetic attack on our nation's traditional forms of energy — coal, oil and natural gas. While running for president, Obama famously said he sought to make electricity prices "necessarily skyrocket" through cap-and-trade legislation and "bankrupt" power plants committing the progressive crime of using coal as an energy source. Agenda 21 and the Death Knell of Liberty. [Scroll down] What have we seen since the Obama Administration took over? The brainiacs in charge of America's finances have been ignoring our debts, and eagerly proposing ways to sink us deeper into a financial quagmire. A lot deeper. At first I thought that they were simply corrupt, venal, self-serving idiots — all of which is undoubtedly true, but they're also destroying America's financial foundation, cleverly and intentionally. They want the American dollar replaced by a new global currency. They want America's middle class to hang in the wind, and then die on the vine. They are Globalists, and they want America to fail. 19,000 Jobs Lost Nationally Since Offshore Drilling Moratorium Imposed. At least 13,000 jobs have been lost since last summer's moratorium on offshore oil production, surpassing projected job losses in a 2010 study by thousands, according to the Louisiana State University professor who authored the study. Joseph Mason, author of "The Economic Cost of a Moratorium on Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration to the Gulf Region," estimated that the new regional job losses due to the moratorium on offshore oil production in the Gulf region is now 13,000 — up from his original estimate of 8,000. Democrats Refuse to Cut Government Spending. After months of refusing to cut any spending, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) finally came out with a Democratic offer to cut spending for this current fiscal year by a mere $4.7 billion. The budget deficit for the current fiscal year is projected to be $1.6 trillion. So, the Senate Democrats' spending cuts would lower the federal deficit by a mere .004%. Time for War Against Democrats' Fiscal Sabotage. It is amazing that the American people would continue to elect Democratic politicians to national office, considering Democrats' cynical disregard for the federal budget crisis. They aren't even slightly serious about becoming part of the solution. Consider the Senate Democrats' most recent proposal for budget cuts to avert a government shutdown. Senate Republicans, following the House plan, proposed $61 billion in cuts for the current year, while Senate Democrats proposed a paltry $6.5 billion. (The Congressional Budget Office says it's actually only $4.7 billion.) Though Obama seems to be hiding in the bushes on this one, he is said to support the Democratic plan. None of the Above on Energy. In terms of energy policy, as in so much else, the Obama administration is in leaderless disarray. The only thing it seems capable of doing is delaying and shutting down energy production. As soon as some promising new supply pops up, like the shale gas capable of fueling America for the next century, the Obama EPA is there launching an environmental study designed to regulate and restrict it. At the moment when new energy supplies are most needed, there are no plans to increase supplies — only plans to reduce them. One would almost think that this President wants to bring America to its knees. Atlas Shrugged 2011: Businesses Buck Obama. Two years in to the Obama term, American companies are reacting to his anti-free market regime in one (or more) of four ways: by becoming wards of the federal government, fleeing offshore, fleeing to business-friendly states, or fighting back. The "too big to fail" banks and insurance giants, and "Government Motors" and Chrysler have become extensions of the regime, playing lap cat Mr. Bigglesworth to Obama's Dr. Evil. An Energy Policy Designed to Fail. Gasoline prices are on the rise again, mostly due to a combination of turmoil in the Middle East and increased worldwide demand that has driven crude prices up over $100 per barrel. When refiners switch to EPA-required summer blends starting on May 1, gasoline prices will increase even more. The left understands that the harder consumers are hit at the pump, the more sympathetic they are to calls for more domestic oil exploration. In an attempt to head off the issue, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other leftists have fallen back on a tired, discredited canard: the "use it or lose it" approach. Obama's First Two Years a Disaster for America. As of March 14, the average price of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.57/gallon. When Obama took office in January 2009, the price was $1.81/gallon. That represents more than a 90% increase in just over two years. ... The pertinent question we might ask is, "What has President Obama done in the past two years to limit the rise of oil and gasoline prices, if anything?" The answer is... nothing. If anything, his policies have contributed towards rising prices. Obama's Edifice Complex. [Scroll down] His election was given a boost by the precipitous slide in the stock market and the economy before the election in 2008. He truly did not let this "crisis go to waste." Congress was swamped with Democrats and they gave Barack Obama a platinum American Express card to go wild. We have yet to see a President — with the possible exception of FDR — who was as determined to create as many monuments to his own presidency as the man who now holds the reins of power in the Oval Office. Unintended consequences. Every time Mr. Obama attempts to repair a problem by government intervention, he creates a more serious problem. An example of the law of unintended consequences is the president's attempt to solve the financial crises by increasing the regulation of the American financial system. These attempts over time "to fix and regulate" the financial markets have resulted in the loss of U.S. dominance in the financial sector. While Obama Seeks New Ideas, His Bureaucracy Stifles Them. Nearly a year ago, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and his healthcare policy team came up with a simple way to save the state's Medicaid program a lot of money. Why not have Medicaid recipients and applicants handle their paperwork online? Using e-mail and a special website rather than paper, Herbert calculated, would save Utah about $6.3 million a year. "It seemed like a no-brainer to us," says the governor. The problem was, going paperless required a rules waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services. And that's where the idea ran into a brick wall. Gas Price Increases Are Intentional. Gas prices continue to go up. When George W. Bush was President of the United States, Democrats constantly demanded he open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help lower prices. Some even wanted a temporary suspension of the gas tax. With Obama? Crickets. ... The left could use gas prices as a political wedge issue against George W. Bush because they knew he did not actually want higher gas prices. Barack Obama, on the other hand, wants higher gas prices. His Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, wants the same. Obama Making Us More Dependent on Foreign Oil. Expectations of political instability in the North Africa and the Middle East are factors which cause the price of crude oil to rise, but the reality is the Obama Administration is doing serious damage to our essential domestic oil industry. The Administration is making our nation more and more dependent on imported foreign crude oil through increased regulations, taxes, and litigation. U.S. sets $223B deficit record. The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February, a $223 billion shortfall that put a sharp point on the current fight on Capitol Hill about how deeply to cut this year's spending. That one-month figure, which came in a preliminary report from the Congressional Budget Office, dwarfs even the most robust cuts being talked about on the Hill, and underscores just how much work lawmakers have to do to get the government's finances in balance again. Liberal group pushes for $382 billion stimulus. A liberal think tank is calling on Congress to embrace a $382 billion stimulus plan to lower unemployment. The call from the liberal Demos group comes as the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans argue over how greatly to cut this year's spending. House Republicans have proposed a total of $61 billion in cuts this year, while the White House has agreed to a total of $10.5 billion in cuts. Does Obama Want $8 Gasoline? While we sit on abundant oil and natural gas reserves, prices at both the wellhead and the pump are rising on fears of spreading Mideast turmoil and short domestic supply. But then, maybe that's the plan. Time Is Money, Oil Is Time. Writing at the Politico, Steve Forbes adds up the damage: "The Interior Department's six-month moratorium on offshore oil production has cost 8,169 jobs, according to a study by one Louisiana State University professor, along with more than $487 million in wages and nearly $98 million in forfeited state tax revenues in the Gulf states alone..." The Party of Big Government. Having apparently realized that this country is bankrupt, President Obama recently proposed cutting deficit spending by $1.1 trillion over the next ten years. ... The president's proposal, however, is only symbolic. It is only meant for show. During that ten year period the federal government will spend well over $40 trillion. What Obama is proposing is a drop in the bucket. But this does not stop him from going in front of the camera and posing as a deficit hawk. The president should be ashamed of himself. He is a quack who is taking this country down the road to fiscal doom. The 'rational' exuberance of spending other people's money. To sink or swim? That is the $15 trillion question. It's now up to the American people to decide whether the American experiment in self-government will stay afloat through reason and sacrifice or else sink into oblivion as a result of self-deception and greed. Obama Administration Plans Second Front in War on Appalachian Coal. [Scroll down] The AP story pertained to a controversial rule derivative of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), known as the "100 feet buffer rule.["] As its name would suggest, it basically prohibits mining waste from being deposited within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams. According to the AP article, the Obama Administration's preferred interpretation of this rule would cost 7,000 mining jobs, almost exclusively in Appalachia. And that's the Department of the Interior's own estimate, which is likely a lowball. Hyperinflation is
a Small Price to Pay? Despite government propaganda every shopper knows inflation is already
a serious problem. The Financial Times presented annual price increases for various items, which
included the following: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression. John Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better known as Zimbabwe. Did someone mention Zimbabwe? Obama Names Top Crony Capitalist to Help Wreck the Economy. President Barack Obama's choice of Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, to head his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness demonstrates once again how clueless the president is about the economy. Having not caused enough damage in the past few years, Obama is doubling down on policies that are slowing the still fragile economic recovery. If the president really wanted to help the economy and create jobs, he would do the opposite of what Jeffrey Immelt has done at General Electric and has advocated for national policy. America the Broke. In this era of hyper-partisanship, it is comforting to know that there is one thing both parties have agreed upon — spending the nation into insolvency. Time Is Money, Oil Is Time. Rebel forces
are battling the Qaddafi regime for control of Brega, a key oil installation. The Libyan dictator vows to "fight
until the last man and woman." Worldwide oil prices are shooting up, causing the markets to become jittery.
An American energy industry which has been profoundly sabotaged by the current Administration is not ready to
make up for any shortfalls. High-speed rail is a fast track to government waste. There's something wildly irresponsible about the national government undermining states' already poor long-term budget prospects by plying them with grants that provide short-term jobs. Worse, the rail proposal casts doubt on the administration's commitment to reducing huge budget deficits. The president's 2012 budget is due Monday [2/14/2011]. How can it subdue deficits if it keeps proposing big spending programs? Obama Bails Out More Spendthrifts. Under an initiative to be attached to the president's budget proposal, our fiscally incontinent states would be further subsidized by the federal government through a moratorium on interest payments owed to Uncle Sam. These states, having spent all the money they had, borrowed billions from Washington to continue making unemployment-benefit payments. Of course, lending money to broke parties is a very good way to ensure that you are not repaid, and that is what Washington is headed toward: delaying interest payments today and, in all likelihood, simply forgiving interest (and probably principal) tomorrow. Eyes on the Prize: Suez Canal. I'm not an Egypt watcher, but it appears the Muslim Brotherhood is continuing plans to isolate the Arabian Peninsula. ... The MB's real objective, in my opinion, is closing the Suez Canal. This, with Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, will effectively put our economy in bottom of the tank thanks to Obama's prior spending sprees. Obama: Egypt's Hostage. By failing to back Mubarak, Obama is committing the same sin that Dwight Eisenhower did in Cuba and Jimmy Carter did in Iran. He needs to understand that the radical Islamists mean us ill and that any effort to appease them is bound to fail. If Egypt falls, Obama will have permanently damaged America's vital interests. Obama 2.O: The First Big Lie. Barack Obama's reign has seen one job killing measure after another, culminating in the greatest job killer of them all, ObamaCare. David Harsanyi was on point when he wrote in his column "Obama Isn't Fooling Anyone" that "I can't recall a single federal program, piece of legislation or proposal in the past two years that was initiated to ease the burden on business or consumers." Obama's rhetoric has chilled business activity. He has let regulators to run amok, whittling away our liberty. Two Americas. Barack Hussein (aka Barry Soetoro) Obama's first two years in office have been, shall we say, enlightening. His policies were disastrous, no question, but enlightening nonetheless because we were clearly shown what the press refused to tell us in advance. We were clearly shown what the courts won't stand up against. We were clearly shown that 2009 and 2010 proved, in no uncertain terms, when Barack Hussein (aka Barry Soetoro) Obama promised HOPE AND CHANGE; what he really meant was he would lead us down the dead end path to SOCIALISM. We Can't Afford the Luxury of High-speed Rail. This past Tuesday [9/28/2010], Amtrak proposed to spend more than $100 billion increasing the top speeds of trains in its Boston-to-Washington corridor from 150 to 220 miles per hour. In August, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood estimated that President Obama's proposal to extend high-speed rail to other parts of the country will cost at least $500 billion. No one knows where this money will come from, but President Obama argues that we need to spend it because high-speed rail will have a "transformative effect" on the American economy. In fact, all it will do is drag the economy down. The Editor says... Voodoo economics? Tote up the jobs from Obama's stimulus. Democrats have lambasted Republicans for years for believing in "Voodoo economics." Well, the evidence is mounting that economic superstition is alive and well in the nation's political circles, though it has nothing to do with a fondness for tax cuts. It's instead the crazy belief that the government can spend its way to prosperity for the rest of us. 'The Problem with Printing Money'. The Federal Reserve's dramatic new intervention into the U.S. economy — a $600 billion purchase of Treasury bonds that was immediately branded with the nautical nickname of QE2 — had barely gotten underway in November 2010 before the Fed itself began sending signals that it had a public-relations disaster on its hands. Obama Moving to the Center? Wanna Buy a Bridge? For those who argue that Obama deserves a second chance at proving he's not at war with American business and the free market, I ask what he has done to indicate he's changed his philosophy that drives that war. It's admirable to give people the benefit of the doubt in personal relationships, but we are talking about more than a personal relationship here and have a responsibility not to ignore the evidence. That evidence tells us that he is still an intractable left-wing ideologue committed to destructive progressive policy prescriptions. Obama "Invests" America Into Oblivion. Don't be fooled. These aren't investments. These are confiscations of private-sector capital that Obama has neither earned nor knows how to earn, for that matter. The left uses the word "investment" each time they're after your wallet. In fact, Obama sold the failed "stimulus" plan as a package of... investments! Seriously. Before he signed the inaptly named "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," Obama called it "an investment that will create jobs building 21st-Century classrooms and libraries and labs for millions of children across America." Obama Isn't Fooling Anyone. President Barack Obama penned a witty Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, titled "Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System." In it, he extolled the virtues of a free market system. And to prove that his admiration of capitalism has nothing to do with naked political expediency, Obama signed an executive order that will "root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb." Sounds rather subjective, though, don't you think? How do we gauge excessive regulation in the Age of Obama? I can't recall a single federal program, piece of legislation or proposal in the past two years that was initiated to ease the burden on consumers or businesses. Obama's sleight of hand on regulation. In Obama's first two years in office, he showed no signs of concern about the number of costly regulations being issued by federal regulators. He set new records for both the number of major regulations issued (43) and their added annual net burden on the economy (conservatively estimated by the regulators themselves at $26.5 billion). None of these will be revisited or revised by Obama's initiative. James Gattuso and Diane Katz of the Heritage Foundation, who analyzed the new regulations in detail, predict that the real costs of Obama's regulations so far are probably much higher than the government estimates. Is Barack Obama Intentionally Trying to Damage Our Economy and Security? That may seem like an absurd question, but it's hard to come to any other conclusion when you consider what is happening to our energy industry on the Gulf Coast. As the Wall Street Journal reports today [1/3/2011], the Obama Administration may have lifted its ban on drilling in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, but there are still long delays in getting other permits approved to drill for oil. Why? No one seems to know. Excuses, Excuses. Obama understands so little of capitalism that he actually thinks that businesses need more government oversight and "investment." He simply can't get beyond the idea of statism: the belief that every aspect of life, from what sort of car the public drives to how much profit a business is allowed to retain, must be decided by government planners in Washington. Now, at the desperate hour when America needs free-market capitalism above all else, Obama's response is more regulation. Does Obama Think We Citizens Are All Idiots? To freeze spending merely means that you will keep it at the same level. In other words, after two years of wildly insane spending that increased our debt by trillions of dollars, Obama says he won't increase that spending, but freeze it at that same level; and for five years. Can you imagine how many more trillions will be added to the national debt if he spends at the same level for five more years? Obama Coal Crackdown Sends Message to Industry. A move by the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke the long-standing permits for a mammoth coal mine in West Virginia sends a strong signal that President Obama plans to implement key parts of his agenda even though newly empowered Republicans can block his plans in Congress. In the aftermath of the November elections, many political pundits predicted that the once-unchecked Obama legislative machine would turn it's [sic] energies to federal rulemaking as a way to circumvent Republicans on Capitol Hill. And the EPA's decision last week suggests that those forecasts were spot-on. Obama Believes American Exceptionalism Begins With Government. If you listened to the speech and came away believing Obama is receptive to moving to the center, then you didn't hear or understand him. For the GOP to make headway on restoring fiscal sanity to this nation, it must first understand him. Then it must oppose and reverse him. Obamacare is a disincentive to work. Bush Policy on Lands Is Reversed. The Interior Department reversed a Bush-era policy on wilderness on Thursday [12/23/2010], restoring the authority of its Bureau of Land Management to identify and recommend new areas for protection. The Editor says... The Problem with Printing Money: The Federal Reserve's dramatic new intervention into the U.S. economy — a $600 billion purchase of Treasury bonds that was immediately branded with the nautical nickname of QE2 — had barely gotten underway in November 2010 before the Fed itself began sending signals that it had a public-relations disaster on its hands. Saving America. The reality of our national condition dictates that we stop mincing words. A huge challenge awaits our Congress: do something positive for our economy before America succumbs to more spending and the relentless printing of money. Our free-enterprise economy is seriously ill and suffering from bad medicine. Obama's Oil War: Oil prices are surging to levels that will soon crimp economic growth. And what's our government doing about it? Just making it worse. ... It's becoming more and more obvious that Obama's energy policy is meant to raise prices by making fossil fuels harder to produce and use. Indeed, the White House has followed a deliberate policy of attacking Americans' use of energy, turning it into something of a moral crusade. We Must Challenge Obama Before He Breaks the United States. We have all heard how narcissistic Barack Obama really is and how he does not like to take orders from anybody but, presumably, Allah his Muslim deity. (Christian? Don't make me laugh.) ... Where in our Constitution does it give him permission to steal the money we provide through our taxes for his own personal pleasures? For that matter, is there any LIMIT to the amount of our tax dollars that he can steal for his whims and wishes, or does he have carte blanche? 111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined. The federal government has accumulated more new debt — $3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29) — during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury. That equals $10,429.64 in new debt for each and every one of the 308,745,538 people counted in the United States by the 2010 Census. National Debt Tops $14 Trillion. The U.S. Treasury website today [1/3/2011] reported that as of last Friday, the last day of 2010, the National Debt stood at $14,025,215,218,708.52. It took just 7 months for the National Debt to increase from $13 trillion on June 1, 2010 to $14 trillion on Dec. 31. It also means the debt is fast approaching the statutory ceiling $14.294 trillion set by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last February. Turning America Around. Barack Obama promised to change America, and he did. Federal spending has increased in two years to $3.72 trillion from $2.98 trillion, a 25% increase. The national debt has swelled to almost $14 trillion from $10 trillion in the same period, and the Office of Management and Budget estimates that it will reach $26 trillion by 2020. ObamaCare is moving 17% of the U.S economy from individual choice to government management and direction. Protectionist policies have stopped trade agreements with several countries. Driving US Families Into Poverty. The Obama Administration still hasn't gotten the message voters sent Washington on November 2. The lame duck session and 111th Congress finally ended, without the White House getting key items on its wish list. So now, the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department intend to impose costly, job-killing, economy-strangling new rules for power plants and refineries, and implement more land-grabs that will lock up additional millions of acres and more billions of dollars of American energy. Their goal is to end the hydrocarbon and nuclear era in America — and force us to convert to "renewable" energy. The Administration's Administrative Tyranny Marches On. [Scroll down] The Heritage Foundation notes that gas prices decreased 9 percent during Dubya's eight-year tenure, but they've been on a steady rise under Obama. The EPA emission rules will clearly make it more expensive to convert fossil fuels into energy, putting even more upward pressure on gas prices. That's not all. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decreed that the Bureau of Land Management will establish new rules to make it more difficult to develop natural resources on government-owned land, which will also drive up the cost of gas and electricity and increase our dependency on foreign energy sources. It Sure Seems Like We're Done. History leaves no doubt that civilizations rise and fall, with the fall always beginning when rising ends. The Classical era passed in under a millennium and a half; ours has already gone longer, but Reagan's Morning in America has become Obama's Closing Time. Deindustrializing America is an endgame, and if the Obamacrats are saving the planet, it's not for underemployed Americans. How Not to Help Blacks Find Employment. Since the 1960s and the War on Poverty, Washington has spent billions, everything from job training programs, to tax incentives, to anti-discrimination laws to eradicate this gap, all to no avail. Given a half century of failure, efforts to narrow differences have grown increasingly desperate. The latest is the federal government's attempt to equalize how black and white job candidates appear to prospective employers even if they differ substantially — just ban employers from checking credit and criminal histories so as not to "unreasonably" disadvantage black job applicants. Voters elected Republicans to end Obamaism, not expand it. No, Mr. President, voters in 2010 did not demand bipartisan cooperation in 2011 to advance Obamacare, increase out-of-control federal spending that drove the national debt to $13.4 trillion and the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion, add thousands of bureaucrats to the government payroll even as private-sector unemployment remains near 10 percent, create hundreds more wasteful, duplicative federal programs that mainly benefit Democratic-favorite special interests like Big Labor, impose thousands more growth-killing environmental regulations, or erect multitudes of additional obstacles to achieving energy independence here at home. Obama to regulate carbon from power plants. US President Barack Obama's administration said Thursday [12/23/2010] it will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, after legislation on climate change died in Congress. A Faux Compassionate Christmas, Courtesy of the Left. In mid-2008, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then-candidate Barack Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began an unprecedented campaign of trash-talking the economy — which, though clearly struggling, was still growing — while promising drastically higher taxes and energy-starving "climate" initiatives. The record shows that enough entrepreneurs, investors, and other businesspeople to matter began heading for the hills, trimming employment, virtually ceasing new hiring, and canceling growth and expansion plans. Fight Back Against Obama's Lawless EPA. On November 15, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency issued a 100-page, highly technical "guidance" document proposing that as of January 2, 2011, large sources of greenhouse gas emissions — such as power plants, steel operations, and petroleum refineries — be required to obtain preconstruction and operating permits limiting their greenhouse gas emissions and to install the "best available" technology to do so. ... Previously, no such permits were needed, and no greenhouse gas limits existed. It is widely agreed such new rules will drive up the costs of electricity, iron and steel, gasoline, and anything else produced by large operations, with these costs passed along to consumers already staggered by a jobless "recovery" from the recession. Missing the California of My Youth. In what seems like a lifetime ago, Barack Obama promised to fundamentally transform the nation. California is what a truly progressive government transformation looks like. Thus, in a sensible America, the decline of California would be the canary call in a coal mine for the nation. A Rate Which Lives In Infamy. President Calvin Coolidge famously said that the chief business of the American people is business. Now it seems that the chief business of Congress is to make sure American businesses are taxed at a punitive rate. TSA New Enemies List. The Obama Administration means to cause as much damage as possible in the two years remaining of its existence. If that reads like a hubristic prediction, I have no better foundation for making it than the White House's approval — nay, its encouragement — of the Transportation Security Agency's (TSA's) new "enhanced" security measures and procedures. Those measures and procedures, which violate, as a matter of policy, the Fourth Amendment rights of American travelers, are meeting as much opposition as any of the administration's legislative policies. Mr. President, Your Helicopter Is Ready! From out-of-control spending resulting in trillions of dollars added to the deficit, to Marxist programs repulsive to most Americans, to double-digit unemployment, to programs that promote class and racial warfare, to complete abandonment of border security and immigration law enforcement, and to inept and naïve mismanagement of foreign affairs, Barack Obama has done enough damage to America. Put Uncle Sam on an Allowance. This country is headed for financial disaster. Spendthrift government is insolvent, and its behavior threatens the economy and lifestyle of all citizens. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recently provided recommendations for addressing government deficits. They proposed cuts that fell woefully short of a real solution. Even so, the committee was unable to reach an agreement. Democrats' budget bill: $1.1 trillion; 1,900 pages. Filling more than 1,900 pages, the $1.1 trillion measure represents an increase of less than 2 percent in annual spending but makes for an easy target of ridicule — a last stand by the Senate's old bulls before the tea party takeover. Memo to House GOP: Get a grip on the EPA. Getting a grip on the Environmental Protection Agency must be at the top of the upcoming Republican-controlled House's "To Do" list. Of immediate concern are the EPA rules for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Unless stopped by a federal court, the Obama EPA will implement on Jan. 2 a flagrantly illegal scheme to regulate emissions from power plants and other large emitters. This enactment will kill jobs and raise the prices of energy, and thus of all good and services. More evidence that economy is stalled because of Washington, Big Green policies. A new analysis of government data by the Western Energy Alliance shows a 79 percent drop in the number of energy development leases offered by the federal government on public lands in the Rocky Mountain region states of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico and Utah. The U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the activities of energy firms seeking to find and develop oil and natural gas under public lands, has issued only 531 new leases in 2010, compared to 2,499 in 2005, according to WEA. Eco-Insanity and ANWR. The abject desperation and evil intentions of so-called environmentalists can be seen in the call to turn the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into a national monument on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its designation. This would provide ANWR with the same status as the Statue of Liberty — only there aren't billion of barrels of oil under the Statue, nor at George Washington's birthplace in Virginia. The idea of conferring national monument status on ANWR is so stupid that it should be laughed out of existence, but unfortunately we have a President who is so intent on denying Americans access to the vast treasure trove of energy resources — oil, coal, and natural gas — that common sense has nothing to do with his decisions. The 'Unexpected' Consequences of Progressivism: The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, submitted his final budget in 2000 for the 2001 fiscal year. It was $1.9 trillion. The 2011 federal budget submitted by Barack Obama? $3.8 trillion. In other words, federal spending has doubled in ten years. Question for my fellow Americans: has your income doubled in the last ten years? Or perhaps more to the point, has everyone who pays taxes doubled their income? The Left's War on the Economy. Obama may be losing the War on Terror, but his War on the Economy is headed full speed ahead. The joblessness, the unemployment rolls and an economic in which the only people still making money are in the government, in public sector unions or on Wall Street is no accident. It was the intended result all along. Collective Lunacy: Obama/Bernanke Can't Learn Econ Lessons. If what happened in Japan [in the 1990s] is starting to seem familiar, it's because we're living in the midst of Barack Obama's and Ben Bernanke's multitrillion-dollar stimulus. Is the Federal Reserve Destroying the Dollar? Every newly installed Socialist government has its first act: the massive printing of money to pay off all the loyal cohorts and followers and supporters. This assures support for the future "reelection" of the regime. The "$800-billion stimulus" bill and its successors have increased our domestic deficit by $3.0 trillion in the first two years, and proposed carbon taxes and government health care are all part of the script of destruction. If you are a globalist socialist, the most effective way to destroy our economy and everyone's wealth is hyperinflation. Ideologue-in-Chief Obama Will Continue to Be Bad for Business. Obama destroys. Wearing the cape of savior, he destroys the resolve of people seeking to be saved. Abusing the office of president, Obama destroys American prosperity. He genuinely believes that government creates wealth. But Obama's policies and pontifications scare ... the machine that creates all wealth: private enterprise. The president makes a show of caring about private enterprise, about people. But he is in love with big government, with ideas. Almighty central planning is progressivism's dearest idea. Barack Obama's idea, too. The Keynesians Get Their Wish. The Keynesians finally got their wish. The Federal Reserve plans to inject $600 billion dollars of the most caustic debt imaginable into the economy. This is the Agent Orange of monetary policies that has the potential to wreak financial havoc. In the hope of generating inflation, the central bank is going to enable deficit spending by buying treasury bonds. You read that correctly; the primary goal is to erode the value of the dollar, and we get to watch our currency and wealth literally dissolve before our eyes. Ponzi promises and priceless gold. In August, Boston University Professor Laurence Kotlikoff wrote an article in the Finance and Development Journal of the International Monetary Fund titled "U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It." In it he warned: "Let's get real. The U.S. is bankrupt.["] He estimated that "Based on the Congressional Budget Office's data ... a fiscal gap of $202 trillion (exists already), which is 15 times the official Treasury debt." Last week, the Federal Reserve announced its intention to print another $600 billion plus to subsidize further the greatest Ponzi scheme in history called the U.S. Treasury market. What does it mean for ordinary Americans? House GOP budget chief calls Fed's $600B plan a 'big mistake'. Paul Ryan, the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, has called the Federal Reserve's plan to pump $600 billion into the economy a "big mistake." ... "Look, we have Congress doing tax and spend, borrow and spend. Now we have the Federal Reserve doing print and spend." Soros Bets on U.S. Financial Collapse. Another financial expert is expressing his deep disgust with the Federal Reserve's decision to print more money and buy more U.S. debt, saying it is a sign that the U.S. capitalist system is moving closer to collapse. "This is the type of stuff we accused the communist and socialist governments of doing — interfering in free markets through currency manipulation," declared Zubi Diamond, author of The Wizards of Wall Street. "What the Fed is doing is not good for free market capitalism and it is not good for America." Bernanke's Cowardice Has Sealed Our Fate. The day after the election, the Federal Reserve launched QE2, the second round of Quantitative Easing. This public relations euphemism attempts to hide the fact that the Fed is "printing money" (the Fed actually does it electronically these days). "Cheating, debasing, and inflating," as in stealing from the public, is a more accurate description. The Nuclear Power Solution. Barack Obama has tirelessly read from the teleprompter about America's urgent need to reduce its reliance on foreign oil and the growing demand for alternative renewable energy sources, green jobs, and such. Surprisingly, nuclear energy — the one technology that could help the country meet all of his energy objectives — had until recently received only political footnotes in the president's agenda. Sadly, when he mentions the word "nuclear" it is usually followed by the words "non-proliferation" rather than "clean energy." Is The President Learning Economics By Trial-And-Error? During his campaign for the presidency and now nearly two years in the White House, Barack Obama's disdain for America's free market economy has been abundantly clear. As a candidate, Senator Obama traversed the country preaching his economic doctrines, and the recurrent themes from these messages were quite specific... Bankruptcy of U.S. is 'Mathematical Certainty,' Says Former Bank CEO. John Allison, who for two decades served as chairman and CEO of BB&T, the nation's 10th largest bank, told CNSNews.com it is a "mathematical certainty" that the United States government will go bankrupt unless it dramatically changes its fiscal direction. Truth and Science and Facts vs. Unwashed Hillbillies. At the very time that we should be reining government in, Obama is using every means at his disposal to expand it as far in every direction that he can. When we should be trying to avoid the obvious pitfalls of European welfare states, we are doing everything we can to imitate them. Conservatism's Boll Weevil. [Obama's] egotism and inexperience, his grounding in the most extreme, ultra-leftist philosophy, his political education at the hands of the Chicago Machine, and the Democrat control of both Houses of Congress persuaded him that he was a creature of destiny. His mission was no less than to remake the basic construct of the United States government, its institutions, and the private sector within the space of a single term in office. America Just Checked Into Rehab. Obama and his Democratic Congress ran up nearly $3 trillion in new debt in just 21 months — after running a disingenuous 2008 campaign that falsely promised to rein in the fiscal irresponsibility that had been rampant during the spendthrift Bush administration. So the voters intervened and sent America in for rehab treatment. What President Obama Didn't Learn at Harvard. If President Obama had gone to Harvard Business School, instead of Harvard Law School, he might have learned this amazing lesson about American enterprise. ... President Obama thinks government produces wealth. Worse, he thinks government's role is to "spread the wealth around." Socialism has failed wherever it has been tried. You Just Might Be a Marxist.
While [these] are intrinsically Marxist notions, many hold them who do not consider themselves Marxists. Don't Fall for Any Postelection Obama Spending Conversion. How can anyone take Obama seriously when he says he will focus on the deficit in the next two years, seeing as his economic and social philosophies dictate that he continue to spend our money like a drunken floozy? The Obama Team's Strategy for Changing America. This transformation — and the President has made it clear that this is just the beginning of what he has in store for the country — may be catastrophic, but it is not accidental. As his pre-election promise suggest — and as David Horowitz and Liz Blaine document in their trenchant new pamphlet, Breaking the System — what Obama has done to America and what he plans for the future if his power is not curbed, is the product of a calculated strategy by the radical Left to subvert America's free-enterprise system and to turn the country's citizens into wards of an always-growing state whose ultimate objective is to engineer American lives. Obama Battles Reagan. Every major Obama initiative from Obamanomics to ObamaCare is inevitably attempting to transform America just as Obama promised: taking the prosperous America Ronald Reagan saw as The Shining City Upon a Hill and turning it into a Society of Beggars. Sending Americans begging — literally. Turning Reagan's "Morning in America" into what Rush Limbaugh has termed Obama's endless Dark Night of the Soup Kitchen. All of this based on the idea that building the American economy (or for that matter any economy), as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said, must be done based on the philosophy that "the biggest bang for the buck [comes] when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance — the biggest bang for the buck." This is, of course, straight from Marx. Obama is smarter than you. The last 22 months have seen a riot of government expansion into every aspect of American life. The housing crisis has not abated and by some measures has grown worse. The value of the dollar has plummeted. Government debt is at record levels and will remain there for the foreseeable future. The economy is sputtering, the stimulus failed to stimulate, job losses are deeper and will last longer than any economic downturn since World War II. Mr. Obama blames this continuing mess on the Bush administration, on factors out of his control, or on anyone but himself. Facts, science and argument disagree. It's Official: Obama Has Now Borrowed $3 Trillion. It's official: The Obama administration has now borrowed $3 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. It took from 1776, when the United States became an independent country, until 1990, the year after the Berlin Wall fell signaling victory in the Cold War, for the federal government to accumulate a total of $3 trillion in debt, according to the Treasury Department. Socialism and Reality. The images on the television screen emanating from Europe are a sobering reminder that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried and will always do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers. ... Yet within the halls of power in Washington, D.C. there is a socialist/progressive cabal, and its titular leader Barack Obama, oblivious to this reality. These ideologues continue to cling to the belief that they have a unique ability to succeed where so many others have failed. How to Turn a Recession into a Depression. Destroy business confidence, cozy up to socialists abroad, send deficits through the ceiling — that should do it. National Debt Up $3 Trillion on Obama's Watch. New numbers posted today [10/18/2010] on the Treasury Department website show the National Debt has increased by more than $3 trillion since President Obama took office. The National Debt stood at $10.626 trillion the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated. The Bureau of Public Debt reported today that the National Debt had hit an all time high of $13.665 trillion. America, we have a problem. In a New York Times interview last week, President Obama acknowledged that there's "no such thing as shovel-ready projects." This was one of his main selling points for the $862 billion stimulus package. He now admits they don't exist, and the stimulus is clearly not working. The public was told that unemployment would not go above 8 percent if the stimulus package passed. They passed it and unemployment went to over 9.6 percent and stayed there. So now the president and his economic advisors say we might have to just get used to high unemployment. And they want to spend even more money. More about President Obama's lies about job creation and stimulus money. It's official: Another year, another trillion dollar deficit. The Treasury Department has officially added up all the zeroes and have proclaimed the FY 2010 budget deficit to be $1.29 trillion. ... That's down by $125 billion from the $1.4 trillion in 2009 — the highest deficit on record. Obama's Takedown of Industrial
America. Obama's industrial policy is designed to make America non-competitive in the world economy,
destroy millions of jobs, and devastate our manufacturing and industrial capacities. ... Here is a summary of
recent aspects of our industrial policy as proffered by the ruling Democratic Party: Where Do You Really Think America is Headed? An old college friend asked me recently where I really think America is headed. I basically said that our nation is an out-of-control train running top speed with an incompetent and suicidal engineer at the throttle. To change metaphors, our country is a packed jumbo jet with an unlicensed pilot at the controls. Obama's war on wealth. President Obama effectively has declared war on America's wealth creators. By refusing to extend fully the George W. Bush tax cuts, Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats are hoping their "tax the rich" rhetoric will carry the day. This sends an unmistakable message to investors and entrepreneurs: If you risk your capital and succeed, your government will punish you. It should come as no surprise, then, that this policy has led to a dramatic destruction of wealth. The Very Dangerous Folly of Obamanomics. [Scroll down] From here, then-Senator Obama went on to introduce his new "energy" proposal. As a remedy for rising gasoline prices, he wanted to raise taxes on oil companies, and use that "extra" tax revenue to give "working Americans" a thousand-dollar voucher that they could use to make gasoline purchases. ... Senator Obama simply portrayed the Exxon Mobil company as a "villain" for earning a "record profit," and he was going to be the "good guy" who would legislate money away from the oil company and give it to "us." The Economics Of 'Fairness' Have Backfired. We raise taxes on things we want to discourage, like cigarettes, and we lower taxes on things we want to encourage, like education. The idea is to manipulate prices by changing costs, via taxation, so that we end up with more expensive Marlboros, smaller hikes in tuition, fewer smokers and more college students — in other words, a smarter and healthier America. That's straight out of Economics 101. ... The problem with Obama is that he treats jobs and job creators like cigarettes. The Bank of Central Planning. The prospect of another big-government program is disheartening to all those who believe the federal government has grown far beyond its originally intended scope of authority. Fear that the massive growth of the federal government will stifle technological innovation, harm the economy, and limit individual freedom is well-founded. Every society that has relied on central planning has suffered with a stagnant economy, limited mobility, and a low standard of living. How Leftists are Killing 'The Jetsons'. For the first time in American history, today's generation is looking at a future that resembles the Flintstones more than the Jetsons. President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, preaches the virtues of "de-development," by which he means the destruction of technological advances; the Obama administration preaches cap and trade policies, which would cripple American standards of living if implemented. Obama and his cronies have no faith whatsoever in human ingenuity and entrepreneurship: the best solutions are always proscriptive and prophylactic. They're wrong. The best solutions are, almost invariably, created by the private sector. Obama vs. Reagan. Vice President Joe Biden recently announced that "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession." In essence, Biden is admitting that despite all the profligate spending and redistribution of wealth that are the hallmarks of the Obama Administration — with its massive inter-generational deficits — Obamanomics is a failure. When will liberal Democrats learn that prosperity is created by unleashing the free market, not smothering it? Obama Kneecaps Airlines. The Obama administration set Big Labor on the easy road to cannibalize the airline and rail industries and last week Senate Democrats stamped their imprimatur on the deal — at a time when taxpayers are getting full view of the cost of out of control unions bankrupting state and local governments and destroying public education. New Narcissus. America is polarizing into a new two-party state — socialists and non-socialists — that will be devoid of the stabilizing checks-and-balances in the former Republican-Democrat two-party system. Convinced of this, I believe my offspring will not only never enjoy a tenth of the freedoms I've enjoyed, but also will toil their lives away in a futile effort to pay off debts that President Obama is now running up. Feels like a depression to me. Between the time that George Washington took the first oath of office as president and when Barack Obama did — 1789 to 2009 — the United States had borrowed nine trillion dollars. Since Obama took office, it has borrowed or imposed nearly three trillion more debt. Tell me he is not deliberately seeking to bankrupt the nation. Fire Geithner before he kills the economy. If a corporate financial officer in the private sector had overseen the wasteful spending of hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars without producing anything to show for it, he would be summarily fired. But corporate performance standards don't apply to President Obama's Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. He was a guiding hand on the government boondoggles and bailouts that have enraged taxpayers since 2008. The Biggest Target is Liberalism. The 2010 election is not simply a campaign against Obama. It needs to be a campaign against liberalism as a whole. Obama remains the major target, and he deserves the honor. No president in my lifetime has been as incompetent, as obtuse, or as polarizing. There's a particular type of incompetence that involves applying serious energy and diligence to doing the wrong thing. Obama is the master of this style of governance. Destroying King Dollar Is Not the Solution. Fed head Ben Bernanke and the FOMC dropped a new policy bomb at their meeting this week. Now they say inflation is too low. That's the real problem. And the solution? Punch up the money supply and punch down the dollar — or what I used to call King Dollar. No more. In the 24 hours following the Fed announcement, gold rocketed up toward $1,300, a new record high. And the dollar plunged. It's a big vote against the central bank and its constant tinkering and fine-tuning. Obama's New Mandate: CHANGE It Back! As the American Dream is systematically destroyed by Barack Obama, a Marxist community organizer with no practical experience except for seizing and wasting other people's wealth, a counterforce of revolution is growing more and more powerful by the day. That force is determined to counter the anti-free trade policies of the arrogant egomaniac who is occupying the White House. Does Your Vote Count? America was at the crossroads two years ago. Americans voted Obama into office and gave the Democrats solid control of the House and Senate. That election determined which road we would travel upon. To my amazement and great disappointment, America chose socialism. The Liberals took complete control of Washington and began to launch a massive agenda to enlarge government, secure power, destroy capitalism, take over industry, control healthcare, increase dependency, and basically cement our future to a foundation of socialism. Democrats Drove President Obama's Car into the Ditch. [Scroll down] On September 30, 2001, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) bottomed out at 7,528. Over the next six years, the DJIA soared, reaching 12,653 by the end of January 2007, the same month Democrats retook control of Congress. Eighteen months later, the stock market was in a free-fall that destroyed the retirement and personal wealth of millions of Americans. Inhofe Says EPA's New Boiler Rule Could Kill Nearly 800,000 Manufacturing Jobs. The top Republican on a Senate environmental panel released a scathing report Tuesday [9/28/2010] that he contends shows that the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America's manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or environmental benefits. More about the EPA. Obama Endorses Global Taxes on Eve of U.N. Summit. In a classic case of misdirection, while the media are preoccupied with the fate of the Bush tax cuts, President Obama is preparing to attend a United Nations summit next week to endorse "innovative finance mechanisms" — global taxes — to drain even more wealth out of the U.S. economy. White House Science Czar: 'De-Develop the United States'. In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the "free market economy" to implement the "massive campaign" he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to "de-develop the United States." The Lies And Distortions Just Keep Coming. [Scroll down] If you work for a small business with more than two or three of employees then you had better hope that your employer is a millionaire or your job may be in seriously in jeopardy. But Obama doesn't think employers should be millionaires. Perhaps this is because Obama knows nothing about running a business. Or maybe it's because his Marxist philosophy tells him that any company worth more than a million dollars should be owned by the state. Reaping the Whirlwind. There is a sense of foreboding rising in this country. ... Our prosperity, our security, and even our safety are fast fading away. Our own president and his party are facilitating our demise. The signs are everywhere. Every new piece of backroom congressional legislation chips away at a few more freedoms, undermining our republic by preventing open and honest debate. Behind the scenes, Obama's henchmen wield sledgehammers against free commerce, gun ownership, freedom of speech, and energy. The billions in taxpayer money going to leftist and socialist organizations cement their toxic influence into the very fabric of our government. Two Years That Changed the World. Flight USA went from "all systems nominal" under Captain Bush and his Republican crew to stormy weather, mechanical malfunction, an all-new Democrat crew under Captain Obama, and a dangerous loss of altitude. All in two years. The passengers are nervous and restless, to say the least. Holding the Line. President Obama has suddenly discovered the virtues of deficit reduction: Having spent all the money, he now thinks it would be downright irresponsible of taxpayers not to pick up some of his tab. His defenders would have us believe that every form of fiscal austerity would sink us deeper into the quicksand — except for tax increases on the most productive individuals and profitable small businesses in the country. Uncertain Business Climate Is Hobbling Employment, Conservative Governor Says. American businesses are most worried about what Washington's going to do next, N.J. Gov. Chris Christie said on Tuesday [9/7/2010]. In an interview with Fox & Friends, Christie said the Obama administration lacks a "clear, cogent message" for the American people: "I can tell you that when I talk to business people in New Jersey — the thing they're most concerned about is the uncertainty. They never know what's going to come out of Washington and how it's going to add to the cost of them doing business." How Obama Thinks. Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad. Barry Soetoro's Indonesian Expatriate Hell. Where did Barack Obama acquire the self-evident disdain he has for major corporations, especially oil companies, and for the striving classes who have made America prosperous and strong? ... He has in the past told us that we can't have houses as warm as we want, or cars as big as we prefer. We must make do with less so that others may enjoy some of the goodies, in effect. The Student Loan Takeover. The unilateral seizure of the student loan program by the Obama administration carries extremely serious implications for the future of higher education in America, especially in view of a confluence of market forces that have the potential to effect the greatest changes education has seen in decades. Outside the liberal academic community, there is general agreement that the traditional university model is broken. Institutions founded for purposes of education and learning have become bloated and dysfunctional conglomerates with vastly oversized administrative staffs and a voracious appetite for money from students, taxpayers (state schools), and alumni (private schools). Dems Propose Back Door Energy Taxes. While Harry Reid may have allowed the energy tax hikes to die on the floor of the Senate, liberals nationwide have continued their attacks on the energy industry. The Gulf oil spill is barely a fond memory of a moratorium and Democrats are already seizing on the incident to push a host of job-killing, industry-kneecapping taxes and regulations designed to do what they failed to do legislatively: take down the American energy industry. Jobs Knowingly Killed And Destroyed. There's a law known as the law of unintended consequences. It's invoked when you try to do the right thing but overlook other events and occurrences set in motion by your actions. In the case of the drilling moratorium, the consequences were intended. Obama, The Nation Killer. The unemployment rate keeps climbing and the polling results for the President and Congress keep falling. Conservatives are well aware that the Obama administration has relentlessly pursued legislation harmful to the economy, but just how bad it is and how bad it will become in 2011 may not have sunk in fully for the public in general. Obama's Beltway Chainsaw Massacre. When what the bucket has dumped out drains away, what do we have? 9.5% unemployment — at least at an official level — 1.5% higher than what was promised if the "stimulus" wasn't passed. A stagnant economy. Businesses neither expanding nor hiring. Car sales — down. Housing sales — way down. Consumer confidence — in the tank. The Folly of Subsidizing Unemployment. The economic "recovery" has been disappointing, to put it mildly, and it has become increasingly clear that the blame lies with the policies of the Obama administration, not with those of its predecessor. In general, the current administration has been too focused on expanding government, redistributing more from rich to poor, and stimulating aggregate demand. Obama knew Gulf drilling ban would cost at least 23,000 jobs. Interior Department officials knew beforehand that President Obama's six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would cost more than 23,000 jobs and inflict devastating economic damage throughout the region. Even so, the administration was not deferred from defying a federal judge and doing it anyway. A year after claiming the economy as his own, Obama points finger. President Obama this summer has repeatedly blamed George W. Bush for the nation's economic woes, a year after he took ownership of the economy and criticized those who "carp and gripe." Obama's 'Progressive' Failures. At a fundraiser Monday [8/16/2010], the president boasted to Hollywood celebrities and deal makers about enacting "the most progressive legislative agenda" in decades. That may be true, but it's hardly something to be proud of. Why 'Atlas Shrugged' is flying off the bookshelves. A record $2 trillion now sits on corporate balance sheets waiting to be invested amid reasonably cheap assets prices. What holds back investment is uncertainty and fear stemming from an overbearing and free-spending government. Businessmen and investors would never attempt spending and borrowing their way back to prosperity. The debt-financed Obama stimulus plan is not only failing to create jobs. It also ratchets up systemic risk, inviting a currency crisis and bond market collapse — from which recovery might be impossible. How's That 'Spread the Wealth Around' Going? Spreading the wealth seems like a good idea, rather like Mom spreading frosting on a cake: tasty and yummy. In reality, of course, governments don't ever spread the wealth. They take money from some people and give it to others. It's more like leaf-raking. You rake the leaves together, and then you hand them over to your political pals for disbursement among their supporters. It's a bit like passing a $26-billion bill to save the jobs and cushy retirements of well-paid teachers and state government workers. What's Holding Back The Hiring? Start With Obama's 10 Job Killers. President Obama claims that he's concerned about "jobs, jobs, jobs," but he has signed laws, issued executive orders and approved regulations that create incentives for private-sector employers to lay off people or delay hiring people. It's no wonder high unemployment persists. Obama's creeping crud. Liberals are shocked and appalled that American businesses are hoarding cash, not hiring and, gasp! — GASP! — posting profits. And this, they say, is all the evidence needed for government to spend trillions more dollars to prod the recovery that's straightaway. Could it be, just perhaps, that American businesses are bolstering their cash reserves, deferring hiring and taking profits now because they know that come 2011 their costs to do business will explode because of skyrocketing government imposts and compliance costs? The Danger of a Government with Unlimited Power. The fundamental thrust of governments such as that of President Obama is to abrogate the rights of private property, aiming at the holy grail of their secular religion: redistribution of income and wealth to reduce everyone to an equally low state of economic equality. Slow Poison. How do you keep an economy from digging itself out of a major recession? One surefire method is massively expanding a government whose major programs are already on their way to bankruptcy, then sitting idly by as major tax increases arrive. The Democratic Congress has spent a trillion dollars on a failed Keynesian stimulus that promised millions of jobs that never materialized. The Dark at the End of the Tunnel. Without "the rich" to bash on, squeeze, hammer, and otherwise alternately abuse and neglect, the rest of Obama's economics don't make any sense. Even then they still don't make much sense, but still, Obama's theories need to rest on something. And the belief in the general unfairness of every- and anything that hasn't been redistributed through DC is his foundation. The Fix is In. Falling like the staccato drumbeat of a pouring rain, the day-by-day assault by the ruling Progressives on the traditions and sensibilities of America has the no-longer-silent majority reeling. We were warned. The watchmen on the walls Buchanan, Limbaugh, Beck and others told us what was coming. They tried to alert those willing to vote for an untried community organizer because they wanted change that the change would change once the organizer got organized, so none of these transformative changes should surprise anyone. The Big Bamboozler. On Monday [8/2/2010], at yet another campaign fundraiser, the part-time President, full-time campaigner Barack Obama told Democrat fat cats, with both hands in taxpayer pockets, that Republicans "have not come up with a single, solitary new idea to address the challenges of the American people." But where are Barack Obama's new ideas? The Keynesian deficit spending of the 1970s, focused on the make-work jobs programs of the 1930s, is not exactly a new idea. Obamanomics: Kneecapping America's Future. The Obama Administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) unloaded its disastrous mid-session budget review in a Friday afternoon dump and run — updating its own budget projections from February. By the administration's own analysis the forecast is bleak: 10% unemployment this year and a $1.47 trillion deficit next year. The President's plan is to add crippling tax hikes to the unrestrained spending and unprecedented deficits and debt. America's Economic Hari-Kari. Anyone with a lick of common sense will tell you that when you are in a hole, you need to quit digging. Continuing to dig will only create a larger problem. Do schools teach this? Even President Obama's national debt commission recently told him that his continuing spending orgy is digging America into a gigantic fiscal hole. Regulation in the Obama Era. Most Americans are painfully aware of the amount of taxes they pay. Money deducted from their paychecks, charges added at the cash register and to each restaurant bill, and checks written to the IRS serve as a constant reminder of the price of government programs. Total government revenue and spending is routinely added up and debated. Yet, explicit taxes and spending are only part of the total burden that government places on Americans. The rest comes in the form of hidden taxes imposed by government regulations. Ratcheting to Ruin. The U.S. government moves closer to a debt death spiral. ... With no spending restraints, the economy moves inexorably toward its date of collapse. The excesses and imbalances created by the explosion of debt over the last thirty years virtually ensure a depression, regardless of what policy actions the government chooses. That was determined before Obama took office. His spending only accelerated the debt spiral, never had any chance of success and sped up our date with economic destiny. US Government 'hiding true amount of debt'. The actual figure of the US' national debt is much higher than the official sum of $13.4 trillion given by the Congressional Budget Office, according to analysts cited on Sunday [9/19/2010] by the New York Post. "The Government is lying about the amount of debt. It is engaging in Enron accounting," said Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University... No One's Capital Is Safe in Obama's America. Obama's poorly coded message to investors is to take your money out of America and keep it out. Whether through excessive taxation, suffocating over-regulation, or thuggish confiscation, the lesson to be drawn by anyone with excess capital is to look for friendlier places to put it to work. The list of friendlier places excludes North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran for the time being, but almost everywhere else qualifies. Obama aborted the recovery. [Scroll down] All of these job-killing actions are complemented by an assault on private investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking through myriad new and higher taxes, more onerous regulations, Obamacare costs and penalties and other measures that are deterring investment by the private enterprises that should drive a recovery. Small businesses will fail; new ones will not replace them. Larger companies are hoarding their cash while looking for opportunities to put it to work in more hospitable places outside the United States. What Can't the U.S. Afford? Most know that the country is broke, paying its bills with borrowed or magic money under an overhang of debt nobody's talking about repaying. The politicians who lead the country while repeating that this is somebody else's fault keep spending without mentioning what will have to be given up for a balanced budget. In fact, Congressional Democrats have so far refused to even provide a budget for this cycle, likely a response to the coming November elections. But 2010's plan is known and it's reasonable to expect 2011 to be similar. Of Course Obama's a Socialist. Thomas Frank, the Wall Street Journal's quota liberal, is shocked that people are calling President Obama a socialist. Last week, a poll announced that 55 percent of people think he's just that. ... You can call Obama a socialist, a progressive, a liberal, a black liberationist. The choice of words doesn't matter. What matters is that President Obama is a card-carrying member of the ruling class, and every act of this president aims to concentrate more power in the government or distribute favors to his supporters. America was not founded for this. The 600,000 did not die in the Civil War for this. The GIs did not crush Nazism and Communism for this. How to Regulate America Out of Business. [Scroll down] The August 25 vote by the Security and Exchange Commission to allow large shareholders access to proxy nominations for board members is a perfect example. In effect, the new regulation encourages environmentalist and human rights groups, as well as institutional investors, labor unions, and hedge funds, to nominate their own representatives for corporate boards. If elected, many of these board members would promote activist agendas that conflict with the interests of the stockholders. Instead of voting to maximize profits, such representatives would support narrow ideological goals. How would it be possible for a representative of a coalition of Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups to serve on the board of Chevron or Massey Energy? Time for Obama to make sacrifices. When Obama entered office, he inherited a budget deficit that reflected the toxic combination of recession, bailouts and runaway entitlement programs. But rather than getting the government's finances under control, Obama and his allies in Congress poured gasoline on the fire with trillion-dollar boondoggles. To put the recent spending binge in context, consider this: At the end of 2008, just before Obama took office, the federal debt was about 40 percent of our nation's total economy. Now, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office report, the debt will explode to 62 percent of our economy by the end of this year. Geithner: Irresponsible spending has fixed the economy. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is right to say that the country is living beyond its means, but it's a curious statement coming from an official in an administration that has done nothing to curb profligate spending. Reaganomics Rules — Obamanomics Fools. Reaganomics, so often derided by liberals, was an economic stimulus that fueled over 20 years of U.S. economic growth, job creation, prosperity, and international power. Obamanomics, in just 18 months, has been a spectacular failure, creating the potential for a $22 trillion dollars of public debt by 2020 that will take another 20 years to repay. You're a Liberal/Progressive if You Believe... increased government spending is the path to prosperity. It doesn't matter how many times this Keynesian economic model has failed or how many times its exact opposite — tax cuts and lower spending — has succeeded. It doesn't matter that $865 billion of "stimulus" hasn't stimulated anything other than government payrolls and political cronies, or that the path we're on is completely unsustainable. Obama's 'Mandate for Sacrifice' Costs Thousands of Jobs. As many as 100,000 Americans who lost their jobs, or will soon, because of GM and Chrysler dealership closings can thank Barack Obama and his "mandate for shared sacrifice," according to a top Obama official. The White House's Continuing War on Affordable Energy. The White House has launched a coordinated PR campaign to argue that it is not anti-business. That is a difficult argument to make when we look at the Administration's record on energy. Time after time the Administration has acted to make it more difficult to produce energy domestically and they are actively seeking to make energy more expensive. This only makes an economic recovery more difficult. Obama's Next Act . [Scroll down] But Obama's most far-reaching accomplishment is his structural alteration of the U.S. budget. The stimulus, the vast expansion of domestic spending, the creation of ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see are not easily reversed. These are not mere temporary countercyclical measures. They are structural deficits because, as everyone from Obama on down admits, the real money is in entitlements, most specifically Medicare and Medicaid. But Obamacare freezes these out as a source of debt reduction. We Only Expected Competence. It somehow has never dawned on the Obama devotees who like to cite the administration's "inherited mess" that this president's failures don't exactly reflect the overcautiousness of a leader constrained by a crisis. Taking over one-sixth of the private sector in an unintelligible health-care scheme is not an indication of tied hands; it's a demonstration of unbridled recklessness. So too is dumping unprecedented billions into a liberal wish-list and calling it a stimulus. And so is cooking up financial reform that makes growth impossible and charges responsible banks with the task of bailing out irresponsible ones. The Rout of Obamanomics. In February 2009, I published a commentary in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Reaganomics v. Obamanomics," which pointed out that President Obama's economic policies were exactly the opposite of President Reagan's. I predicted that as a result they would produce exactly the opposite results. Art Laffer has produced a far more sophisticated argument advancing a similar analysis. But the June unemployment report released last Friday [7/2/2010] shows an economy doing much worse at this point than even I expected. A silver platter of
GOP talking points for November. Let's review some tasty silver platter entrees: Endless Zeros. Twenty trillion dollars. That is the estimate of federal indebtedness by 2020. But that $20 trillion is just the federal debt: it does not include $3.4 trillion in current annual spending, nor does it include state and local obligations. Government has no intention of paying off this debt — only of continuing to add to it. What that means is that taxpayers are obligated to service this debt (and whatever is added to it) at prevailing interest rates forever. Heckuva Job, Peter. After accruing a $1.3 trillion deficit and the largest debt in U.S. history, what do you do for an encore? For Peter Orszag, exit was the only option. If ever someone smelled the smoke and knew it was time to leave the burning building, it's the director of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget. Obama approval rating takes dive as he faces anti-business charge. A new poll out Friday [7/9/2010] showed a new benchmark: a majority of Americans now disapprove of Obama's job performance. The Economist/YouGov survey of 1,000 U.S. citizens from July 3 to 6 showed that 52 percent disapprove of Obama's job performance. And Obama's approval in the poll was at 43 percent, a concerning number for the White House. Gallup's daily tracking poll, which averages all polls over the last three days, showed Obama Friday at 44 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval. Obama throws out baby + bathwater: Re: 'Barack Obama: The great jobs killer'. The government can force people to pay taxes on their employees, and even to buy them health insurance, but it can't force them to offer jobs to anyone. As long as federal policy makes business owners afraid to hire additional workers, unemployment will remain at unacceptably high levels in Nevada and elsewhere throughout the U.S. Green Jobs Don't Exist in a Free Market. A large part of Obama's $786 billion stimulus bill was devoted to green or renewable energy projects. Obama and his environmentalist hordes convinced Congress that the money would be used to create an army of home weatherizers, wind-turbine factory jobs and other employment opportunities that would help put to work the nearly 8 million people who have lost their jobs during the recession. "We know the jobs of the 21st century will be created in developing alternative energy," Obama proudly proclaimed. This, of course, from a man who doesn't know the difference between price and earnings or overhead and profit. Well, he doesn't know shineola about the economy and job creation either. Economic lesson number one: Government regulations do not create jobs. Private industry serving the wants and needs of the consumers create jobs. Period. Obama's 'Killing Great American Jobs' Machine. [Scroll down] [America] appears to have lost its ability to create the millions of jobs that will be needed to keep pace with the yearly flood of new job-seekers entering the workforce. The reason, economists and other critics say, is the administration's anti-capitalist, anti-free enterprise, anti-free market policies that are impeding investment and venture capital formation, punishing U.S. businesses with higher taxes and new mandates like Obamacare, cap-and-trade energy fees and draconian financial regulations coupled with threats to let the Bush tax cuts expire that are already having a preemptive job-killing effect on payrolls and economic growth. Carter Country. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the world can no longer depend on the U.S. to drive the global economy. Yes, that's the demoralizing sound of the White House spreading more malaise. And the Voice of the Liar is Heard in our Land. The [Obamacare] bill will break states. It will break companies. It will put a boot down on the head of the American economy. Which is exactly its goal. The Obama Administration is not interested in economic prosperity, it is interested in a government takeover. People who can make their own way and pay their own bills, are poor candidates for a nanny state. No, the people have to be robbed, browbeaten, left helpless, and only then will they agree to have the chains put around their necks. Or least stop fighting against them as hard. King Barry's Big Adventure. When one looks carefully at the company with which King Barry surrounds himself, and the Progressive Marxist agenda they share, it's entirely reasonable to be not only suspicious, but genuinely afraid of their collective capacity for inflicting a crippling and permanent level of damage to our glorious republic. This would have to include the possibility of outright destruction. In fact, many observers would argue that is precisely the goal. Obama's Destruction Of Capitalism. Obama's administration is rapidly replacing capitalism, markets and free enterprise with socialism and total government control. In Marxist theory socialism is a stage on the way to the overthrow of capitalism and establishment of communism. It's doing this by finding examples of capitalist 'failures' and using them to justify government regulation and takeover. Obama's Latest Shakedown. President Obama's oil spill speech revealed, once again, how stunningly shameless he is. This relentless ideologue is not even marginally competent at masking his ongoing crusade to apply a wrecking ball to every sector of our economy and remake it in his own image. Obama Has a "Boot on the Throat" Of the Global Economy. [Scroll down] This illustrates one of the greatest tragedies of the Obama presidency: our President's harshest, most angry, most aggressive words are usually aimed at free enterprise. It's difficult to imagine our President ever claiming to have a "boot on the throat" of Islamic terrorists, or Iran, or North Korea. Yet even dating back to his earliest days on the presidential campaign trail, he has often spoken words of vitriol towards American businesses, including pharmaceutical companies, car manufacturers, and — yes — oil companies. The Reason for Constitutional Rights. The story is becoming an old one with the Obama Administration. AIG executives receive a lawful bonus, and Democrat leaders in Congress snarl and warn that a special income tax surcharge awaits them, if they do not return the bonuses. Businessmen are treated like criminals, even when their actions are wholly legal. What these Democrats are doing, although they are loath to admit it, is grossly violate the constitutional rights of executives at BP or at AIG or some other "fat cats" routinely excoriated by the left. 'Stimulus' or not, Obama seeks new spending. Though he didn't call it a second stimulus, President Obama this weekend asked Congress to pass legislation that amounts to much the same thing: extending some of the first stimulus bill's programs and adding some of the White House's new priorities such as small-business lending and a tax on big banks. Obama and Oil:
Greasing America's Decline. President Obama has consistently pursued environmental policies
designed to forward his socialist agenda at the expense of American economic power. Very few, if any,
of Obama's environmental policies have anything to do with the environment, but instead, they all serve as a
cover for economic sabotage. As an example, the original cap-and-trade legislation favored by
President Obama would have reduced U.S. GDP by $9 trillion and lowered emissions past a point where no
industrial nation could endure. Stimulus II means more cash for Dems. Unemployment among government workers last month was 3.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, meaning government workers are about three times less likely to be jobless than the general population. From this disparity, Democrats have somehow concluded that what we really need is a greater disparity. How else can anyone explain their plan for an additional $50 billion bailout to prevent further job losses among state and local government workers? Obama is Killing Private Business. Obama's Interior Department, using lies to justify its offshore drilling moratorium, is already in the process of killing off as many private-sector jobs as any number of jobs bills could create. Meanwhile, we're bailing out state and local governments that spent too much in boom times and got too cozy with their unionized workforces. The problem: At some point, the host organism is going to die. We can't all work for the government, because someone has to produce something useful for government to tax. Alinskys in Action. As Congress considers the Democrats' unprecedented legislative assault on Wall Street, radical leftists say the bad economy gives them new opportunities to push America even farther down the road to socialism. "The banking crisis is the next big thing," said George Goehl, executive director of the Chicago-based group National People's Action. Our Pro-Business President. The big political news out of Washington yesterday is that the White House wants you to know that President Obama is not antibusiness. That reassuring word comes in a dispatch from Politico.com quoting senior White House aides that they have launched "a coordinated campaign to push back against the perception" that its agenda is hostile to business. How in the world did anyone get that idea? Obama's deficit deception: Barack Obama claims Obamacare is necessary to keep the country solvent. This is a strange assertion coming from the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history. America's Predicament: According to the Obama administration America's public debt will exceed 100 percent of GDP in the next fiscal year. History shows that most countries whose debt exceeds this mark are rarely able to control it. This level of indebtedness usually leads to currency debasement. Barack Obama's Total Eclipse for America. President Obama's $1.6 trillion deficit for this year, following his $1.4 trillion deficit for last year, has been sucking the capital investment needed to create jobs and economic growth right out of the economy into runaway government spending and government employment. In fact, total gross federal borrowing this year and last is much higher. This and the threatening prospect of what lies ahead is what has delayed and slowed recovery so seriously so far. Now it appears that Obama's policies, hearkening all the way back to FDR's 1930s, may be leading us into another Great Depression, in fact. Barack Obama = Jimmy Carter? The president believes that government's proper role is to intervene in and usurp control of America's economy. From that belief Obama has brought us the government takeovers of General Motors and Chrysler; government bailouts of Wall Street, banks, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; government stimulus spending on a massive scale; government federalization of health care, impending government tax increases on income, capital gains, dividends and small businesses; and government debt of officially more than $13-trillion — a growing figure that the International Monetary Fund says will surpass the nation's gross domestic product in 2012. Halt the Assault. The Free Enterprise Alliance is leading the campaign to Halt the Assault on America's free enterprise system. The Free Enterprise Alliance is the action arm for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and other advocates of limited government, open and fair (and intense) competition, and the economically sound principles upon which America was built. Obama's voodoo economics. President Obama hyped Friday's job-report numbers, claiming a slight drop in the unemployment rate as evidence that things were "moving in the right direction." The numbers hardly represent good news as Mr. Obama continues to ignore the creeping indications that his debt-fueled economic policies are hurling the country toward a historic collapse. Don't be fooled by Obama's 'incompetence'. It is a tremendous mistake to think that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will help convince Americans of Barack Obama's incompetence. Obama's true agenda is so insidious that even his inability to handle a crisis serves his greater strategy. And that strategy has a name: it is the Cloward-Piven Strategy. ... If the oil spill in the Gulf manages to destroy the fishing and tourist industries in that region, shut down oil drilling, raise the price of oil and of food all over the country, and bring more and more Americans to a financial breaking point and thus dependent on food stamps and other government programs, Obama and Co. will smile and nod at one another as the Cloward-Piven strategy hums merrily along. Murdering America. We are all witnesses to the crime; the deliberate murder of the United States of America. In just under a year and a half, the White House in collusion with the Democrats in Congress has conspired not to "save" America from a financial crisis they created, but to kill America through a series of multi-billion dollar "bailouts" that have two things in common. (1) They did not work and (2) they have created levels of national debt beyond anything in the entire previous history of the nation. $13,050,826,460,886.97. Seen on the "debt clock" in Times Square, that number seems little more than an abstraction, something almost impossible to process. But think about it this way: If you earned one dollar every second, it would take you 416,000 years to earn enough money to pay it off. Politicians Are Kicking The Can Right Off The Cliff. The desire of politicians to obtain instant electoral gratification at the expense of long-term financial security has reached epidemic proportions. In fact, this "party now, pay later preference" has pushed the global economy to the brink of what could be a broader, deeper and more sustained fiscal collapse than anything we have witnessed in recent years — perhaps ever. Buy Socialism Now, Pay for It Later. One of the more stunning bits of insanity to come out of 2008 is that during an economic crisis caused by "Buy Now, Pay Later" fiscal planning, a candidate whose entire economic philosophy was built on "Buy Now, Pay Later" was voted in. The difference is that Obama's "Buy Now, Pay Later" plans weren't there for capitalism, but to fund socialism. And now with the national debt tripled, and his approval rating lower than a skunk's at an aromatherapy session, he's pushing out ObamaCare's "benefits" ahead of schedule. Past Deficits vs. Obama's Deficits in Pictures. [Scroll down] Now the President is apparently arguing that his trillions of dollars in additional deficit spending are needed to "invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century." This is statement goes to the core of the fundamental difference between leftists and conservatives in this country: liberals belief economic growth comes from wise investments by government experts; conservatives believe that economic growth stems from millions of Americans having the freedom to make their own economic decisions everyday. How to Cripple the Free Economy: The socialist policies implemented by the Obama administration and the Democrat leadership undermine America's economic prosperity and prolong the misery for millions of companies and workers. Despite passing multi-trillion dollar government tax and spend initiatives, numerous bailouts of failed businesses, and repeated extensions of government benefits, Americans are suffering and the economy is languishing. Impeach Obama Campaign: How long must we wait... how long should we sit back and permit Barack Hussein Obama to rip apart the fabric of this country before we take action? Are you terrified at Barack Obama's campaign to change our country into a third-world nation? Are you willing to sit back and watch Obama bulldoze our great nation? Are you willing to let him construct a totalitarian regime... fascism, socialism, Obamaism... take your pick? A New Direction. Obama intends to punish productivity and reward laziness to the point that we become an egalitarian society (where everyone has an equal amount of stuff) rather than a society of equal opportunity. You've seen ObamaCare. Our country cannot survive this hideously expensive monstrosity. But there's more to come. Cap-and-Trade is on the way. Unions will become more powerful. And then there's the Value Added Tax. More about the VAT. Obama the Warrior. To speak of [President Obama] as a warrior is the height of absurdity. Yet in some sense, he actually is a warrior — not in any military context, but rather in the classic parlance of the progressive movement. He is an aggressive, motivated, and dedicated soldier in the battle to remake America into a collectivist social welfare state. He struggles mightily to undermine the Constitution, destroy free-market capitalism, subvert traditional culture, and weaken the sovereign nature of the American republic. Obamanomics 101. I am not an economist; but if you tell me that private businesses' incomes have gotten smaller while government-provided benefits have risen, you may not be able to call that a lot of things — but you can definitely call it redistribution of wealth. That is a fancy way of saying socialism. Death of the Postmodernist Dream. In just a few months the brave new dream world as we knew it has died — but with a whimper, not a bang. ... The Greek meltdown — with Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain on the brink — has shown that European socialism does not work. Bankruptcy, not politics, is the final arbiter: Individuals, firms, and nations either buy particular bonds or they don't. And a nation like Greece, in turn, either pays what it has borrowed or it doesn't. All the op-eds in the New York Times cannot change that fact. Voters fed up with spendthrift Obama. The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress have thrown caution to the wind by throwing money every which way, inundating the country in red ink. The rescue of the big banks, justified by the necessity of preventing financial collapse, morphed into saving General Motors and Chrysler, spending billions of the taxpayers' dollars for the expediency of protecting union jobs. The Bankrupting of America. The American public feels it is drowning in red ink. It is dismayed and even outraged at the burgeoning national deficits, unbalanced state and local budgets, and accounting that often masks the extent of indebtedness. There is a mounting sense that taxpayers are being taken for an expensive ride by public-sector unions. The extraordinary benefits the unions have secured for their members are going to be harder and harder to pay. More about labor unions. Sugarcoating Socialism the French Way. [Scroll down] John Kerry and Barack Obama, and their many supporters, have spent decades attempting to reshape America in the image of France. Now, with the passage of Obamacare and increased federal control of the financial, automotive, and energy sectors of the economy, they are close to succeeding. With the passage of just a few more pieces of legislation — cap-and-trade and the nationalization of 401(k) accounts among them — the transformation of America into a European-style welfare state will be all but complete. Buy Socialism Now, Pay for It Later. One of the more stunning bits of insanity to come out of 2008 is that during an economic crisis caused by "Buy Now, Pay Later" fiscal planning, a candidate whose entire economic philosophy was built on "Buy Now, Pay Later" was voted in. The difference is that Obama's "Buy Now, Pay Later" plans weren't there for capitalism, but to fund socialism. And now with the national debt tripled, and his approval rating lower than a skunk's at an aromatherapy session, he's pushing out ObamaCare's "benefits" ahead of schedule. Obamaitis: Spend more, raise taxes. Earlier this year, for example, Congress increased the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion, thus giving the federal government a higher credit limit. The increased limit lets Congress spend and borrow beyond even the current budget deficit, which is now headed for an all-time high of $1.56 trillion. Going further into the red is inconsistent with President Obama's professed desire to reduce the federal deficit. But when he appointed members of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, he and Congress agreed that the commission's report would not be due until December — also conveniently after the midterm elections. Obama Hypocrisy on Small Businesses and Jobs. After 15 months in office, Obama has yet to make any good decisions to help small business or create jobs. Instead, additional levels of Obama Administration bureaucracy stifle innovation and burden American entrepreneurs with silly new rules buried in thousands of pages of legislation. In short, Obama is killing the American growth machine. Evidence of Obama's assault on business, capital and innovation is everywhere. Obama uses Grecian Formula: My big fat Greek deficit. [Scroll down] While America's red ink has yet to reach Greek levels, we are headed in that dangerous direction. According to the World Bank, Greece's external debt stands at $582 billion, an amount equal to about 170 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). By contrast, the external debt of the United States is $13.8 trillion. With our larger economy, that debt constitutes 96.5 percent of GDP — a lower but still troubling number. Cry Treason! Let it be said that probably all presidents have been called treasonous by their political opponents. A growing body of popular opinion, however, is beginning to regard the actions of Barack Obama as treason because they coalesce into a pattern that suggests a deliberate effort to undermine national security and the economy. The liberties we take for granted, privacy, freedom of speech, and others are seen to be in jeopardy. Obama Madoff with Our Tax Dollars. What we have in Barack Obama is an American president pushing trillion-dollar financial policies that exhibit many of the same characteristics of Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Similar to Madoff's powerful elite and business establishment connections, President Obama has many powerful and loyal connections in both business and government, many of whom are clearly overlooking obvious signs of trouble, with some even turning a blind eye to the facts regarding the president's financial policies. Cap and Trade — Taxing our Way to Bankruptcy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has declared (April 28) that he is making global warming the Senate's top priority. With legislation likely to impose monumental costs on the nation's economy while accomplishing no real-world climate benefits, this is a fitting conclusion for a Congress intent on bankrupting the nation through sheer clumsiness and ignorance. Global temperatures have not risen for more than a decade, confounding alarmists' computer models. During the entire 20th century, as the planet recovered from the abnormally cold Little Ice Age, temperatures rose only 0.6 degrees Celsius. Did someone mention Cap and Trade? We Are Out of Money. Today may be terrible, but tomorrow is going to be much worse, at least as measured by such metrics as deficits, debt, and entitlement spending. In an April speech, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke laid out the misery that awaits us. "The arithmetic is, unfortunately, quite clear," he said. "To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above." Obama's Profits Allergy. Raised and mentored at the feet of capitalist-hating leftists, Obama repeatedly reveals a visceral distaste for profits. And I don't mean so-called "excess" or "ill-gotten" profits only, but just plain old profits. Obama thinks, like a Marxist, that profits are "surplus value" stolen by capitalists from laborers who produce the wealth. He is obviously so deeply steeped in Marxist indoctrination that he believes that prices are only high because of profits. In his static view, only a government-controlled system can cut out those evil profits and maintain reasonable prices. Barack Obama: Enemy Within. I've been reluctant to climb aboard the "Obama wants to destroy America" conspiracy train. I'm no longer reticent to do so. As Newt Gingrich recently observed, we know this administration to be "far and away the most radical administration in American history." Although he may not seek to destroy America outright, we can only conclude — based upon his grossly irrational and irresponsible governance — that Obama remains determined to destroy America both as we know her and as our Founding Fathers intended her. Barack Obama, America's Selective Salary Policeman. President Obama spoke the most revealing and clarifying 10 words of his control-freak administration this week: "I think at some point you have made enough money." Peddling financial regulatory reform at a rally in Quincy, Ill., Obama then ad-libbed peculiar definitions of what he called the "American way" and the profit motive. Obama: Stuck on Begrudge. Off the teleprompter for a few seconds while stumping for financial reform recently in Illinois, President Obama had this to say about money, incomes and success: "Now, what we're doing, I want to be clear, we're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." "Enough Money". One of the many shallow statements that sound good — if you don't stop and think about it — is that "at some point, you have made enough money." The key word in this statement, made by President Barack Obama recently, is "you." There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think that they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that is starting down a very slippery slope. The President Says You've Got Enough Money. In a recent speech, President Obama declared, "at some point, I think you've got enough money." And it's what he thinks, not what you think, that matters. That goes double for what he thanks about your money. There lies — bare as can be — the irrefutable evidence of the president's true ideology (socialism or worse) and of just how serious a threat he is to this nation. National Debt Soars Past $13 Trillion. The U.S. national debt has passed the $13 trillion mark, according to USDebtClock.org, an independent website that tracks the real-time growth of U.S. revenues and spending. How Obama Himself Made More Than 'Enough Money': In defending his administration's efforts at putative financial reform, President Obama suggested a ceiling, perhaps government-imposed, for Wall Street executives. Although he did not begrudge them income that is "fairly earned," he added ominously, "I do think that at a certain point, you've made enough money." The president may be projecting guilt from his own excellent adventures in greed. Cap-and-Trade Treason. Just as the Obama administration moved swiftly to acquire ownership of General Motors and Chrysler, to take over insurance giant AIG, control one sixth of the nation's economy through the healthcare act, and is now seeking to expand the regulation of Wall Street, Cap-and-Trade will ensure the destruction of the nation as manufacturing flees to other parts of the world. Obama's Salary Cap. During a two-day swing through Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, the president went off teleprompter and blundered into another Joe the Plumber moment, that unguarded instant during the 2008 campaign in which he told a potential small-business owner that he planned to spread the wealth around. Now Who's Afraid Of The S Word? How dare you use the S word? they gasped in 2008 when we ran a series about Barack Obama titled "The Audacity Of Socialism." But now, more Americans than not think that's how our future is spelled. NYT/CBS Poll: 52% Say Obama Moving America Towards Socialism. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that a majority of Americans, 52 percent, think the policies of President Barack Obama are moving the United States toward socialism. Published April 14, the poll surveyed the political, racial, and social opinions of both the general pubic and self-described members of the tea party movement. Ruled by Children. It is hard to shake the notion that Americans have voted a lot of children to serve in Congress and the greatest child of all, Barack Obama, to be our president. Who else but children would continue to enact new programs that "entitle" Americans to receive all manner of services for which there is no money? Hannity's Right: Obama Is a Socialist. This is the plain truth. Obama is a socialist. Merriam-Webster defines socialism as "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods." A socialist is "one who advocates or practices socialism." Obama, for example, practiced socialism with General Motors. Last year, he directed the government to take 60 percent ownership of GM. Financial District workers can't bear to watch. Wall Street worker Steven Cohen didn't waste his time listening to Obama's speech to the financial industry Thursday [4/22/2010]. He knew exactly what message the President was going to deliver, and thinks it's all wrong. "Why would I watch his speech?" the 54-year-old real estate professional said. "The man is hurting the job creation engine that makes New York City run. "I have better things to do with my time." The President is delusional. How Dumb Does He Think They Are? Does Obama seriously not understand that most voters — not those who show up for his rallies, but voters of normal competence — are well aware of the tax increases in Obamacare, the tax increases in cap and trade, the tax increases when the Bush tax cuts expire next year, and the looming VAT tax that will impact every American family? The New Front in the War on Wealth. The United States under the current governing regime continues to move toward a powerful central government. As a step in that direction, the Congress and the White House recently granted the Internal Revenue Service more police power to not only collect taxes, but within that process, to negate the legal rights of the people to petition the courts and to control the behavior of American and non-American taxpayers. Debt's All, Folks. Federal programs grow like Paul Bunyan and live far beyond their usefulness. There is simply no incentive to cut programs or staff, which would signal loss of power and prestige. Government managers face no profit motive or expectant stockholders. Businesses and households cut back if they overspend. The government just comes up with more ways to tax us, and in increasingly sneaky fashion. Have you looked at your phone bill lately? Getting Gas Wrong: In an economy full of problems there are still a few high points. One of them, as you may have noticed if you pay attention to your utility bills, is that natural gas prices are relatively low. ... We shouldn't have to worry about this sector of the economy, but there is a dark cloud looming on the horizon in the form of yet another environmental initiative that the Obama administration is pushing forward, one that has the potential to cut domestic natural gas production, cost us jobs and revenue and force energy prices upward. Fox News Poll: 79% Say U.S. Economy Could Collapse. The latest Fox News poll finds that 79 percent of voters think it's possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of Democrats (72 percent), Republicans (84 percent) and independents (80 percent). Obama's Campaign Against Success: "For 250 years, America has been known throughout the world as the place where anyone could work hard, scrape together a little money and invest in a great idea," the Trends writers observe. "But a creeping kind of governmental interference has seriously threatened this ideal," they argue. In other words, the Trends writers continue, "the very bedrock concept underlying what's typically called 'the American Dream' is threatened by these measures." National Debt Up $2 Trillion on Obama's Watch. The latest posting from the Treasury Department shows the National Debt has increased over $2 trillion since President Obama took office. The debt now stands at $12.6 trillion. On the day Mr. Obama took office it was $10.6 trillion. $12,670,895,780,689.20. The headline above provides the exact amount of outstanding public debt as of Tuesday, according to the latest available figures from the U.S. Treasury. By the time you read this, that figure will have increased by $17,338,324,977. Making the Housing Crisis Worse. The Obama administration has announced a new plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure due to under-employment and unemployment. Instead of having the government create an economic climate which would actually create private-sector permanent jobs and thus lower unemployment, the government wants to require lenders to cut or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for these homeowners. Spoiling the Spoilsport. My theory is this: the government has to really screw up bad to choke off the market to near-death. Think Hoover and FDR combined. The market, like a living creature, hates to die. Bush and Obama together were only about 10% to 20% of Hoover and FDR together. So we got only a Great Recession (4% GDP decline), not a Great Depression (25% GDP decline). The market is gasping for breath, and Obama's shoe is still on its neck, but it's alive. Underworked Americans hit 20.3 percent. Mr. Obama's profligate policies have destroyed vast amounts of wealth, and all there is to show from the stimulus is massive debt. The president seems to have no notion that the money he spends has to come from someplace. That someplace is the American taxpayer, who is getting squeezed to pay higher taxes while working less. Note to Doctors: Now I'm "Entitled" To Your Services. Vice President Joe Biden did it again. He reiterated what was once a central theme of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and what has been a central tenet of our government since Mr. Obama became President. And the idea is, simply, this: when government takes wealth away from certain individuals and groups, and gives it to certain other individuals and groups, such actions are NOT to be called "economic re-distribution." Such actions are to be described as "fairness." Sallie Mae Blames 2,500 Layoffs on Obama's Student Loan Overhaul. Powerhouse student loan provider Sallie Mae says layoffs are imminent as a result of President Obama's new student loan overhaul. The ObamaCare tax hike that loses five times what it brings in. We turn to the Wall Street Journal for the math on what it will cost to raise taxes on corporations' retiree prescription drug coverage. This is the provision that has caused several corporations to take markdowns recently. The bottom line: by closing this "loophole" — which was originally created to dissuade companies from dumping retirees' prescription costs into Medicare Part D — the government could lose more than five times what it brings in. Debt disaster dead ahead. When the credit rating agency Moody's announced recently that the United States had moved "substantially" closer to losing its AAA bond rating, it largely ran as a wire brief, buried in newspaper business sections. But this obscure announcement may one day be regarded as the beginning of the end of American prosperity. With health bill, Obama has sown the seeds of a budget crisis. A "budget crisis" is not some minor accounting exercise. It's a wrenching political, social and economic upheaval. Large deficits and rising debt — the accumulation of past deficits — spook investors, leading to higher interest rates on government loans. The higher rates expand the budget deficit and further unnerve investors. To reverse this calamitous cycle, the government has to cut spending deeply or raise taxes sharply. Lower spending and higher taxes in turn depress the economy and lead to higher unemployment. Not pretty. With Every Intervention, Concerns Build Over Size of Federal Government. Health care. The auto industry. Real estate. Wall Street. As the Obama administration increases regulation and pumps up taxpayer aid in these sectors and beyond, critics say the president is expanding the federal government to unprecedented levels. CBO report: Debt will rise to 90% of GDP. President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday [3/25/2010]. Here's what Obama's 'necessarily skyrocket' plan looks like. Remember when President Obama said his anti-global warming program meant "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket"? Well, he wasn't kidding one bit. He and his environmental extremist friends want to force the rest of us to use less energy and to get what energy we do use from "green" or "renewable" sources. Want to see that approach applied on the local level? How about a 37 percent increase in your monthly light bill? Chicago Does Socialism. The president promises a state fix for health care; then student loans; and next energy. There are to be subsidies, credits, and always new entitlements for every problem, all requiring hordes of fresh technocrats and Civil Service employees. Like a perpetual teenager, who wants and buys but never produces, the president is focused on the acquisitive and consumptive urges, never on the productive — as in how all his magnanimous largesse is to be paid for by someone else. Transforming America: The fiscal train wreck is happening sooner than we thought, a leading bond market trader says. Which is why investors are now telling the U.S. government it will have to pay more to borrow money. ... The passage of the health care bill has focussed investor attention on the runaway deficit situation, and its long-term consequences. The deficit, which ran to around 3 percent of GDP in George W. Bush's final year, is now exceeding 10 percent. Obamacare Dystopia. [Scroll down] In one of a bazillion little clauses in a 2,000-page bill your legislators didn't bother reading (because, as Representative Conyers explained, he wouldn't understand it even if he did), Congress voted to subject the 28 percent tax benefit to the regular, good, ol', American-as-apple-pie corporate tax rate of 35 percent. For the purposes of comparison, Sweden's corporate tax rate is 26.3 percent, and Ireland's is 12.5 percent. But just because America already has the second-highest corporate tax in the OECD is no reason why we can't keep going until it's double Sweden's and quadruple Ireland's. Obamacare's Consequence: A tarnished presidency. The liberal line is that President Obama has secured his place in history by signing into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. And secured it he has. Henceforth Obama will be remembered as the man who accelerated America's mad dash toward bankruptcy. Without Firing a Shot? During the height of the Cold War, some feared the communists would take over the United States without firing a shot. Could it be that nearly a half-century later, we're on the verge of that becoming a reality? President Barack Obama and Democratic congressmen won their respective elections — no shots were fired — and they are feverishly attempting to dismantle this nation's institutions, brick by brick. Does Obama Employ the Marxist Doctrine of Creative Destruction? Having watched Barack Obama's sole economic recovery strategy of spending hand-over-fist to "heal" our economic malaise and rampant deficits, we must ask if his theory is a cipher for the mythic phoenix? Is Barack a classical Marxist seeking to fix a broken society via torching our economy to ashes, confident it will arise again, healed by socialism and communism? During a turbulently reckless period he seeks a massive government-directed health care bill. Obama now demands wild expenditures on top of record deficits, in the midst of a prolonged recession, against record unemployment. So, what other motivation does such illogical decision making suggest? The Democrats Must Be Stopped. There are several reasons why some people still don't understand the fiscal disaster that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are visiting on our nation. The first is the sheer enormity of the numbers involved. It is hard for anyone really to comprehend the difference between "billion" and "trillion." Obama: Serving Ambitions, Not Citizens. This recession isn't going to end as long as Obama is in office. The recession is an essential part of the "Progressive" plan to transform the foundation of the country from capitalism to socialism. ... Obama's healthcare plan does nothing to reduce the costs, but instead attempts to subsidize them with taxpayers' money which will only make the problem worse. Backing Losers, Shackling Winners: Obama-Style Industrial Policy. Team Obama seems intent on selecting the weakest players to represent the American economy in global markets. The administration's tax and regulatory policies handicap our finest industries while trying to promote others that may never be competitive without government subsidies. At times it seems that this administration wants American industry to fail. The Real Tea Party Story: Community Builders vs. Community Organizers. Toward the goal of destroying Americans' ideas of community-building, [Saul] Alinsky taught his organizers to dissuade the people from believing that there was any hope outside a mother state. He taught his organizers to intentionally and continually sow discontent with the "status quo"... Now that we've had a year of a proud Alinskyite community organizer as president, it's not at all hard to see that Obama is much, much closer to being a "fascistic demagogue" than he is to being the grand conciliator for whom his befuddled followers fell into willing sway. Obama Stimulating a Marxist Revolution Using Taxpayer Money. A Marxist group that has demanded the "destruction" of the U.S. and issued a call "to bring this government down" is the recipient of stimulus funds from the Obama American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This same group, the Brecht Forum, has also called for the complete takeover of insurance companies and farms in America. Obama budget spends more in each of the next ten years than the last one. President Obama promised a turn toward fiscal discipline in his State of the Union Address. But his new budget doesn't just plan on more deficit spending for a year, followed by austerity. Rather, it actually increases deficits in each of the next ten years over what he'd planned for in last year's budget. Obamacare Declares War On Growth Capital. U.S. companies are gasping for cash like beached fish fruitlessly flapping their gills. Rather than help these firms find financial oxygen, President Obama would accelerate their asphyxiation. Specifically, Obama's February 22 health reform proposal would sic the 2.9 percent employer-employee Medicare tax onto "income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, and rents." This spanking-new investment-income tax would slam individuals who make more than $200,000 and north of $250,000 for married couples. If the S-word fits, Obama should wear it. I am honestly confused. Why is it not permissible for us to call President Obama a socialist? Why do so many with a media platform dodge the question when asked point-blank if Obama is a socialist? While obviously expected by those in the mainstream media who look upon Obama as an oracle, it's disappointing and disingenuous when Republican "leaders" refuse to describe the president as a socialist. Maybe some in the GOP and the mainstream media simply don't know or understand the definition. The Keynesian Stimulus Dogma. Most Americans don't believe that the way for Washington to address its gargantuan debt is to increase deficit spending and go deeper into debt. ... Stimulus plans haven't worked, won't work, and we can't afford them. We are already in great economic danger from deficit spending. A policy to plunge us even deeper into the debt abyss is kamikaze economics. The 'I Am Not George Bush' Policy. George Bush, a purported conservative, ran up deficits reaching in aggregate $2.5 trillion; therefore I, Barack Obama, a liberal, can legitimately exceed that figure by a factor of three or four. That seems to be the thinking of the present administration. How Does One Spell Government Bankruptcy? O-B-A-M-A. If any chief executive officer in the United States of America presented his board with a budget that was one-third unfunded, he would be fired and tossed out of the boardroom immediately. President Obama recently revealed a $3.8 trillion budget for FY2011 that has a $1.3 trillion deficit. This budget short fall represents $4,000 for every man, woman and child in America. It is equivalent to a business CEO presenting his board of directors with a financial plan to have a 34 percent loss. Planning to Fail. The economy seems to have settled in somewhat from the disaster of 2008. Every indication is the economy is poised for a rebound — provided the right trigger is in place. In the past, the trigger that has always got the economy back on track has been tax cuts, by Ronald Reagan, George Bush and John Kennedy — presidents from both sides of the aisle. And just when the economy is primed for that trigger, President Obama is going in the exact opposite direction: it is as if he is sabotaging the efforts of the American people. Obama Believes He Has the Secret Blueprint to the Universe. There must be a simple explanation for President Obama's stubborn refusal to admit mistakes or change his failed far-left policies. ... In a nutshell, what Obama did his first year was rampantly spend taxpayer money to "solve" our financial woes by staggering government investment. Pointedly, Barack is spending borrowed money, to be repaid later, to solve current problems. This controversial fiscal policy is called "Keynesian Economics." How to spell Obama energy policy: 'D-e-l-a-y'. The need to develop America's bountiful fossil fuel resources will only intensify as our economy grows and those of emerging world economic powers like China and India similarly expand. But President Obama is moving national energy policy in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of aiding exploration and development of available fossil fuel resources, the administration appears to be doing everything possible to slow or even stop it. I Was a Teenage President. The Obama administration resembles nothing so much as a big house in the suburbs where the parents are away for the weekend. In the absence of any responsible person to take charge, the Teenager-in-Chief is letting the rest of the adolescents run wild. Our King of Big Government Suggests We Need Another New Agency. What is the matter with that man in our White House? Will he ever stop trying to spend every nickel and dime that Americans have, including our savings that we worked hard for to ease our retirement years? He acts like a poor kid that suddenly comes into some money and it is burning a hole in his pocket to get spent. Obama's Lack of Business Sense: Asked how how and why small business loans would help small business, President Obama replied: "If [small businesses] can get the bank loans to boost their payroll... they will do so." He further claimed that in his "travels" he has spoken with small business owners nationwide, and they see optimism and new customers. ... [O]ur President advocates taking loans for the purpose of boosting payroll — in the middle of an economic draught. It just makes no sense. There's a simple explanation: Obama and his team are incompetent. Like Toyota, Obama's Accelerator Pedal Is Stuck. As he professes to want to reduce the dangerous budget deficit, Obama brings to mind the hapless engineers at Toyota who find that their vehicles accelerate whether or not the driver wants them to. It appears that no matter how hard Obama jams on the brakes with his new-found commitment to deficit reduction — having already almost doubled the deficit in one year — the level of red ink just seems inexorably to rise. Reasonably Sane Sustainability: Something that is "unsustainable" cannot be sustained. That is what "unsustainable" means. Our federal budget is on an unsustainable path. Therefore, it will not be sustained. Our only choice is the manner in which it will not be sustained. One set of choices would lead to one or more "crashes," or bad endings: federal debt default, hyper-inflation, massive and deep economic recession, riots, chaos. The Obama Problem: It's the People, Stupid! In order to bring about his "social change" (AKA "destruction of We-the-People"), Obama must destroy every aspect of the American way of life. Since Obama took office he, his mentors and followers have been making tremendous headway. Via a series of multi-billion-dollar faux 'stimulus' packages and other anti-America bills, Obama and his Democrat-run Congress have virtually bankrupted the USA. Senate OKs debt ceiling hike to $14.3T. Senate Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion increase in the federal debt limit Thursday [1/28/2010], seeking to push off another politically painful debt vote until after the midterm elections. President Obama Signs Law Raising Public Debt Limit from $12.4 Trillion to $14.3 Trillion. Behind closed doors and with no cameras present, President Obama signed into law Friday afternoon [2/12/2010] the bill raising the public debt limit from $12.394 trillion to $14.294 trillion. Pay-go gets passed, then it gets bypassed. The ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and Democrats are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda. A New Contract with America. There is a strong tide running through American politics right now, made only stronger yesterday [2/1/2010] with the president's submission of a $3.8 trillion budget that has a $1.56 trillion deficit. If you think our debt's bad now ... On day one of his vow to take "meaningful steps to rein in our debt," Barack Obama asked Congress to freeze portions of discretionary domestic spending. ... On Day Two, taking a break from the rigors of austerity, he was in Tampa, Fla., promising $8 billion for high-speed rail projects there and in a dozen other places. Four days later, he released a $3.8 trillion fiscal year 2011 budget that would add another $1.3 trillion to the national debt. It's Official: Obama's Spending Today Dwarfs FDR's Depression-Era Spending. Between 1934, the first fiscal year in which Roosevelt and a Democrat congressional majority had full control of the federal budget, and 1941, the year the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, FDR never spent more than 12.0 percent of the GDP. In 1938, FDR spent as little as 7.7 percent of GDP. According to the budget tables released by the White House Monday, Obama will spend 25.4 percent, 25.1 percent and 23.2 percent in the three years remaining in his term. An Obama-Sized Government. By all accounts, federal fiscal policy has now run completely off the rails. Budgetary pressures have been building for years because of unconstrained entitlement spending and Washington's unchecked appetite for ever-more activist government. But what had been a chronic problem that all involved knew needed corrective action has now become, in the Obama years, a full-fledged disaster in the making. Ponzi scheme on the Potomac. Federal government spending has grown nearly seven times faster than median income since 1970, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and Office of Management and Budget. At more than $12 trillion, the federal debt is already more than 80 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and growing fast. The federal government's total debt, including unfunded liabilities, means about $600,000 of debt for every U.S. household. Sooner or later, the federal government's scheme will come crashing down, and the loss will be mammoth. Spending America Into Oblivion. [Scroll down] He went on to repeat basically what he had said during his State of the Union Address earlier in the week, "By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program." Heritage's Riedl corrected President Obama on Monday, saying, "This is simply not true. The policies mentioned by President Obama were implemented in the early 2000s. Yet even with all those policies in place, the 2007 budget deficit stood at only $162 billion." Obama's Budget: Fiscal Armegeddon. [Scroll down] Amazingly, with the same sleight of hand that his so-called stimulus "created or saved" imaginary jobs (in non-existent Congressional districts), Obama now claims that federal deficits will begin to magically decline by 2012 — although even his rosiest numbers don't envision annual deficits falling below $1 trillion until after 2020. Where will our national debt be at that point? $24 trillion? What the Obama Budget Reveals. Obama's fiscal 2011 budget, totaling $3.834 trillion, provides more than just details about revenues, expenditures, and deficits. It offers the clearest road map yet as to where the president intends to lead America. What that road map reveals is not very reassuring to those who care about limited government. America's 'Free' Falling Economy. The latest index of economic freedom shows America falling fast, being ranked for the first time as "mostly free." We've fallen behind Canada, and it's look out below. Our accelerating descent into a command-and-control economy with government pulling the strings is taking its toll. Obama Must Know His Spending Yields Bankruptcy, Not Growth. On Jan. 16, 2009 — about a year ago — Obama said: "The first job of my administration is to put people back to work and get our economy moving again. That's why I've moved quickly to work with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an 'American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan' that will immediately jump-start job creation and long-term growth." Obama made similar statements repeatedly. Notice he said "immediately." Here we are a year later at 10 percent unemployment after Obama promised it wouldn't exceed 8 percent. Is anyone holding him accountable for this outrage? The Government's Endless Appetite for Spending. Last December, Congress approved a $290 billion increase of the debt limit to support the government's borrowing through February. This lifted the total amount the federal government can borrow to $12.4 trillion. But today Congress wants to go into even more debt. The Editor says...Please take a moment to recall which party is in control of the Congress while all this is going on. Obama Chooses Christmas Eve as Night of Darkness For Free World. The elephant in our living room is what moseyed in when the mainstream media took a holiday and the mask of President Barack Obama began to crack. How long have we known in our hearts that Obama is not an American? How long have we known that even though he professes to be one, Obama is not a Christian, nor even a Christian sympathizer and that his actions over the last year prove he is not a benevolent president. Obama wants a healthcare bill that is signed, sealed and delivered on Christmas Eve. Obama wants to ruin America and the Free Enterprise system that made America what it is. A Lesson from James Madison About Obamanomics: For those who are surprised by Obama's heavy-handed, big-government, "anti-business" policy proposals, I respectfully ask "why?" Were you watching and listening carefully during the last presidential election cycle? ... In case you missed it, let me assure you — what we know today as "Obamanomics" is quite consistent with the themes and ideas upon which Senator Obama campaigned for the presidency. It's Not the Economy, Stupid! It's National Survival! I don't believe the public has lost faith in Obama over the economy. And the public's angst is about more than just its losing faith in him. The public is scared to death — not about the ebbs and flows of the economy in the short term, but about the very survival of the country — because of the reckless spending policies Obama is deliberately pursuing and the other "elements" of his destructive agenda to remake America in his image — including going soft on terrorism. Socialism's Greatest Lie: Government Can Give You Everything for Free. [Scroll down] It would have been cheaper and simpler for individual taxpayers to see a direct tax hike, instead of the complicated way in which the government moves around money, while the politicians still benefit from covering every angle for a problem that they created. And then of course there's the loan package. If you don't want to raise taxes on anyone, you have to borrow money, which is the Lunatic's MasterCard, because while taxes remain the same, the amount of debt being carried rises, and that debt has to be paid off. Stimulus flop. The ARRA (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) has become one of the spectacular failures of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress. ... America's national security is ultimately tied to the health of the American economy. This Democratic Congress and Administration have purposely allowed our economic decline to accelerate. Obama Taxes Our Patience ... Among Other Things. [Scroll down] How will a tax on 50 huge banks help you, the ordinary Joe or Jane trying to make ends meet? The money collected will not go to you in any way. It will not reduce your tax burden, ease the credit crunch, or lead to the creation of jobs. In fact, it will do just the opposite. As large banks are taxed, they will pass the cost onto clients of all sizes. Obama Rewards Losers, Punishes Winners. President Obama's misbegotten bank tax is precisely the wrong policy at precisely the wrong time. It will wind up backfiring across the board. Why? Because bank consumers and borrowers are the ones who will wind up paying this tax, creating an obstacle to economic recovery. The Undoing of America. As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America's standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun. ... Even a Democrat has to acknowledge the simple logic: America cannot at the same time be the last best hope of earth and increasingly similar to more and more countries. Obama's Game of False Choices: Obama can't come out and say that he's a Marxist-oriented, big-government statist who is recklessly driving our country and traditions into the ground. But he can say he rejects that false choice and that failure is not an option. U.S. in Fiscal Peril with $12.1 Trillion Debt. After $787 billion in stimulus spending and $700 billion in bank bailouts, 2010 is fast shaping up to be the year of the federal budget diet.
Obamacare Bankrupting States. Sen. Ben Nelson's "Cornhusker Kickback" for Nebraska may have given Harry Reid his coveted sixtieth vote, but it comes at a price for the other states, states that are already feeling the hammer of rising Medicaid costs. Just coming to light is a concern that has been giving governors heartburn for months: the fact that states are going to be hit with a monstrous financial burden with the passage of Obamacare, and none are in a position to handle it. Obama Uses Global Warming To Destroy The US Economy. President Obama knows little and cares less about global warming or climate change. It's a means to a political end. He's an arsonist setting fires to save the country, but as it burns he uses extinguishers that we know don't work. He's pursuing a deeply entrenched ideology with help from those who advanced his career as a figurehead for socialism in America. Nation must 'spend our way out of this recession'. President Barack Obama called for a major new burst of federal spending Tuesday, perhaps $150 billion or more, aiming to jolt the wobbly economy into a stronger recovery and reduce painfully persistent double-digit unemployment. Profligate road to perdition. The fat-filled $1.1 trillion appropriations bill Democrats sent President Obama last week is the latest action in a spending spree that is fast becoming the pivotal political issue of the midterm elections. The Democrats' yearlong spending orgy, record $1.4 trillion budget deficits and a $12 trillion national debt have been overshadowed by the economy and jobs, health care reform and other issues. Obama Reducing the Debt? Dream On. Obama and his party simply will not agree to keep their grubby government hands off the estimated $200 billion the banks are going to repay under TARP. ... Obama [has announced] that he intends to intercept a good portion of the debt repayments and spend it on job creation and assistance to certain debtors. I assume we're supposed to be too dense to remember that his stimulus spending to date hasn't created jobs and that most of it hasn't even been used for that purpose. Congress raises debt ceiling to $12.4 trillion. The Senate voted Thursday [12/24/2009] to raise the ceiling on the government debt to $12.4 trillion... Fiddling While Treasury Burns. The spend junkies who inhabit the United States Congress are once again trying to pull a fast one on the American people. Driven by an overpowering urge to feed their insatiable habit, they are plotting to raise the national debt ceiling by an unprecedented amount. The 'Global Imbalances' Myth. As the economic crisis has eased in recent months, a questionable international consensus has emerged: The global economy needs to be rebalanced. "We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth," President Barack Obama said during his Asia trip last month. Senate OKs $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill. The Senate passed on Sunday [12/13/2009] a massive spending bill that wraps up $1.1 trillion of the $3.6 trillion annual budget for fiscal year 2010, which started Oct. 1. The House has already passed identical legislation, and President Obama has indicate he'd sign it. Wake up and smell the debt! There is virtually no voice in the government for cutting back on spending. Instead, under both the recent Bush administration and the Obama administration, spending has ballooned. Bailouts, entitlements, health-care subsidies: it appears that the government has an endless amount of money to give away. But the plain and simple fact is that the government is spending money it doesn't have. The Obama Energy Fiasco. If the president wishes to free America from dependence on foreign oil, he should be encouraging the production of reliable energy supplies in this country. What has he done to encourage more production of coal, oil and gas, and nuclear energy? The answer is that he has done nothing. ... Not only has the president done nothing to promote new supplies of energy, but he has also done much to impede them. The Surprise at Copenhagen. Anyone no longer believing Obama's campaign language of "fundamentally changing the United States" underestimates this man. This is a massive power grab of historical and possibly unconstitutional breadth at a breakneck pace. Card check, health care reform, TARP fund misallocations, the stimulus bill pork-barrel spending, cash for clunkers, the $3.4 billion settlement with the Indian tribes, the financial reform bill, additions to the federal work force amidst the hemorrhaging of jobs in the private sector, and now this... we had better wake up and smell what this team is shoveling. And fast. Federal Employees at the Trough. With last year's U.S. federal deficit of more than $1.4 trillion, it will become increasingly difficult to reduce the government's level of red ink, particularly if the federal government continues to expand. However, it now seems quite obvious that the government employment will continue to expand, especially under a nationalized health care system or once Obama's new Consumer Financial Protection Agency officially becomes part of the government Leviathan. Just The Plan For How Not To Create Jobs. The biggest political issue today and in the 2010 election is that one in six Americans are jobless. The political party that offers a solution has the best chance of victory — but, so far, both parties just don't seem to get it. We are told that the unemployment rate is 10.2%, but that's only part of the problem. When you add discouraged Americans who have quit looking for a job, plus the underemployed (i.e., working only part-time while seeking full-time work), the figure rises to at least 17.5%. $2,000,000,000,000 More in Debt? You Bet. On Thursday, December 10th, congressional Democrats led by Speaker Pelosi put forth legislation to raise the treasury's debt ceiling by nearly $2 [trillion] to $13.9 [trillion]. Pelosi is hastily lining up a vote before the end of the year because the treasury expects the Congress to hit their existing debt ceiling later this month, essentially "maxing" their available credit. Fat City. What are the risks of an exploding U.S. public debt? The Chinese, Japanese and Arabs still buying that debt will begin to suspect they are holding onto paper on which the United States will default, or will cheapen by inflating its currency — as the Germans did in 1923 to avoid paying war reparations. When they do, they will stop buying U.S. debt and start dumping. The Fed will then have to raise interest rates to attract borrowers, throwing the economy into a tailspin. Congress punts problems to 2010. Trying to save Christmas, Congress is setting itself up for one wild Groundhog Day of budget woes come February. The House, anxious to go home, is to begin voting Wednesday on four year-end bills, most of which share one thing in common: a two-month punt on every tough issue, from managing the federal debt to helping the nation's growing ranks of long-term unemployed. Runaway Debt Must Be Stopped Now. The U.S. government's unprecedented spending splurge, with no end in sight, is creating a mountain of debt that endangers both our economy and way of life. Can something be done about it? How Likely Is Hyperinflation? During the past several months, concerns have risen that the expansionary policies of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve System to counter the present crisis are creating the danger of a substantial future inflation. Some speak even of a hyperinflation, that is, of a rate of inflation exceeding 50 percent per month. The Audacity of Debt. At least someone in America isn't feeling a credit squeeze: Uncle Sam. This week Congress will vote to raise the national debt ceiling by nearly $2 trillion, to a total of $14 trillion. In this economy, everyone de-leverages except government. It's a sign of how deep the fiscal pathologies run in this Congress that $2 trillion will buy the federal government only one year before it has to seek another debt hike — conveniently timed to come after the midterm elections. Uncle Obama's Extortion Racket. Uncle Obama has gotten ahold of your credit card. And he's amassing charges on it that you — not he — are liable for. You can call the fraud line, you can call the police, you can call any politician or government agency, and they will all tell you the same thing. Shut up and pay up. The purpose of a business is NOT to provide jobs! The purpose of a business, small or otherwise, is NOT to provide jobs to the populace. The purpose of a business is to make money for the owners. For some reason, President Obama and the Democrats (i.e. liberals) believe that the existence of a business is to provide jobs regardless if they are needed or not. This sounds a lot like a government job. Hire people to do nothing. Obama Shatters Spending Record for First-Year Presidents. The federal government spent $3.5 trillion during President Obama's first year in office. This far exceeds the spending for any other first-year president. Voter Anger Is Building Over Deficits. Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. ... However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill. Rising debt could derail Congress on just about everything. The Senate began a debate Monday [11/30/2009] over the future of health care in America that's likely to go on for weeks, but behind the scenes, lawmakers are struggling to resolve an even more explosive issue: how to pay for all their ideas. Federal budget deficits remain at record highs. The national debt is $12.1 trillion and Congress must vote soon to let it go higher or else the Treasury won't be able to issue new debt. Surge adds to Obama's pricey plans. The president insists that lawmakers should not put a price tag on national security, but every item on Mr. Obama's ambitious agenda — from health care reform to another proposed job-creation bill — is threatened by the grim budget reality of a stagnant economy, colossal deficits and record levels of public debt. Read the Numbers: Obama Will Bankrupt America. When President Barack Obama entered office in January, the greatest problem America faced was neither the war in Afghanistan nor the recession. It was the imminent crisis of the welfare state. Not only has Obama failed to deal with this crisis, he is pursuing policies that will bankrupt America. Infatuated with the New Deal. [Scroll down] Obama acted as if he's downright puzzled by the lack of hiring. "I want to hear from CEOs about what's holding back our business investment and how we can increase confidence and spur hiring," he said. "And if there are things that we're doing here in Washington that are inhibiting you, then we want to know about it." Could the president really not have a clue about his administration's role in putting a chill on hiring? I doubt it. He couldn't be that oblivious. Obama: The Un-Stimulator. Why aren't businesses hiring? Because they don't know what's next. The small shop owners, mid-size company budget planners and corporate strategists — they all look ahead and see nothing but questions and worries. What will the massive new health care bill cost? Will there be cap-and-trade taxes after the Copenhagen summit this week? What domestic priority will Obama push next? If you don't know what a new employee will cost you in 2010, the last thing you want to do is hire one. If Obama were a Marxist, what would he believe? Critics claim Obama's budget is an example of the Cloward-Pivin model of planned economic destruction of a functioning capitalist economy via sabotage. Outlays are so gigantic, and so dreadfully misspent, that our financial infrastructure will soon collapse. A trillion dollar tax increase and spending rising by $10 trillion dollars over the next decade is probable. If so, government default will occur, only offset by mass currency printing, which will then bankrupt the general populace. Obama's $250 Bonus Turns Social Security into Welfare. Since Social Security recipients will get no cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) next year, President Obama wants to give each of them $250, a move supported in principle by the Republican House and Senate leadership. However, this move is not only unjustified; it makes a fundamental change to Social Security's structure and starts the process of converting the program from an earned benefit funded by a worker's own contributions to a welfare program. How Do You Measure Integrity? The term "kleptocracy" is applied to a government that extends the personal wealth and political power of its own officials and the ruling class via the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service. That sounds pretty close to what we have in America today. The Five Obama Fails. The Obama administration burst onto the presidency with a historic wealth of good will, hope, and change. It is now marked by one failure after another. Unfortunately, these failures are not without costs. The burden is borne by consumers, taxpayers, and generations yet to come. Dick Morris and the Crusade against ObamaCare. But Dick Morris is doing his best work now in his crusade against ObamaCare. He seems charged with high purpose, principle, and energy. If he continues to receive support, he might help save America from a health care catastrophe. Catastrophe, of course, is also the title of Morris' recent co-authored bestseller outlining the countless ways that the most radical president in American history is leading the country towards a rendezvous with decline and doom. How to Wreck the Economy. "The higher jobless rate could be the new normal" reads the headline of a recent AP report. ... The report's message is clear. It will be a long time before we recover our former prosperity. Things, in fact, may never be as good as they used to be, at least not in our lifetimes. US public debt tops 12 trillion dollars for first time. The US public debt topped 12 trillion dollars for the first time in history, Treasury officials disclosed Tuesday [11/17/2009], moving past a key barrier that raised hackles in Congress. Treasury data showed Monday's outstanding debt at 12.031 trillion dollars, up from 11.999 trillion on Friday. Socialist or vast expansion? Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Republican, recently joined commentators Rush Limbaugh, Patrick Buchanan and others in using the word "socialist" to describe President Obama and his policies, and we all know what's coming — a verbal bombardment. Critics will call him hysterical, paranoid and stupid. They will say he is a scaremonger misusing the language for political effect. Instead of looking at where Mr. Obama's policies are taking us, we'll have another fight over the meaning of a word and its connotations. The Coming Deficit Disaster. President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Our national debt: How much would 12 trillion eggs weigh? The Federal Government's tidal wave of debt now exceeds $12 trillion dollars. We have plummeted an additional trillion dollars in the last 8 months. ... Each American household's share of this debt is $103,000. ... All these mind numbing numbers begs three fundamental questions. Who is going to end up paying for this tsunami of debt? Are there politicians willing to tax us enough to pay off this deficit? (Yes!) What's the threshold where taxpayers refuse to be taxed further, even with the threat of jail or loss of property? We may be finding out these answers within the next few months. Roll Obama Back. Even during the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama promised to reduce the federal deficit. In his first 100 days, he increased spending and grew government faster than at any time since World War 2. But his tsunami of deficit spending — in the failed "stimulus", nationalization of GM and Chrysler, his $3.6 trillion budget for FY 2010 and more — has created an enormous voter backlash. America Needs More Jobs, Not More Debt. Last week, as the national debt topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history, one influential policymaker said, "I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt ... that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession." Cloward-Piven Government. It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, "Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis." Part of a series, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. A National Nightmare, Indeed. Joe, when The New York Times is sounding the warnings over the exploding national debt, you and Barack insist not only on not reversing your disastrous course but also on making it worse. How can reasonable people assume anything other than that you are trying to run this nation into the ground financially? Obama Will Carry Pledge of 17% U.S. Emissions Cut to Copenhagen. President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen for climate-change talks, where he'll offer to cut U.S. emissions about 17 percent by 2020 in an effort to help break a deadlock between rich and poor nations. Debt is Destroying the Dollar. Gold increasingly looks to investors to be a more reliable store of value than governments' bonds are, especially U.S. bonds as the U.S. government threatens to pile a mammoth health care entitlement onto the nation's Ponzi welfare state, increasing the nation's debt and borrowing. When Our Military is Attacked, Obama is a Nowhere Man. During a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Croft when the stock market was sinking, Obama giggled. He wasn't embarrassed afterwards or apologetic. More worrisome than his bizarre behavior was that he didn't regard it as strange. Obama vs. The American Businessman. Obama has demonized just about every business sector in America. Through the 2008 campaign to the present, he has gone after credit card companies, the coal industry, mortgage companies, real estate companies, steelmakers, utilities, drug companies, doctors, oil companies, Wall Street, defense contractors, and health insurance companies, just to name a few. All Falling Down... When Obama talks of a trillion here for health care, a trillion there for cap-and-trade, it has a chilling effect. Does he include the cost of interest? Where will the money came from? Who will pay the interest? Has he ever experienced the wages of such borrowing in his own life? Did he cut back and save for his college or law school tuition, with part-time jobs? Did he ever run a business and see how hard it was to be $200 ahead at day's end? Obamanoia. Imagine that you are a small business owner, and just consider — why expand now or rehire? since (a) I have no idea what the new taxes will be; (b) I have no idea about what all these new regulations, cap and trade, card check; etc will cost me; (c) I am beginning to think all this trash talk about bad doctors, insurance companies, the Chamber of Commerce, CEOs, the wealthy, etc. suggests this administration does not like me or what I do; ... If I have a business, somewhere down the line there is going to be a government-run rival, sort of like your local can't go broke PBS station in every avenue of commerce. Why insist on ensuring hustling employees when the rival, overpaid DMV-like work force can't go broke whatever they do? Could America go broke? The idea that the government of a major advanced country would default on its debt — that is, tell lenders that it won't repay them all they're owed — was, until recently, a preposterous proposition. Argentina and Russia have stiffed their creditors, but surely the likes of the United States, Japan or Britain wouldn't. Well, it's still a very, very long shot, but it's no longer entirely unimaginable. Democratic deficit duplicity. I nearly fell out of my chair as I read this New York Times headline: "Democrats Push for Plan to Cut Deficit." From the headline alone, I couldn't tell whether this was before, during or after they supported President Barack Obama's intentional, exponential escalation of the deficit to $1.4 trillion. That's simply immeasurable chutzpah. Destination: Banana Republic. When Senator Judd Gregg (R) New Hampshire, stated that out of control deficits could lead America into status as a Banana Republic, he was right on target. His web site statement that unless we act soon, these deficits are here to stay was also correct, although with all due respect to the Senator, it appears that we are already too late. Is Obama pushing to intentionally make America a second-rate world power? The deficit run up by the first Obama budget was four times larger than the already huge deficit imposed by the last Bush budget. Added together the Bush and Obama deficits have seriously weakened the confidence other nations, and specifically investors in those nations, have in the American economy and thus in the American dollar. Investments are now going "off shore" more than ever. Wealth Redistribution on Steroids. If this government wealth-confiscation trend continues unabated, the mercenary, larcenous socialists of the Obama regime will break the backs of the perpetually demonized wealth-producing Americans, a result so inevitable that we must assume that is what they intend. In Praise of Lobbyists. Raising taxes on the overseas profits of American firms has been a central plank of Barack Obama's agenda since his campaign for President in 2008. ... The U.S. is one of the few developed countries that even tries to tax corporate overseas profits. Most operate on a territorial system, in which business profits are taxed in the country in which they are earned. America cannot afford Obama. [President Obama's] recent comments in regard to coal-fired power plants are a wide open door to the real Obama and his plans for the destruction of the American way of life. ... He has proudly stated that he plans to put policies in place that will cause electric rates to skyrocket. Under Obama, it won't matter whether or not you can afford to buy that big screen TV, you won't be able to afford to turn it on. Former CBO Chief Calls Obama Administration Fiscal Policies 'Laughable'. A former Republican congressional budget chief called the Obama administration's claims to fiscal responsibility "hypocritical" and "laughable," noting in particular the mounting unemployment numbers (9.8 percent nationwide) despite the $787-billion stimulus plan enacted in February that he said was poorly designed. The Nation's Climate Change Solution: 'Make the Recession Worse'. A lefty magazine editor has come up with a list of brilliant solutions to the planet's purported climate change problem: make the recession worse, make goods more expensive, and restrict all intercontinental travel to blimps. So said Emily Douglas, web editor for The Nation, who, when asked Wednesday [10/14/2009] how we could "reverse our culture of consumerism," replied immediately "make the recession worse." Without A Shot Being Fired, A Dictator Has Taken Over the United States. [Scroll down slowly] It makes one wonder if this was all part of his plan to decimate the United States one more decisive step along the way to his assumption of the "Leader of the World" title. He and his family are having one grand ball at our expense while he lollygags instead of tending to our free trade business of state. And through it all, incredibly, there remains a corps of hardline supporters who are blind to all his faults. Obama's "Progressives": When he was still an adolescent in Hawaii, President Obama came under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis, a widely known communist in the 1950s. Obama is completely at home with "progressives", but is ironically being attacked by the nation's far Left for not fulfilling their dream of the complete transformation of the nation from capitalism to socialism fast enough. The destruction of the nation's economy is necessary to complete the transformation and it is only the outrage and protests of Americans that will save us from a fate that has been and remains the goal of the nation's communist enemies. Obama's permanent depression. President Barack Obama may be remembered for permanent depression, the way that Leon Trotsky's name is linked with permanent revolution. Fiscal stimulus combined with near-zero interest rates have proven to be a toxic cocktail for the United States, the macroeconomic equivalent of barbiturates and alcohol. Keynesian spending creates a deficit that sucks all the available capital out of the grassroots economy and transfers it to the Treasury market. Obama's Competing Waterloos. The Heritage Foundation reports that Obama's budget would produce $13 trillion in deficits over the next decade, even more than the outrageous $9 trillion previously projected. This is nation-shattering stuff, folks, and Obama and his minions remain unflappable, intent on staying the bankrupting course, sporting Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?" expressions. The fact that we know they can't be that oblivious is what makes us wonder whether something more sinister lurks in their motives. Spending Money Freely. The larger vision of Obama's approach to each separate issue is to see how government can manage the solution. To establish government in this position of power, taxes must fill the coffers and empty the wallets. Obama still at odds with facts about health care. The first hints of real trouble can be found in President Barack Obama's initial address to a congressional joint session on Feb. 24. That's when the jarring incoherence of his lavish plans came into full view. He said the "state of the economy is a concern that rises above all others." He said it was imperative that the nation bring its budget under control so that we don't bequeath to our children a debt "they cannot pay." But by then he had signed a $787 billion stimulus bill that would dramatically worsen the deficit. In that same speech — in which he called the economy the top priority — he pressed Congress to approve major legislative initiatives that had nothing whatever to do with the immediate problem of economic growth: a job-killing cap-and-trade plan and a deficit-bloating health care reform plan. This Just In... Obama Is a Leftist! Voters last year elected a left-wing former "community organizer" with one of the Senate's most liberal voting records. He seeks to take the country — over the growing resistance of even those who voted for him — to an idealized world of government-guaranteed equality of outcomes. He wants a government-guaranteed "level playing field" of wealth redistribution via taxing those deemed to have too much. Obama's goals are open, blatant and confidently asserted, backed by a filibuster-proof, supermajority, Democratic-controlled Congress. There is no Big Secret, no subterfuge, no bait-and-switch. This is who and what he is. The Assault on American Business. The message from Washington is clear and getting louder by the day. If you run a successful business you face excessive government regulations and higher levels of taxation for years to come. The more productive and profitable you become, the more you will be forced to pay for the privilege of operating in this country. This threat is real and it appears that many companies and business owners are taking steps to protect themselves. Manufactured Healthcare Crisis. If there were ever any doubt that Barack Obama personifies the Crisis Strategy, it should long since have been removed for anyone with a mind. ... For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Crisis Strategy was the brainchild of two radical socialist college professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The idea was to overwhelm government with demands for services to the point where the system would collapse and provide an opening for the socialists to take over. It's official: Obamanomics has failed. With the sycophants in the Obama press corps distracted while rubbing elbows with the Obamas and other rich folk on the Vineyard, the O Team threw their sucker punch: officially announcing that the federal budget deficit next year will be nearly 20% more than in their first forecast made just last May, and over the next ten years will be two trillion dollars more than they had predicted. What's $2 Trillion Among Friends? $2,000,000,000,000. That's the amount by which the Obama administration raised its ten-year estimate of the nation's budget deficit from the one it made only a few months ago. ... The new estimate assumes that Medicare and Medicaid spending will be cut by $622 billion, even though Congress has made it know that it is reluctant to make any such cut. Finding no buyers for snake oil. Master politician that he is, Barack Obama is a lousy calculator. He spectacularly misjudged the American public's appetite for a government nanny. Or maybe he miscalculated the power of his slippery tongue to sell government snake oil. His apparent willingness to abandon the attempt — for now — to nationalize the health-care industry appears to defer the Democratic first step in remaking the home of the brave and the land of the free into Little America, cutting it down to a size incapable of intimidating the likes of Switzerland or Swaziland. Obama Down, Economy Up. [Scroll down] The stock market moves inversely to Barack Obama's approval ratings. ... Even daily stock trading vividly reflects this same pattern. The sharp, cliff-like lines on an intraday chart often coincide with the ubiquitous Obama pronouncements and press conferences. Most interesting is actually watching one of these events in real-time, with one eye on the television and the other on the tape. The averages sink with practically each utterance, their descent arrested only when the president mercifully finishes up. Why Does Barack Obama Hate Our Economy? I think it's a question a lot of us — both right and left — are asking right now. We originally had such high hopes for President Obama. While his wife obviously hates America, not even considering liking it until it looked like her husband might get the highest job in the land, it always seemed that Barack was at least apathetic about the existence of America. While he wouldn't shed a tear if it was destroyed, he didn't seem to mind it being around either. But his actions lately have shown that not to be true. ... At this point, even the most ardent Obama supporter has to admit he's actively trying to destroy the American economy. An Anti-Business President. Democratic presidents are not famous for appointing businessmen, merchants, or entrepreneurs to their cabinet or senior White House staff. These are people who have started or run private businesses, created jobs, met payrolls, and made profits. Thus they might be sensitive to how government can help or hurt business enterprises, especially during an economic downturn. The number of such people appointed by Obama: zero. Members of his cabinet and White House staff come predominantly from government, academia, think tanks, and the law. Know-Nothing-in-Chief. [President Obama] wants to eliminate many deductions for upper middle class and wealthy taxpayers. He's eager to spur the growth of unions, though success here is likely to slow the rate of growth and increase the rate of unemployment. He wants government to intervene more aggressively in the economy, a reliable job killer. He's asked for authority to seize any financial institution deemed (by his administration) a "systemic risk" to the economy. He thinks government can teach the private sector lessons in efficiency. That would be an historic first. He believes his budget, which triples the national debt, "lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity." Whew! And this is just what Obama has proposed in the first six months of his presidency. Obama's budget will make us the most socialist country in the world. America has sold its soul for unsustainable entitlements, and the price could very well be our capitalistic society as we move closer and closer to socialism. Socialism, as Winston Churchill defined it, is a philosophy of failure. Yet when President Barack Obama fired the CEO of GM, the American public barely batted an eye. As financial markets have teetered on the brink of going under, the U.S. government has stepped in, taken ownership, arbitrarily decided what companies will fail and pumped and inflated others with fat TARP and bailout funds... Obama Agenda Tanks, Stock Market Soars. While some have attributed the recent rise in stock prices to positive earnings reports, the most important factor at play is the growing confidence amongst investors in the economic prospects of the nation as a whole. Smart investors have been painfully aware that an alarming number of President Obama's policies, including CO2 emission regulation and healthcare reform, are quite simply business killing initiatives. Why the Obama Stimulus Plan Must Fail. Today's investors have figured out that tomorrow does not look so rosy. So they are holding back on investment until the storm passes. No new investment, no new jobs. As libertarians well know, each new extension of government power should be examined under a presumption of error. By that standard, the president's stimulus package — indeed his entire legislative program — should be scrapped. Obama thinks you're stupid. Record Deficits Could Sink Obama's Presidency. Ronald Reagan ran large deficits; so for a while did Bill Clinton. Both Bushes did every year. And Barack Obama, who admittedly came to office amid a liquidity crisis that called for fiscal stimulus, trumped them all with the largest proposed budgetary shortfall in the nation's history that may hit $2 trillion dollars. Economists differ on the precise percentages of gross domestic product at which annual deficits began to drag down the economy. Stocks Surge as Obamacare Implodes. Hate to say it but Obama's disastrous press conference last night is a big contributor to today's roaring stock market. The Dow opened strong and is now up over 200 points, continuing a very bullish rally that is breaking new high ground for shares this year. Obama saving the dinosaurs. Obama and his team seem sharply opposed to the view that creative destruction is a valuable economic force. They seem happy with what might be called destructive destruction — the obliteration of value and wealth without any resulting positive change. ... Imagine the wave of innovation that could be set off if General Motors and Chrysler were allowed to fail. Existing firms, such as Ford, Honda and Toyota, would have vast new markets to compete for. ... The message is clear. If you succeed and become profitable, Obama will take a big share of your profits for the federal government and give another big share to the unions. Reclaim the Constitution or else it's adios to the republic. It's gotten to the point where the federal government can do whatever it wants, and that is just plain scary. Last week, you could turn west to California, east to Washington, D.C., or stop in the middle at Detroit to find numerous examples of federal power gone so far out-of-whack that it can no longer rightly be called government but should be recognized for what it is — assisted suicide. The Birth of American Socialism. [At first] we were told by the Media and other Liberal institutions; there will be no ownership of stock from the government. This is just a way to float loans to the banks. That changed almost immediately, and now the government holds "preferred" stocks meaning they get paid first, but do not hold a voting interest in the company. Now that's going to change as Our Savior, the Most Merciful Barack Hussein Obama has quietly announced that he's changing the stock from "preferred" to "common", making the United States Government the majority shareholder of over 500 financial institutions in America. In short, with the stroke of a pen we have become a socialist entity. Obamanomics: Naive, Or Intentionally Destructive? Does President Obama want the U.S. economy to decline further? Or is he just simply naïve about what is required to make the economy grow, and about the differences between "good" and "bad" economic policy? ... Back in February and March I began stating — in writing and on talk radio — that this President has no intention or desire to grow the U.S. economy, but rather, wishes only to grow U.S. dependency. Obama the Destroyer. If somebody were deliberately trying to undermine the very fabric of these United States, he would first vow not just to change its policies but to completely "change America," and then would do just about everything Barack Obama already has begun to do as president. The Drive to Abolish National Currencies. [Scroll down] In effect, the present crisis was created for the intended solution — a global currency that would dissolve national sovereignty. This is no longer merely an academic question. World leaders are gathering on our soil next week to urge global investors to abandon the US dollar as the preferred reserve currency in favor of an internationally traded currency unit similar to the Euro. Americans must be ready, or what has already happened in Europe will happen here. Obama's revenge against GM: These are not just rank amateurs, they are willfully ignorant amateurs, who also happen to be grandiose narcissists, and who now have free reign over the levers of power in the United States. We are all watching the Titanic steaming full speed ahead right before that diamond-hard iceberg tears off all the steel rivets from her skin. If you're not aghast, you're just not paying attention. Your EPA Mafia At Work. I am increasingly of the opinion that the main goal of the Obama administration through CO2 regulation, exploding deficits, punishing taxation, and any other means at their disposal is the destruction of the economy and the complete control of impoverished Americans. This is an administration that exists to impose an Orwellian socialist utopia when the smoke clears. When it comes to CO2, Obama, all of his so-called science advisors, and the Environmental Protection Agency are all lying. A criminal fraud is being perpetrated. Obama's Cirque du Stimulus. Charges that the Obama administration's extravagant fiscal and monetary recession-fighting measures are the road to perdition, even if true, miss the much larger and more important point. Obamanomics is not really aimed at ending recession and fixing the U.S. credit system. It may be that, in terms of official immediate objective, but the Obama presidency is mostly about fulfilling a much larger ideological ambition. The recession crisis, as many have already noted, is really a handy pretext for a national plan to push down America's private sector and boost the public sector. Obama signs stimulus, Dow plunges nearly 300. Stock market down 2,000 points since Election Day. Obama is Unifying the Nation Against Washington DC. According to Rasmussenreports.com only 16% of the nation strongly disapproved of Barack Hussein Obama on the day of his inauguration. That number has since become 32%, doubling during his first six weeks in office. ... This most likely has a lot to do with the fact that Obama and Pelosi's Obamanomics adventure into Marxism, has already cost average Americans nearly $3 Trillion in lost investments and savings, as the DOW lost another 30% of its values just since the day Obama was elected. $4 Trillion in Marxist Social Engineering efforts, all at overtaxed taxpayer expense may have something to do with it too. The Obama depression: Obama's role model is Franklin D. Roosevelt, yet Obama evidently is not familiar with Amity Shlaes' fine book, The Forgotten Man. Obama says he is embracing "experimentation — if that doesn't work, then you do something else." Shlaes shows that what FDR called "bold, persistent experimentation" deepened and lengthened the 1930s Depression: Businesses faced with ever-changing rules didn't know whether to invest or hunker down. At least, though, FDR famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He tried to raise the nation's spirits. Obama, though, has repeatedly dampened them with his self-fulfilling prophecies of gloom. Dow Sees Biggest Two-Day Drop Since 1987 After Obama Elected. The economy was already week, to be sure, but anyone trying to argue that Obama doesn't bear some responsibility here is fooling themselves. You can't campaign on massive tax hikes (both those promised by Obama himself and those that will happen when Obama and the Democrats "roll back" Bush's tax cuts) in uncertain economic times and not expect the market to react when you win the election. The Stock Market Has Spoken. It's simple really, Senator Barack Obama prior to his election to the United States Presidency stated that he would increase taxes on the energy sector to push forth a new wave in alternative energy. Before he was elected Senator Barack Obama also attacked the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA. Campaigning Senator Barack Obama also told the unions that he would support them, and unions look out for their own interests and not the interests of the corporations where they work. Obama's First Month: The Dow opened at 8281.22 on the morning of Obama's inauguration. Today [one month later] it opens at 7465.95. That's a vote of practically no confidence in Obama's strategy for reviving the economy. The numbers were worse on the biggest days of the Obama presidency. The Dow fell 332.13 points on inauguration day, 381.99 points on the day Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced step two in the bank bailout, and 297.91 points when the president signed the stimulus bill three days ago. Financial markets are a bet on the future. The market's view is that an Obamanomics-driven economy looks grim. Is It Any Wonder The Market Continues To
Sink? Last Oct. 13, in trying to explain why the market had sold off 30% in six weeks, we acknowledged
that the freeze-up of the financial system was a big concern. But we cited three other factors as well: Nationalization rumors sink stocks. Fears that the federal government will be forced to nationalize some of the largest banks sent the stock market plummeting Friday, driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a six-year low. President Obama and the Coming Stock Market Crash. How destructive to the U.S. economy would a Barack Obama presidency be? Beneath Obama's flowery rhetoric lies a dangerous economic plan that will wreak havoc on the American economy. Obama plans to return to the failed policies of high taxation coupled with an expansion of government spending. Worse, Obama says he is absolutely committed to almost doubling the capital gains rate — something he will easily accomplish with a Democrat Congress. President Obama's 2,000-point tumble. On Nov. 4, after Barack Obama clinched the White House, the market closed at 9,625.28. In mid-morning trading today [2/17/2009], the day President Obama signs his massive Generational Theft Act into law and a day before he unveils a massive new mortgage entitlement, the Dow dropped to to 7,606.53. Obama Calm Can't Stop $torm. Last fall, Barack Obama was deemed by all the great and good as the man to save the country from its financial crisis because of his calm. As John McCain flailed around, Obama stayed steady, and commentators ascribed to him the most extraordinary leadership qualities based merely on his equipoise. How is that working out? Well, the stock market has lost roughly 25 percent of its value in the past two months, destroying more than $2.6 trillion of wealth. But at least President Obama is calm. The 10 Biggest Amateur Mistakes By the Obama Administration So Far. [#1] Barack Obama may be a liberal thriller, but he's also a stock market killer. Since he came into office, his Bunyanesque new spending proposals, his plans for a trillion dollar tax hike, his regular badmouthing of the economy, and his incessant tinkering with banks and the housing market have caused the stock market to go into a freefall. Granted, stocks would have likely dropped anyway because of the economic crunch we're in, but the market wouldn't have already reached the lowest level since 1997 without lots of help from Obama. Now Obama Tells Us? Imagine that last fall before being elected, Barack Obama had outlined the positions he has embraced since being inaugurated as president. An honest campaign speech could have gone something like this: ... "Although my new spending proposals may raise the federal deficit in my first year to $1.75 trillion, I promise the American people that by the end of my first term, I will halve the federal deficit — albeit adding another $3 to $5 trillion to the national debt. Obama Appoints University of Starbucks Economics Department. Ever walk into a Starbucks and see a bunch of people sitting there debating textbook theories and solving all the world's problems over a mocha java? If so, then you've visited a University of Starbucks campus. These are precisely the kind of people who have gotten America into the current economic mess. Treasury's Unreality Show. The latest example came yesterday, when equity markets showed early strength after a dreadful week when they had fallen nearly 6%. Then investors started to absorb a three-paragraph morning statement from five branches of the Obama financial regulatory team asserting that the government "stands firmly behind the banking system during this period of financial strain to ensure it will be able to perform its key function of providing credit to households and businesses." Stocks headed south around 10 a.m. and didn't stop until they'd lost another 3.4% or so. The nearby chart of the Dow since Election Day is a running tally of ebbing confidence in the new Administration. How Obama handles 'priorities'. In the Middle Ages, when a young prince suddenly became king, the royal court, the church leadership and other senior aristocrats would scrutinize his every word and habit for signs of what kind of mind would be deciding their country's fate and their personal prosperity and safety. Today, around the world, President Barack Obama's every word, every action, every inaction is being likewise scrutinized for similar reasons. Investors Unimpressed with Obamanomics. The old saying that money isn't everything seems to epitomize President Obama's inept attempts to jumpstart the economy by throwing $2 trillion to $3 trillion at it. Nothing appears to be working. Obama's On a Path to an American Welfare State. Forget all the conspiracy theories of a mythological "North American Union" combining us with Mexico and Canada. Barack Obama wants America to be an unofficial member of the European Union. The path he outlined in his quasi "state of the union" address is to remake America on the model of a European welfare state. Down to lows unseen since 1997, the financial markets are as nervous as a politician on a polygraph. When the president speaks of catastrophe, they panic. It's Obama spreading panic. President Obama, in his pursuit of liberal big-government spending, has totally neglected the role of the president of the United States in reversing global panic. To the contrary, his every remark and the constant preoccupation of his Cabinet is to heighten the sense of crisis and to escalate the predictions of doom if we do not do as they tell us and raise spending now and taxes later. Instead of being a firewall, reassuring Main Street even as Wall Street crashed, he has become a conduit of panic, spreading the mood of desperation from the stock exchange floor to kitchen tables across the world. The Era of Big Government Is Only Getting Warmed Up. The president's address tonight comes at an interesting juncture. The stimulus has passed, but the administration is backpedaling on just how much good it is going to do and how quickly we will feel its effects. The mortgage bailout plan has induced a populist backlash. And the financial sector is paralyzed with fear. Despite promises of fiscal responsibility, there is nothing but government spending and rising deficits in the near term. Stocks end at 12-year lows. Stocks tumbled Friday on worries about the government taking a bigger chunk of Citigroup and a bleak reading on the economy, again touching 12-year lows. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 119 points, or 1.7%. It was the lowest close since May 1, 1997. The S&P 500 (SPX) index lost 18 points, or 2.4%, closing at its lowest point since Dec. 18, 1996. Markets Aren't Easily Charmed. Some things can't be disguised by stagecraft or media cheerleading. In the end, it matters what you do, not how you describe your plans. Marxist Obama-nomics Destroy DOW. The DOW Jones average closed at $8,281.22 on January 19, 2009, the night before the Obamanation became an historic reality. A little more than a month later, the DOW continues its free-fall approaching the $7000 mark (sic) and nobody knows where the bottom is. But so far, Obama-nomics have cost Americans trillions in new debt and 14% of their savings, in just a month... At This Rate, We Run Out of Dow to Lose in About 88 Days. Dow down another 88 today. As I try to repeat each time, the market is responding to all kinds of economic data, but to the extent that it is responding to Washington, it's not liking what it's hearing. ... The increase in gun sales is the only genuine economic stimulus that can be credited to Obama. Obama and the Stock Market. [Almost nobody in the media is] saying anything critical of Obama's policies which, obviously, the stock market — conventionally the predictor of our economy — thinks are dead wrong. Cognitive dissonance? Mental imbalance? Slavish idolatry? Or just plain inability to admit you made a mistake? You tell me. Meanwhile, the market goes lower and lower while the media continues its hosannas to BHO. Obama lied; the economy died. George W. Bush didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was merely mistaken. Whereas President Obama told a whopper last week when he claimed he was not for bigger government. As he said Tuesday night: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government — I don't." This he asserted though the budget he proposed the next day asks for federal spending as 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), higher by at least 6 percent than any time since World War II. In Free-Fall, Stocks Hit Lowest Mark Since '97. The global financial rout worsened yesterday [3/2/2009], driving U.S. stocks to their lowest level since 1997 amid deepening questions about whether governments around the world are being forceful enough in combating the economic crisis. There was no single cause for yesterday's sell-off, which sent each of the major indicators down at least 4 percent, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing below 7000 for the first time in 12 years. The Editor says... The Anti-Reagan: Barack Obama allegedly intends to be a transformational president like Ronald Reagan. But now President Obama is raising taxes on businesses and retirees, socializing the largest sectors of America's economy, and decimating state sovereignty and creativity. This is the polar opposite of what President Reagan did in the 1980s, and reveals Barack Obama as the Anti-Reagan. ... President Reagan's administration was the first in half a century where the government share of the economy decreased, as he slashed the growth rate of government while the economy swelled. Don't Worry, Be Happy. So the stock market drops over 25 percent since Election Day, almost 20 percent since Inauguration — and Barack Obama tells the American people at his press conference Tuesday [3/3/2009] not to "spend all your time worrying about that": "You know, it bobs up and down day to day. And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong." But the stock market isn't gyrating, or bobbing up and down. It's dropping. Is America Being Deliberately Destroyed? If a foreign power had invaded our nation and imposed these measures we would be at war with it. With all the numbers, the billions and the trillions coming at us every day, White House budgets, proposals to raise taxes "on the rich", a new health care scheme, a "cap-and-trade" emissions plan to penalize utilities and all other companies for releasing "greenhouse gas" emissions, it has been a dizzying ride since January 20th and it's all downhill. Market to Obama: I'm Just Not That Into You. The Dow Jones industrials fell 4 percent yesterday [3/2/2009], dropping below 7,000. The market barometer is now down a whopping 30 percent since Election Day, including an 18 percent drop over the past three weeks. That, even as President Obama's plans to stimulate the economy, fix the banking system and bailout struggling homeowners have come into sharper focus. One could view the slow-motion crash as a financial vote of no-confidence in the White House's ability to effectively fix America's economic mess and lead the rest of the world out of its tangle. It's Only Your Life's Savings. To be clear: there is no bobbing here. [The stock market] is sinking like a stone. And unlike polls the markets are "real" in the sense that they are tied to real money, real earnings, and real economic behavior. His glib waive of the hand — too busy to worry about the market because he's busy remaking society — is the perfect example of precisely what this administration is getting wrong. The market's harsh verdict on Obamanomics: Officially, President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget is titled "A New Era of Responsibility." That's false on two counts. It's an era — not of responsibility, but of big-government taxation, spending, and regulation. And it's not new. History is full of attempts to inflate the state to grow the economy. Virtually all have ended badly. As Monday's sell-off reminds us, Wall Street's verdict on Obamanomics has been quick and sharp. 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. 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 [3/2/2009] 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. 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. The Stupid Party. One can see why the White House is trying to foment controversy. It provides a convenient distraction from the ongoing failure of the administration's economic policies. This failure is well established, despite however popular those policies seem to be at the moment. The president's stimulus package, housing plan, and bank rescue have been met with shudders from the markets. Is Obama Out of His Freakin' Mind? President Obama blames the continuing global financial crisis for the unmitigated carnage on Monday, when the Dow fell below 7000 and closed down 300 points (or 4.2 percent) at a 12-year low of 6763. [Nonsense!] The man is in denial. By now we know the economy is ailing. The main thing that has changed: The disturbing details of Obama's tax-and-spend plans are becoming all too clear. Most of the moves he has made in his first 43 days in office have been bad for the markets, damaging to investors, ill-advised for the economy and detrimental to repairing the financial collapse wracking the entire planet. Stocks Should Matter to Obama. Any president, particularly the current one, has a lot of things to worry about. Should the level of the Dow Jones Industrial Average be one of them? In a word: yes. The question seems especially relevant after Thursday's stock selloff drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average down further to 6594.44. The Emperor has no clues. This is getting worse by the day. First off. Obama doesn't understand how the market works. It's a vote of confidence each and every day how things are going to be in the future. Not how things were yesterday. Or, even today. During the campaign, Barak Obama famously displayed his dismaying ignorance of economics and the availability and utilization of capital when he was surprised to learn, during an ABC interview, that lower capital gains rates result in high federal revenues. Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow. It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis. The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Caught in the Financial Downdraft. President Obama and his aides this week were selling hope. The markets aren't buying. Did Obama Cause the Stock Slide? At least on Wall Street, the honeymoon is over for President Barack Obama. Polls still show the President has strong popularity among the general U.S. population, and Obama continues to command power in Congress. But among investors, fairly or unfairly, there is griping that the new Obama Administration is at least partly to blame for the recent slide in stocks. 'Manchurian Candidate' Starts War on Business. Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama's first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage. It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business. Obama's Political Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. President Obama has purposely recreated a version of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome by following the Hoover/FDR model of economic destruction, increasing taxation and regulation during a recession. Obama is compounding the damage by destroying the domestic nuclear, oil and coal industries at the same time. It should be obvious that we need to double or triple our domestic energy production and reduce absurd government regulations. Memo to President Obama: First Things First, Please. Welcome to the Barack Obama bear market. On Inauguration Day, the official beginning of the era of "hope" and "change," the Dow stood at 8,281. On Friday [3/6/2009], it closed at 6,626 — the fastest drop for any president in more than 90 years. Given his track record so far on economics, no wonder Obama wants to talk about health care instead. ... What policies have Obama and his team presented to reassure the markets and offer the promise of stabilization and renewed growth? The short answer: None. Obama Fiddles While Wall Street Burns. [Scroll down] The Dow Jones fell to twelve-year lows last week, having fallen about 20% since Obama's inauguration. This is the fastest drop under a new president in 90 years, according to a Bloomberg News report. Unemployment has topped 8% and is still climbing rapidly. ... Where is the promised clear and specific plan to save the financial industry? It's nowhere to be found. Dr. Obama: First, Do No Harm. When it comes to our complex economy, President Barack Obama would do well to heed the physician's ancient commandment to first "do no harm." Instead, Obama's administration has been prescribing all sorts of multibillion-dollar borrowing remedies without any consistent diagnosis of what is exactly wrong with the weak economy or even how bad things actually are. The Death of Democratic Capitalism? How far will the Obama administration move to assert regulatory control over key sectors of the economy? Are we moving away from democratic capitalism, and toward some sort of corporatist state-directed economy? That could be the biggest stock-market and economic-growth issue facing us today. Stocks plunged almost 300 points on Monday [4/20/2009] over new fears of bank nationalization. Obama's agenda will ruin U.S. for years. Let's face it, most of you fell in love with Obama for one of two reasons. He either seemed like this new type of politician who was going to ride into Washington and bring about reform and change, or he simply wasn't George W. Bush. Either way, you bought into something quite different than what you got. Many of us knew before the election that Obama, for all his smooth talk, is in over his head. Not only is he not up to the job (better equipped to do late-night talk shows), his agenda will damage us well into the future. 'I Bond' Payments Get Wiped Out. Rates on government securities, certificates of deposit and savings accounts all have plummeted in recent months. Now, yields on another safe haven — Series I Savings Bonds, or I bonds — are dropping to nothing. Friday [5/1/2009], the Treasury Department said these inflation-linked bonds that are purchased between May and October will earn 0% for their first six months, the first time rates have hit 0% since the bonds were issued in 1998. Household Wealth in U.S. Decreased by $1.3 Trillion. U.S. household wealth fell in the first quarter by $1.3 trillion, extending the biggest slump on record, as home and stock prices dropped. Net worth for households and non-profit groups decreased to $50.4 trillion, the lowest level since 2004, from $51.7 trillion in the fourth quarter, according to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds report today. The government began keeping quarterly records in 1952. How Obama's socialism works: [Scroll down] At the core of the new policy will be the simple assumption that Washington knows best. But it doesn't. The stagnation of the Japanese economy in the past 20 years is eloquent testimony to the fact that government usually gets it wrong. ... One way or another, the government usually runs the economy into the ground, as it will under King Barack I. If this mess is what he really intended, we're all in big trouble. Obama is printing money as fast as he can. US deficit climbs to 1.3 trillion dollars. The US budget deficit reached 1.3 trillion dollars for the current fiscal year in July, official data showed, news set to fuel opposition to US President Barack Obama's ambitious health care and climate change proposals. Indentured Grandchildren. If you are blessed, as I am, to have grandchildren, you may not realize that they are more than just treasured children of your children, a gift beyond measure. They are also indentured servants who will be paying off your cumulative national debt for a good part of their lives on earth. Repeal Obama's Raw Deal. Obama's reckless spending has already sent the federal deficit mushrooming, like some economic radioactive cloud, in just his first year, and evidence mounts that Obama's economic policies are nothing more than a Raw Deal. Last spring, Obama tried to jawbone international leaders into imposing the same sort of porkulus package that Democrats strong-armed through Congress here. They, for the most part, rejected Obama's exhortations. Obama and 'Redistributive Change'. [Scroll down] Why would intelligent politicians try to ram through, in mere weeks, a thousand pages of health-care gibberish — its details outsourced to far-left elements in the Congress (and their staffers) — that few in the cabinet had ever read or even knew much about? Once again, I don't think health care per se was ever really the issue. ... Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. Senate must raise debt ceiling above $12 Trillion. The Senate must move legislation to raise the federal debt limit beyond $12.1 trillion by mid-October, a move viewed as necessary despite protests about the record levels of red ink. Bursting the Government Bubble. America is now engaged in the unprecedented growth in government accompanied with unprecedented debt at the federal level. The Federal Reserve in cooperation with both the Bush Administration in its final days and now the Obama administration is propping up the credit markets with over $1.0T including the TARP funds, and open market purchases of the US debt obligations. Can the too big to fail hypothesis for the big banks also be applied to the Federal government? Is the US Government bankrupt? Before we continue to debate the merits of any Obama health care plan, we need to consider a few important facts. By any rational means, we must consider the present condition of our Government's financial situation. An honest look at those finances would have a prudent person conclude that our government is tacitly bankrupt. Our unfunded liabilities far exceed our assets. Iceberg Dead Ahead, Captain Orders "All Engines Ahead Full". Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 for every American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the president's budget, the deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms. Trickle Down Poverty. Instead of approaching the economy in a way that opens a door through which the poor can use their God-given talents to better their circumstances, Obama plans a state-run economy that will result in trickle down poverty. And for all his talk about "spreading the wealth around," our president is really poised to spread dependence on a discombobulated bureaucracy. In His First Year, Obama Presides Over 4.1 Million Jobs Lost. Unemployment shot up in 2009 from 7.7 percent in January to 10.1 percent in October before settling at 10 percent in December. Behind those percentages were more than 4.1 million people who lost their jobs during the year. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that's the most job losses in a year since 1940. None Dare Call It Socialism. Socialism vs. Obamaism may not be a distinction without a difference. But it's certainly a distinction with such a trifling difference that there's not nearly enough there to make a living on. Obama is killing the economy. Barack Obama has the worst budget record of any president in American history. ... Mr. Obama's [first] budget, coupled with the $787 billion stimulus slush fund, was the most irresponsible in history. The effects of his ruinous policies can already be measured. Obama's demonization of banks: Banks are not the bad actors Democrats want people to believe. Banks have paid back almost all the [bailout] money they were lent along with interest. The same cannot be said for government-run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have irretrievably lost $400 billion and counting — and the Obama administration is offering those losers a blank check for billions more. The Bill Comes Due for Socialism. It began as a beautiful cruise to a land of "hope and change," but it has become a nightmare in which the ship of state is being deliberately steered toward a whirlpool of debt from which, if Obama is successful, the nation cannot escape. Mr. President, Words Matter. For two years Obama serially damned the entrepreneurial classes. They should "spread the wealth," be "patriotic," and pay "their fair share." They should be paying more income, payroll, and inheritance taxes. They could not be trusted with health care, student loans, high finance, or auto manufacturing. Their lifestyles of private jets and Super Bowl junkets came at the expense of the downtrodden. A New Era Of Irresponsibility. If you're one of those who doubted the White House's pledges of fiscal restraint, the new budget confirms your worst fears. Over the next 10 years, it boosts spending, taxes and debt by record amounts. ... The proposed budget over the next decade would rack up $45.8 trillion in new spending, $9.1 trillion in deficits and more than $2 trillion in higher taxes on Americans. 3.8 Trillion for What? [Scroll down] The prospects of a staggering $1.6 trillion deficit in this fiscal year hasn't stopped Obama from proposing a lot of new spending in the past week or so: $4 billion for an "infrastructure innovation and finance fund," $5 billion for an anti-nuclear proliferation program, an additional $3 billion for aid-to-education, and $25 billion more to bail out state governments who have spent themselves deeply into debt. Collapsing Ceiling. Congress stands ready to lift the debt ceiling an additional $1.9 trillion and is eager to waste hundreds of billions more. Do our representatives realize the long-term damage they're doing to the economy? Out Of Control Spending. The president has a peculiar understanding of leadership. By all accounts, federal fiscal policy has now run completely off the rails. Budgetary pressures have been building for years because of unconstrained entitlement spending and Washington's unchecked appetite for ever-more activist government. But what had been a chronic problem that all involved knew needed corrective action has now become, in the Obama years, a full-fledged disaster in the making. Obama Begins His Assault on Your Life Savings. The welfare state and your life savings are two cars heading down a one-lane road in opposite directions. One must yield, or there will be a crash. For Americans who believe in the old-fashioned virtues of hard work, self reliance and respect for private property, the solution is obvious. The welfare state must yield. For politicians who believe in the welfare state and redistributing wealth, the solution is equally obvious. Your savings must yield. Obama — Too Little, Too late, Too Cynical. The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes 13 months into this administration — and only after Obama added nearly $1.5 trillion in new borrowing in 2009. And by the time the new deficit commission submits its recommendations at the end of this year, the current 2010 budget will have put us out another $1.5 trillion. Obama Administration Using Accounting Gimmicks That Would Make Enron 'Blush'. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says the Obama administration is using an accounting "gimmick" in its budget by not including the debt owed by mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bill and Hillary: Driving the Left into a Ditch? It's bizarre. Why does President Obama insist upon driving public option health care legislation through Congress when voter opposition to it is at an all-time high? Unhappiness with Obama and the other leading Democrats is so high that a national tea party movement has virtually brought the Republicans back from the electoral grave. The president's job approval numbers have been in a year-long slide. In almost every election since he took office, Democrats have gotten trounced. Yet he continues to push extraordinarily unpopular policies. Could it be the advice he's been getting? GOP senator says ObamaCare will "divide and bankrupt America". Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and personal friend of President Obama's, on Saturday [2/27/2010] took a highly public stand against the president's health care plan and against his intentions to "ram" a bill through Congress, warning that such a move will "divide and bankrupt America." Coburn, chosen as the Republican lawmaker to deliver the party's regular weekend address to the nation, cautioned Obama against supporting the use of "reconciliation" ... Auto Schizophrenia. Under assault from Washington on global-warming regulations and tort litigation, the U.S. auto industry still managed a 24 percent sales gain in March as it continues its climb out of the worst sales recession in 30 years. President Alfred E. Obama. Observing President Obama's relentlessly reckless approach to our nation's fiscal integrity is reminiscent of the signature phrase of Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?" Obama struck again last week at the G-20 conference in Toronto, urging other nations to follow his Pied Piper lead into deficit spending hell. Unlike recent U.S. presidents who recognized and touted this nation as the world's exemplar for economic growth and prosperity, Obama is turning us into a poster nation for financial irresponsibility. I'll Take a Double-Dip. The United States of America is in great peril. Absent drastic and immediate intervention, America as we know it will cease to exist. ... Keynesian economics has been a failure wherever implemented. Government priming of the economic pumps has never worked and has inevitably led to banana republics and rivers of blood when the populace is finally purged of wealthy, productive citizens to tax. Nobody could be stupid enough to believe that continuing down this path will lead anywhere but to financial ruin. All of this chaos and uncertainty is intentional and the Obamacrats are engaging in the wholesale overthrow of our free market system. Democrats deeming themselves defeated come November. On the first day of July, the House of Representatives passed a "budget enforcement resolution" that "deemed as passed" a $1.12 trillion budget. ... Pelosi's spineless minions did not dare pass a real budget, for a real budget would have shown in black and white — in red ink, actually — just how wildly mismanaged the federal fisc has become. The trio of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Pelosi is putting the finishing touches on a one-year deficit of $1.6 trillion, while setting in motion an expansion of the standing debt to well north of $14 trillion. This is no mean feat in an era when Democrats themselves denounced George W. Bush's deficit of a mere $160 billion in 2007. Boring Barry. Marxists like Obama have nothing new to say. The whole sum of human problems, according to the goateed gurus of radical socialism on college campuses, is the unfair distribution of wealth, and the only solution to this "problem" is coercive redistribution. It is hard to overestimate just how dull, dumb, and monotonous radical socialism is to people who are forced to listen to it all the time. The Dangers of Big Government Debt. Warnings about America's impending financial car wreck are being sounded, loud and clear. The only question is whether those driving the car will slam on the brakes before it's too late. 25 Reasons to Send the Democrats Packing in November. [#1] Remember the stimulus bill? Republicans strongly opposed it and said it wouldn't work. Democrats said it would revive the economy and keep unemployment under 8 percent. So, what happened? Democrats shoved through a bill that cost $1.1 trillion when you add in the interest. It cost more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, and putting a man on the moon — combined. The result? The economy didn't take off, the unemployment rate is still at 9.6 percent, and Democrats are calling for...you guessed it, another stimulus bill. Our Boy-President. In 2008, Americans elected a boy-president. In short order, he becomes Jimmy Carter on Socialist steroids. He apologizes to the world in a submissive fashion and caves in to Muslim extremism. He also is hell-bent on bankrupting the government in order to finance a permanent power-grab. Worst of all, he is insistent on building a nation of government addicts in the form of welfare, unions, and heavy-handed market Socialism. This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2023 by Andrew K. Dart "Eh, I don't worry about the market's 'day to day gyrations.' " Older commentary Stocks plunge as investors ponder Obama presidency. A case of postelection nerves sent Wall Street plunging Wednesday [11/5/2008] as investors absorbed a stream of bad economic news and wondered how a Barack Obama presidency will help the country weather a possibly severe recession. Barack's Siren's Song — The Seduction of a Nation. Barack Obama's repackaged song of social justice through wealth redistribution is nothing but a version of Karl Marx's dream, trimmed and garnished for the ears of worried Americans. Joe Biden, already mesmerized by the idealism of his left-wing Party, is convinced that such comparisons must be a joke. Unfortunately Joe, there is no joke. The facts are facts, and you and those like you are willing to sail this great nation onto the rocks. We're ALL Democrats Now! It will take a few years for the 63 million Americans who wanted "change" to figure out what the rest of the world already knows, — socialism doesn't work. The 5% Obama promises to rob on behalf of his constituents have already changed investment strategies to protect their earned assets. By the time Obama arrives on their doorstep, the cupboard will be empty. An Obama Panic? Markets Fear His Policies. Barack Obama has re mained cool and confident amid the financial melt down, even as John McCain at times has been embarrassing, lurching from one proposal to the next. But while the polls are reflecting Obama's steady hand, the markets haven't. In fact, they're getting worse by the day as Obama's lead widens. Is This the End of Conservatism? As historian John Steele Gordon helpfully pointed on in the Wall Street Journal, panics are not unusual in American history. We've experienced them almost every 20 years since 1819. Gordon blames Thomas Jefferson, which is intriguing, but the point is that we've always emerged from these periodic paroxysms intact and our economy has continued to grow. ... But if we elect a crypto-socialist like Barack Obama and give him a bigger Democrat majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate, banking regulation may be the least of our troubles. The Obama (Stock Market) Discount May Be Real. Are investor concerns about an Obama presidency influencing the stock market? And by "concerns" I mean "existential panic." And by "Obama presidency" I mean "a tax-hiking and regulatory reign of terror." And by "influencing" I mean "eviscerating." U.S. Stocks Tumble in Market's Worst Two-Day Slump Since 1987. [In the first two days after Obama won the presidential election,] U.S. stocks slid, sending the market to its biggest two-day slump since 1987, after jobless claims jumped and the shrinking economy crushed earnings at companies from Blackstone Group Inc. to News Corp. Investors Flee From 'Change' Obama Hypes. Are Barack Obama's proposed tax increases adversely affecting our financial markets? We say yes, unambiguously. The senator has done a masterful job distracting attention from his tax increases with his $500-per-worker tax credit supposedly for 95% of Americans. ... With the bottom 40% of income earners not paying any federal income taxes, such tax credits would not reduce any tax liability for these workers. Instead, since they're refundable, they would involve new checks from the federal government. These are not tax cuts as Obama is promising. They are new government spending programs buried in the tax code and estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years. Investors' Real Fear: A Socialist Tsunami. Right now it looks like the U.S., which built the mightiest, most prosperous economy the world has ever known, is about to turn its back on the free-enterprise system that made it all possible. It isn't only that the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party is favored to take the White House. It's that he'll also have a filibuster-proof Congress led by politicians who are almost as liberal. A Barack Market. The voters may be full of hope about the looming Obama Presidency, but so far investors aren't. No President-elect in the postwar era has been greeted with a more audible hiss from Wall Street. The Dow has lost 1,342 points, or about 14%, since the election, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting similar skids. Obama proves to be stock market poison. Hours before the polls closed on November 4th, the S & P 500 stock index closed for the day at 1005.75. Yesterday [11/20/2008], after 12 trading sessions since the election results were known, the S&P closed at 752.54. That is a drop of 253 points, and 25.2%. There has never been such a reaction to an election result in American history. The loss is 2.5 trillion dollars in market value, just for for the S&P 500 companies. Markets and Marxists Don't Mix. The USA has elected a far-left president, [which threatens] to fundamentally change the nature of the United States of America and its Constitution. This political development is not promising; no socialist system of government has ever had the record of employment, productivity, innovation, and growth that the USA has enjoyed under a system of free-market, rule-of-law economics. On the contrary, socialist states are universally noted for functional inefficiency and institutional corruption ... . We fail to learn from history. We just had a presidential election that in some circles produced a lot of euphoria. But I believe that at some point — I hope sooner rather than later — many Americans are going to wake up and realize that this election was not a cure for our problems but a symptom of the disease. I think this is what our crashing financial markets are telling us. The Obama Jolt: Barack Obama wants to give the economy a jolt. So far, though, the biggest jolt we've seen is the one the economy has given to Obama. That jolt, in the form of a plummeting stock market, upset Obama's desire for a leisurely transition. It made him virtually America's acting president. Obama is fond of saying — he said it again last week — that the country has only one president at a time, and until January 20 it's George W. Bush. True enough, but financial markets don't look at Washington that way. They focus on the future, and that means Obama. Obama Sinks the Markets. The Dow has now fallen more than 50 percent from its peak. Last month, it saw its biggest one-month drop since 1933. Grandpa's retirement savings just half vanished over the last few months, and the president is telling him it's just a meaningless blip. This is not a poll — this is all about the American people's economic future, or their present. The stock market is in its greatest free fall since the Great Depression, and the president shrugs his shoulders. From TARP to Obama to Command-and-Control. Perhaps this is why the stock rally has stalled. And raising taxes on entrepreneurs, investors, businesses, and the entire energy economy through cap-and-trade is no way to promote growth. Nor is unprecedented command-and-control intervention in the economy. In other words, a war on capital with an unlimited welfare safety net will do us in. Plus, Mr. Obama's massive health-care expansion plans will end up bankrupting the entire nation. This is his responsibility; he owns the problem now. When will he stop? The Obama Recession. I think it is time to call it "The Obama Recession." Using Obama's own numbers, we are now worse off than we would have been had Obama's stimulus not gone into effect. Nationalizing the banks Is the kettle black enough? If ever there was a case of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, it is the cluster of new financial "reform" regulations Washington politicians are trying to foist on the back of Wall Street. In a typical political smoke-and-mirrors misdirection, President Obama wants us to believe greedy Wall Street bankers are to blame for our economy sinking in financial quicksand and that more government regulations and controls are the answer. Don't believe it. Obama's Economic Policy: Crony Capitalism. The so-called financial-reform bills now working their ways through each house of Congress are, like the health-care-reform bill before them, not about reform at all. They do not reform anything. Instead, they make the federal government the major player in a major industry. Just as the health-care-reform bill will transform private insurance companies into the equivalent of public utilities, whose every major decision needs government approval and whose returns on capital are more or less guaranteed, these bills would do the same for big banks and other financial institutions. Financial fascism. The "Dodd financial reform" bill being considered by the Senate will make it illegal for 99.6 percent of the population to invest in needed new and promising start-up companies while at the same time ensuring that the 33 largest banks, which control 92 percent of all bank assets, will be required to purchase more federal government debt before giving loans to businesses and individuals. Quite simply, the government is continuing to practice financial fascism. The end of American capitalism? The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system. Bank of America tumbles on nationalization worries. Bank of America Corp shares fell below $5 for the first time since 1990 on speculation that spiraling losses at newly acquired Merrill Lynch & Co might lead to government control of the largest U.S. bank, wiping out shareholders. Standing Athwart Nationalization. [Scroll down] And the Obama proposal definitely deserves more scrutiny. As I noted previously in the Spectator, the administration's white paper puts no limits on the type of firm the government could seize. On page 19, the paper defines a "Tier I financial holding company" that would be subject to seizure as "any firm whose combination of size, leverage, and interconnectedness could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed." This is eminent domain on steroids. It would be the arbitrary decision of politicians as to what businesses pose a "threat to financial stability." Citiboobs. Citigroup's arrogance is about to fly sky-high. Literally. As The Post reported yesterday, the bank — having wrangled a $45 billion cash handout from US taxpayers, plus another $306 billion in federal guarantees of its assets — now plans to buy (get this!) a $50 million ... corporate jet. You've got to wonder: Is the company begging to be nationalized? Citi's Sky-High Arrogance: Just weeks after Citigroup averted total collapse with a $45 billion shot in the arm of taxpayer cash, the bank jetted its former CEO and his family on one of its corporate jets to a posh Mexican resort for New Year's, The Post has learned. Sandy Weill, 75, hopped aboard the tanking bank's Bombardier BD 700 Global Express on Dec. 26 with his wife, Joan, daughter Jessica, her husband and their children. They flew from Westchester County Airport to the Los Cabos shore region in sunny Baja, according to aviation records and sources familiar with the trip. Republican Says He Won't Drop the Idea of Nationalizing the Banks. A Republican and a Democrat agreed on Sunday that the government may have to take a larger ownership stake in the nation's banks. But the Republican lawmaker seemed to go even further than the Democrat in backing the idea of nationalization. "Let's talk" about nationalizing the banks, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said on ABC's "This Week." But she also said the nation is not ready to "move to the point of a formalized nationalized banking program yet." Rep. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who appeared on "This Week" with Waters, said the nation's banks are in so much trouble, "We're going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago, no one likes." Government Ownership in Banks Could Cause More Problems than It Solves. The federal government's purchase of $250 billion in stocks from U.S. banks as part of the $700 billion financial bailout could cause a repeat of the same poor market discipline that caused the credit crisis, according to free market economists. "These shares put in the hands of the government has a muting effect on incentives," said Frank Gamrat, senior researcher at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. "Profit-making incentives drive the economy and maximize performance. You take out that incentive when the government is going to provide capital." Bank nationalization on the agenda, Lindsey Graham joins Marxist revolution. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he would entertain the idea of bank nationalization, on ABC Sunday morning. Graham attempted to get comfortable with TARP II and the next bank bailout, saying "I would not take off [the table] the idea of nationalizing the banks." Graham didn't have much good to say about the stimulus bill passed by the Senate, but the news of his openness to bank nationalization isn't going to be pleasing to the conservative base of the Republican Party. Reid: Don't call it nationalization. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports efforts of the federal government to dramatically expand its stake in Citigroup, but wants people to back off from the dramatic rhetoric. "It's not nationalization, it's protecting the taxpayers' interests," Reid (D-Nev.) told MSNBC's Morning Joe program on Monday. The Problem With 'Nationalization'. The chorus for nationalizing America's struggling banks is growing louder, and support for the idea comes from strange sources. Alan Greenspan has said that he understands that "once in a hundred years" the government needs to take over the banks, and now is the time. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, has called for doing what works and "if nationalization is what works, then we should do it." That is the kind of pragmatism that leads to socialism. Don't Nationalize Our Banks. The federal government may be getting ready to nationalize one or more of America's major banks. The reason often cited for taking such drastic action is "systemic risk." Are our banks really in such dire shape? You might be surprised to discover that the answer is no. Just say no to bank nationalization. Last Labor Day, the thought of nationalizing banks was alien, if not seditious. Today, some argue for bank expropriation. Bafflingly, this advice comes not from Communists, but from Republicans. "It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring," former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said in Wednesday's Financial Times. This would "allow the government to transfer toxic assets to a bad bank without the problem of how to price them." Greenspan, whose monetary bubble elevated the economy to the vertiginous heights from which it is tumbling, seems old enough to understand that banking without the "problem" of prices is like flying without the "problem" of altimeters. Will Obama (Inter)Nationalize the Banks? Citing the "tragic failure of financial regulation," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told PBS' Charlie Rose that henceforth, "capitalism will be different." No question about that — it already is. Taxpayer bailouts of individual companies and entire industries have transformed congressional hearings into shareholder meetings. In the Obama economy, auto manufacturers submit their business plans to Washington for approval. Bad medicine. The president knows that if the government actually takes over this country's banks, insurance companies and manufacturing giants, they will perform as nimbly as the Postal Service. He may not be a socialist, but the rhetoric he has encouraged may lead gradually but inexorably to something just as economically dangerous. There is a word for an economic system that allows business enterprises to remain in private hands so long as those ostensibly running them cede real decisionmaking power to government. It's called fascism. Obama Wants to Control the Banks. The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command. Obama Is the 'Arrogant, Dismissive, and Derisive' One. The imagery behind Obama's threat couldn't be more obvious: comply with my demands or I will make sure you are harassed, intimidated, and run out of town on a rail. He made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Don Corleone couldn't have said it better. We cannot forget, however, that it was Barack Obama himself along with his fellow Democrats who agitated this mob-like frenzy about the banks, the CEOs, and the bonuses. It was Obama who said the bonuses were an "outrage" and a "violation of our fundamental values." Backdoor Path to Bank Nationalization. A big New York Times story this morning [4/20/2009] strongly suggests that Team Obama is about to up the ante in an effort to control the banking system for as long as the eye can see. White House and Treasury officials are now talking about turning government TARP loans into common stock for the 19 biggest banks. It's clearly a backdoor path to nationalization, as Uncle Sam would be the largest shareholder in these institutions. What's more, it's not at all clear that the administration will even let certain banks pay down their TARP loans. A Backdoor Nationalization. Just when you think the political class may have learned something in months of trying to fix the banking system, the ghost of Hank Paulson returns to haunt the Treasury. The latest Beltway blunder — and it would be a big one — is the Obama Administration's weekend news leak that it may insist on converting its preferred shares in some of the nation's largest banks into common equity. The stock market promptly tumbled... Government Bullying of Private Industry More Serious than Imagined. Three cheers for Andrew Cuomo! No, honestly. He's taken a break from extorting AIG execs to give up their bonuses to expose a far more frightening extortion plot: the effort by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to force Bank of America to go through with the Merrill Lynch deal — and conceal the mammoth losses from the shareholders. 20 Great Moments from Obama's First 100 Days! [#17] The only thing more startling than finding out that there were banks that want to give back hundreds of millions of dollars worth of taxpayer money was being told that Barack Obama?s administration was refusing to let them give the money back so he could retain control over the banks. The Party Of Yes: 6 Ways Democrats Are Hurting America. [#2] Taking over the banking industry: Granted, George Bush got the ball rolling and plenty of Republicans voted for TARP. So, the GOP's hands aren't clean on this one. But, we now have the government leaning on banks to take pennies on the dollar from the car companies, refusing to let banks pay taxpayer money back, and there's even still talk of completely nationalizing the banking industry. What is there in the history of this country, especially in the wake of a banking related housing crisis that was created by the government, that would make anyone think this is a good idea? Does Obama Want to Own the Airlines? Only luck and falling oil prices saved Washington from having to face mass bankruptcy of the airline industry last year. Now the specter is rising again. Fuel prices are up. Traffic continues to plummet amid a global recession. United Airlines last week mortgaged its spare-parts inventory to raise cash at a usurious 17% interest rate. Yet the Obama Justice Department has come out of the blocks trying to scuttle a promising experiment to stabilize the chronically unprofitable U.S. airline sector. The new administration seemingly won't let companies fail, and won't let them succeed either. U.S. Raises Estimate for 10-Year Deficit to $9 Trillion. The nation's fiscal outlook is even bleaker than the government forecast earlier this year because the recession turned out to be deeper than widely expected, the budget offices of the White House and Congress agreed in separate updates on Tuesday [8/25/2009]. The Editor says... White House projects bigger deficits, bigger debt. The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House officials predicted Tuesday in a fiscal assessment far bleaker than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago. Government overspending is national suicide. Remember when the deficit was so bad that Democrats said we (or more accurately the Republicans) were placing a terrible burden on our grandchildren? That was several trillion dollars ago. Democrats now appear perfectly fine with extending the growing deficit and national debt to their great-grandchildren. The Pelosi-Obama Deficits. The good news is the deficit for 2009 will be "only" $1.58 trillion, about $250 billion lower than expected thanks to less need for TARP funds. But the Obama fiscal plan envisions $9 trillion in new borrowing over the next decade, which is $2 trillion more debt than the White House predicted earlier this year. Sunbathing Obama Burning Us to a Crisp. Sunning lazily this week on the rocky shores of Martha's Vineyard, President Obama is in a terrible pickle. He has flushed billions of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars down the toilet "stimulating" the economy, acquiring insolvent car companies, and buying up clunkers that are immediately rendered inoperable by the feds — an apparent government specialty. ... And now he has blown the top off all limits on the amount of suffocating debt he is willing to pile on the children and grandchildren of America. Obama's 09 deficit exceeds all eight years of Bush red ink. How much is President Obama boosting federal spending? ... This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President Bush. Doubling the national debt. The Obama administration late last week, in classic late Friday afternoon attention-dodging mode, released its midsession budget review. The good news: the federal deficit for this year will be only $1,600,000,000,000 rather than $1,800,000,000,000. The bad news, which will be released officially Tuesday: the projected federal deficit for the next ten years is projected to increase to $9,000,000,000,000 from $7,000,000,000,000. That's an extra $547,000 per day every day for the next 10 years. 9 banks fail in 1 day; $2.5 billion hit to FDIC insurance fund. Federal regulators have shut the doors on part of a small banking empire built by through a string of 28 acquisitions over the past two decades. Nine U.S. banks seized in largest one-day haul. U.S. authorities seized nine failed banks on Friday, the most in a single day since the financial crisis began and the latest stark sign that substantial parts of the nation's banking industry are being crippled by bad loans. Obama's Internal Reporting Service? America's Founding Fathers envisioned a limited government in which laws were fairly and evenly enforced and justice was blind. Yet as government's lust for additional power and its appetite for new spending have both exploded in recent years, so too has Washington's apparent willingness to play politics with prosecutions and government leaks. We saw this trend at work in the recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, which even a kindergartener could tell was timed to coincide with President Barack Obama's "War on Wall Street" and the perpetuation of his failed bailout method of financial reform. Violating privacy one bank account at a time. Sen. Christopher Dodd's "regulatory reform" bill, S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, has many contentious proposals that have members from both political parties on edge. The bill cauterizes "too big to fail" by establishing a Financial Stability Oversight Council that would indentify politically important institutions, sending the signal that some companies are indeed too big to fail. Obama's leap to socialism: President Obama showed his hand this week when The New York Times wrote that he is considering converting the stock the government owns in our country's banks from preferred stock, which it now holds, to common stock. This seemingly insignificant change is momentous. It means that the federal government will control all of the major banks and financial institutions in the nation. It means socialism. To sum it up, Obama's War on Capitalism: [Scroll down] Of course, this war on capitalism is carried out as a war on business and industry: a concerted effort to take the reigns of the economy out of the hands of the people and place them in the hands of the government. According to Charles Krauthammer, this blitzkrieg on freedom has already "destroyed a third of this nation's wealth," and Obama's zeal for the cause portends even greater loss in the near future. Is Obama Designing the End of Capitalism? All of Obama's economic policies thus far are designed to drive America into full embrace of socialism. His chief means for this transformation: inflation. He is attempting to inflate the currency through two primary means: intense deficit spending, and pushing up production costs through union subsidization. In order to make these measures politically palatable, he cites FDR as an example of good deficit spending; he cites the credit crunch as an excuse for inflationary monetary policy; and he recommends unionization in order to boost wages. Preparing for the Coming Tax-Revolt. It doesn't matter that increasing taxes on successful people will not bring in much dough. What matters is punishing success, not filling the treasury. No one should be surprised at this. Whatever else you can say about Obama, he has never made a secret of his redistributionist philosophy. Economics for him is not about the creation of wealth. It is about 1) the redistribution of wealth and 2) penalizing those who have had the temerity to succeed. Gov't Spending Shatters Postwar Records. Congress is burning through the nation's community chest, spending trillions in tax dollars as if it were Monopoly money. The legislators are on pace to burn through a record $4 trillion in fiscal year 2009 — approximately $1 trillion more than 2008's history-making expenditure, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left. The left everywhere seeks to make as big and powerful a state as possible. It does so because only the state can redistribute society's wealth. And because only a strong and powerful state can impose values on society. The idea of small government, the American ideal since its inception, is the antithesis of the left's ideal. The cap-and-trade bill's control of American energy and the ObamaCare takeover of American health care will mean an unprecedented expansion of the state. Added to increased taxes and the individual becomes less and less significant as the state looms ever larger. Big-Government Medicine. Big new taxes. Big new spending. Big new government. This seems to be the proposed cure for the Wall Street-inspired recession. The government now runs major banks and companies, and plans to take control of the American health-care system. And it aims to tax energy use in the United States to reduce production of carbon dioxide. An Olympics We Can Believe In. The picture now comes into sharp focus. Americans voted for president a man who thinks that government creates wealth; that "greed" caused the current economic crisis; that taxpayers should provide health insurance for those who don't have it; that a government-induced housing and financial crisis can only be addressed by more government; that government can more efficiently and profitably run businesses than can the private sector; that "global warming" requires the imposition of job-killing and price-hiking action against emitters; and that government should "spread the wealth" by taking from those who have "too much" and giving to those who have "too little." Obamanomics: Decreased Productivity = More Jobs. The president believes that increased per-employee productivity is a problem that he needs to "work on." In other words, the president sees his challenge now as how to get the American worker to be less productive, so that companies require more employees to maintain current output. The New Jobs Bull. In a follow-on to the president's jobs summit, Congress is cooking up a jobs bill for a vote next week. It's the same tired recipe to expand government at the expense of the private sector. Call it a jobs kill. Last week, we watched as 130 Big Labor bosses, community organizers, left-wing think tanks and a few token CEOs supposedly put their heads together to come up with a way to create jobs in the worst U.S. recession since 1929. On jobs, Obama giveth, and Obama taketh away. [Scroll down] Big Government policies are killing GE jobs that might thrive in the free market, while creating GE jobs that never would survive in a free market. Obama is replacing unsubsidized jobs with subsidized jobs. Biden calls this "a new economy." Obama calls it "remaking America." Massive spending and the fast track to socialism Even before his inauguration, Obama was perceived as a big spender. Dems to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash. In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year's rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections. "We've incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday [12/9/2009]. Obama's Only Real Accomplishment. Barack Hussein Obama has accomplished only one thing in his first year in office. Obama's only real accomplishment is that he took hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and directed them to his donors on Wall Street, in the unions and the insurance industry. Barry Hussein took in nearly 15 million dollars in donations from securities and investments companies, and his first priority was to pay it back with a massive bailout that has exploded the deficit. Socialism in Stages. Every bureaucratic intervention in the market reduces long-term wealth creation, even if it provides a temporary boost to the economy. In time, this reduction of wealth is blamed on the inefficiencies of the remaining "unfettered" market, which provokes calls for greater intervention, ad infinitum. Health care is a perfect example of the incremental socialization process. House Democrats pass $447B omnibus. House Democrats passed a massive $447 billion appropriations conference report Thursday [12/10/2009] to fund a host of different government agencies in fiscal 2010. The conference report, approved on a 221-202 vote, didn't get any support from House Republicans, who raised concerns about spending increases. Small Business vs. the Great Ozbama. Mr. President, the bulk of the job losses at the small business level aren't tied to tight credit at all. They are the result of your policies and threats of policies that target business owners. I have lost count of the different ways you and your Democratic Congress and your czars have threatened to take money away from business owners. I was up to 30, and just gave up. Why not? The government can pay for everything. Government Giveth and Taketh Away. [President Barack Obama] now is promising to "spend our way out of this recession." ... It is estimated that the president's eruption of generosity will cost an additional $170 billion, perhaps more. He has made this promise despite the fact that fear is spreading throughout the country that our government deficits are unsustainable. The so-called Independents have forsaken him owing to their fear that he is bankrupting the country. Dr. Dean's Admitted Socialism. On Sunday's "Face The Nation" on CBS, Howard Dean, doctor, former Vermont Governor, former head of the DNC, stated that the Veterans Administration's health care system is, in fact, a socialist system. Yes, he said that. Taking the National Debt Seriously. If you think those town hall meetings over health care were fierce, wait until Americans come to understand the threat to our national financial survival posed by the interest on the government's credit card. ... It is the interest on the national debt that makes our future unstable. The exploding size of that burden suggests that, short of devaluing the dollar and taking a large bite out of the middle class through inflation and taxation, there is no way to ever pay down that bill. Obama Will Spend More on Welfare in the Next Year Than Bush Spent on Entire Iraq War. As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama's proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush's war spending by more than $260 billion. U.S. Budget Deficit Hit Record $1.4 Trillion in 2009. The federal budget deficit tripled to a record $1.4 trillion for the 2009 fiscal year that ended last week, congressional analysts said Wednesday [10/7/2009]. How Uncle Sam is killing your savings. The government is spending trillions to keep interest rates down in order to support the economy and prop up housing prices, and those low rates have inflicted collateral damage on savers' incomes. Dangerous deficit: America's red ink hits a troubling mark. The federal government's announcement that the deficit for the fiscal year that ended in September is $1.4 trillion, the highest since 1945, is very unwelcome news. Coming Soon: $500 for Every Newborn? Imagine a world where every baby received a trust fund at birth. It might sound like a fairy tale, but being born into money — or at least into a $500 savings account — could soon become reality for all children born in the United States. The Editor says... Obama Administration to Increase 10-Year Deficit Estimate to $9 Trillion. In a report next week, the Obama administration will increase its 10-year budget deficit projection to roughly $9 trillion, an increase of about $2 trillion from the previous projection, an official at the Office of Management and Budget told FOX News. The 2010-2019 cumulative deficit projection replaces the administration's previous estimate of $7.108 trillion. The Taking of America. [Under President Obama,] Americans have been saddled with more spending and a greater level of debt than all previous 43 Presidents combined. There is no way these trillions of dollars can ever be paid back and Obama knows it. He also knows or at least thinks that most Americans are so stupid they will roll over for all of this and just let it happen. He's wrong. Obama's Red-Ink Ocean. They call this restraint? President Obama yesterday proposed cutting $17 billion from the federal budget — barely one half of 1 percent. All while spending $3.4 trillion. Pain? Restraint? It's more like party time, we'd say. Responding to the Obama State. By now almost everyone agrees the numbers are staggering. Since Barack Obama took his oath of office around 11 weeks ago, he has proposed a $3.6 trillion budget, which will create a deficit this year of almost $1.8 trillion. This amounts to 12.3 percent of the GDP, up from 3.2 percent in 2008 and 1.2 percent in 2007. The President's budget was submitted in conjunction with a $410 billion omnibus spending bill, complete with some 8,500 earmarks. This legislation, in turn, came in the aftermath of a $787 billion stimulus package. Printing Money — and Its Price. It may seem perverse that in this new era of reckoning — with consumers finally tapped out, government coffers lean and banks paralyzed by fear — many economists have concluded that the appropriate medicine is a fresh dose of the very course that delivered the disarray: Spend without limit. Print money today, fret about the consequences tomorrow. Otherwise, invite a loss of jobs and business failures that could cripple the nation for years. Such thinking carries the moment as President-elect Barack Obama puts together plans to spend more than $700 billion on projects like building roads and classrooms to put people back to work. Traveling down the road to serfdom. The economic and social perils of centralized, top-down, big-government intrusion are as well established as it is possible for a public policy to be. We know they lead to lower growth, dependency, and the atrophy of entrepreneurial will. We know this because we have seen it happen again and again for more than a century. And yet, here we are in 2009 poised to travel down that gruesome road to serfdom once more. Slickness With a Straight Face. Clearly the Obama administration has not brought comfort to the markets in its initial weeks in office. The President and his team have also failed to bring clarity or coherence. Their massive agenda is not only ambitious, bold, and expensive, it is contradictory. Take the President's new budget proposal, for instance. The Generational Theft Act of 2009. Barack Obama has dubbed his behemoth fiscal stimulus proposal the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." But if truth in advertising were required of White House plans, only one title would fit the trillion-dollar-plus-and-growing bill: The Generational Theft Act of 2009. President-elect Obama was at his most candid when he told the country Tuesday [1/6/2009] that we face massive deficits for the foreseeable future. "Potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come," he said, "even with the economic recovery that we are working on." Obama team ponders how best to waste $1 trillion. You can appreciate the dilemma of Obama's Kenyesians. How best do we waste $1 trillion in next year's "stimulus package?" Do we dress it up in spiffy new language and spend it on creating grids for solar and wind power? Or do we just throw it at traditional infrastructure projects like roads and bridges? Obama stimulus could reach $1 trillion: report. President-elect Barack Obama's team is considering a plan to boost the recession-hit U.S. economy that could be far larger than previous estimates and might reach $1 trillion over two years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday [12/13/2008]. Stimulus: The stuff Obama would build. America may soon get a whole lot of new stuff. As part of a new, massive spending plan designed to jumpstart the economy, there's talk of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on new roads, bridges, trains, schools, power plants, transmission lines and energy-efficient homes. Obama's Job-Creation Program Flunks Basic Math. There are currently about 10 million unemployed workers in the U.S. "If we write a check for $75,000 to each of the unemployed, we won't have anyone 'unemployed,'" said former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. The recipients may not be working in the traditional sense of going to the office each day, but the government can provide for their needs without anyone having to lift a finger. Obama Appoints University of Starbucks Economics Department. Ever walk into a Starbucks and see a bunch of people sitting there debating textbook theories and solving all the world's problems over a mocha java? If so, then you've visited a University of Starbucks campus. These are precisely the kind of people who have gotten America into the current economic mess. Let's Hope Obama Doesn't Keep His Promises. Put these policy blunders next to other of his objectives — higher minimum wages, requiring companies to pay benefits they can't afford, excessive regulation, the establishment of new entitlements as part of an unaffordable welfare state, higher prices because of higher corporate taxes, the further devaluing of stocks and savings with boosted capital gains taxes — and what you will get is economic deterioration. So the bet you should have with Obama-trusting friends and neighbors is that, to the extent that he fulfills his campaign pledges, the economy will be much, much worse in virtually all categories by the end of his second year as president. The Obama Spendorama: Obama claims to want to "balance the budget and stop spending the Social Security Surplus." Combining that laudable goal with Obama's massive new spending would cause the tax bills of the average taxpayer earning $62,000 to rise $5,300, or 61%. For taxpayers earning $104,000, the increase would be over $12,000, or 74%, and for the top 1%, earning over $365,000, "their income tax bill rise by an astounding $93,500 (132%)!" Obama hosting pricey party in a dicey economy. Unemployment is up. The stock market is down. Let's party. The price tag for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration gala is expected to break records, with some estimates reaching as high as $150 million. Despite the bleak economy, however, Democrats who called on President George W. Bush to be frugal four years ago are issuing no such demands now that an inaugural weekend of rock concerts and star-studded parties has begun. Don't Know Much About Economics. Barack Obama is an awfully good politician but not much of an economist. His model for lifting America out of its economic slump is President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Obama's New Deal is Bad for America. President-elect Barack Obama is proposing a staggering $500 to $750 billion federal government spending spree when he takes office to "fix the economy." He is promising to add or save 2.5 million jobs by 2011 with this FDR-style monstrosity. ... Obama is not even the president yet, and he is already setting himself up for failure by setting the bar on jobs and economic recovery extremely high. Obama-Economics. It's no secret that Obama wants to spread the wealth around. However, he is neither a Socialist nor a Communist. Why? Because both of these economic theories are based on people working. Also, having such things as welfare, free public housing, and free health care — and making others work to provide them — isn't socialism or communism. It's Obamaeconomics. Obama Considers Major Expansion in Jobless Aid. President-elect Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are considering major expansions of government-assisted health care insurance and unemployment compensation as they begin intensive work this week on a two-year economic recovery package. One proposal, as described by Democratic advisers, would extend unemployment compensation to part-time workers, an idea that Congressional Republicans have blocked in the past. Obama's Team Rankles the Right. Conservatives fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come. "It is disturbing," said Roger Clegg, a conservative opponent of Lee's appointment who is now watching the Obama advisers at the Justice Department. "The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left. Obama's End Run around Congress. Candidate Barack Obama promised "change we can believe in," but he never hinted that this change would all but circumvent Congress to impose on America the most dramatic liberal social transformation since the New Deal. While promising to lead, he did not suggest that he would create a kind of "imperial presidency" that would horrify the Founding Fathers. Based on their own direct experience with a sovereign, they were rightly concerned with any one man having too much power. This is the kind of power that Obama is now reaching for, following the same kind of "stealth strategy" that helped get him elected. The dangers of Obama's public-works juggernaut. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to jolt the American economy out of its depressionary spiral with the mother of all fiscal stimuli. While Mr. Obama seems to have little choice in this policy matter, his desperate gambit has a high probability of failure — and may make the recession worse. Don't believe the Washington chorus: We can't spend our way to economic recovery. Though politically unpalatable, the wiser approach would be to let economic nature take its course. Memo To Obama: Cut Taxes For All. President-elect Obama is letting his outline for economic recovery dribble out into the media ever so slowly. But from what we've seen, the plan seems less like stimulus and more like redistribution. Obama eyes revenues via green policy, taxing rich. President Barack Obama is moving to raise new revenues and curb a massive deficit through two key channels under his maiden budget plan: a green energy scheme, and taxes on the richest Americans. The 10-year plan unveiled Thursday forecast revenues to dip to 2.186 trillion dollars in fiscal year ending September before more than doubling to 4.446 trillion dollars in 2019 as an enormous trillion dollar budget deficit thins out. GOP Attacks Climate Plan as Too Costly. Despite the Obama administration's claim that its budget wouldn't raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 a year, "the budget before us assumes large amounts of money" from the climate-change legislation, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said at a hearing Tuesday [3/3/2009]. "And that means higher prices for Americans for food, for gas, for electricity, and in a state like Michigan for home heating — pretty much anything that they buy." How Obama's Soak-The-Rich Plan Will End Up Hurting Middle Class. President Obama has claimed that his budget goes after the rich who supposedly will pay the cost of his spending extravaganza. But it is already apparent that the rest of us will pay plenty. Presidential Bait-and-Switch. Mr. Obama pledged "no tax hikes on any families earning less than a quarter million dollars." What he didn't draw attention to was $600 billion in higher energy taxes he wants to impose through a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions. These taxes will hit everyone who drives, flips a light switch, or buys anything manufactured, grown or shipped. Aiding the Bottom 10%: A Recipe for Economic Decline. [Scroll down] The Obama administration plans to spend $275 billion in order to aid homebuyers who borrowed irrationally in order to buy that which they couldn't afford. ... It's well known at this point that subsidization of mistaken investment insures more of the same, and in shielding the profligate from failure, the government shields them from lessons that will help them not to fail in the future. Failure is an excellent teacher, but those most in need of instruction will not be taught if the allegedly soft view of the housing problem prevails. What's Free Enterprise? Don't Ask Us! Since the economy slipped into a recession last year, Americans have seen leaders of both parties push unprecedented policies in response to the downturn, including federal bailouts of banks, automakers and mortgage holders. One after another, proposals have been advanced that have the potential to significantly curtail free enterprise in this country, giving government a far more intrusive role in our economy than ever before. In $3.6 Trillion Budget, Obama Signals Broad Shift in Priorities. President Obama delivered to Congress yesterday a $3.6 trillion spending plan that would finance vast new investments in health care, energy independence and education by raising taxes on the oil and gas industry, hedge fund managers, multinational corporations and nearly 3 million of the nation's top earners. Nation of sheep. "Socialism," tightly defined, is outright government ownership. It is not, strictly speaking, socialistic to propose that government take over health care policy, redistribute income, prod the automobile industry to make particular kinds of products, and impose a carbon cap-and-trade regime to combat a problem — global warming — that few voters seem to worry about. What, then, do we make of the budget that our fearless leader dropped on our heads the other day, with its announced deficit of $1.75 trillion? ... Our leader wants the country to be run by its national government. "Run by" isn't the same as "owned by." Requiem for a Republic. In his wildest dreams Ronald Reagan never thought that a president of a United States, now in the throes of a serious economic crisis, would adopt a solution to the problems of our economy that would not only worsen the situation, but set in motion the beginning of a transition of the government of the United States from a Constitutional Republic into a coercive quasi-Marxist regime where Washington is the master of our people instead of their servant. A socialist's America. It is finally beginning to dawn on conservatives who underestimated his ideological tendencies, and even on much of a general public that doesn't usually think in ideological terms, that Barack Obama has big plans. And not just plans for putting the economy back on track, either. The first African American president might be the most radical president in American history. Within this context, the economic crisis is simply the necessary pretext for sweeping changes designed to transform America in the Swedish or French image. The Community Organizer-in-Chief. I finally figured this out. Barack Obama is the Community Organizer-in-Chief. He is taking the inequities, the slights, the unfairness, the spread between wealth and poverty, the choices the rich have but which the poor do not ... and he wants to fix that. For everyone. Obama: Bush Made Me Do It. Obama claims to have inherited socialist policies from President Bush. Maybe so. Bush (and a Democrat controlled congress) was responsible for the first bailout bill. But Obama cannot blame the second bailout bill on Bush. Obama's trillion-dollar pork laden stimulus bill is not "entirely consistent with free-market principles." Not even close. To the extent President Obama is taking the country further down the road to socialism, he needs to be held accountable for his actions. Socialist? Moi? President Obama is quite touchy about being referred to as a "socialist." After appearing dismissive of a New York Times reporter's question about whether he was a socialist, he took the unusual step of placing a post-interview call to the Old Gray Lady to clarify his remarks, the Washington Times reports. "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question," said the new Oval Office inhabitant who remarked during the campaign that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." The Editor says... Obama Takes On Market-Based Government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly employed by the federal government shrank. One of the factors that explained the difference was contracting. ... The new system was supposed to save money; it almost certainly hasn't. It was supposed to deliver quality; instead we witnessed the most spectacular government failures in years. The Obama Rosetta Stone: [Scroll down slowly] The "top 1%" isn't just going to pay for these policies. Many of them would assent to that. The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to "pay for" the fact of their wealth — no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit. ... The White House says its goal is simple "fairness." That may be, as they understand fairness. But Figure 9 makes it clear that for the top earners, there will be blood. This presidency is going to be an act of retribution. Of course he's a socialist. Newsweek tells us we're all socialists now. That's an obvious lie, because the Newsweek socialists like Evan Thomas suffer from regular nightmares that American conservatives will find another Ronald Reagan. But that raised the question of socialism. Obama danced away from it, of course, when a NYT reporter actually asked him. Whoooo me? Well, anybody who reads the New Media knows the answer already; and anybody who doesn't know, doesn't want to know. The Schmoo is Alive and Well and Living in the White House. It's difficult to see much difference between the denizens of Dogpatch, the cargo cultists and Obama's disciples, all of whom seem to believe they're entitled to health care, day care, food stamps, college tuition, abortions, a house, a car, a plasma TV and collagen-enhanced lips. It isn't enough that Obama is a messiah for the non-religious and the number one fantasy sex symbol for America's women and Chris Matthews, he's also Santa Claus. When I see what Obama and his elves, Pelosi and Reid, are doing to America, spending money like a teenager who's stumbled upon Paris Hilton's Platinum Card, it makes me fear that, thanks to the last election, America has done to itself what no foreign invader could have hoped to accomplish. Obama's Relentless War on the American Dream. It's probably poor form to piggyback onto another columnist's work, but Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger's disturbing discoveries about President Barack Obama's budget summary justify an exception. Those not blinded by the Obama cult fog have produced abundant evidence of Obama's grudge against capitalism, but Henninger's revelations are hard to top. Despite Obama's later denials, he was most serious when he cavalierly told Joe the Plumber he wanted to "spread the wealth around." We've seen it born out in his policies so far and in the promises of those to come. Obama's Class War Budget vs. Your Income: President Obama met this week with the chairmen of the congressional budget committees and called for a bipartisan effort to "pass a budget that puts this nation on the road to lasting prosperity." But the fiscal 2010 budget he presented is a startling call to political class war. It depicts America as populated by an aggrieved middle class exploited by an upper class luxuriating in ill-gotten gains. Time to Stop the Bailout Stampede. It's becoming increasingly clear that both the elected and appointed Democratic leaders at the helm of the world's largest financial ship of state, responsible for navigating us out of a spiraling economic crisis, have forfeited the common sense and commitment to the principles of a free market — the most basic of which is the freedom of business to succeed and the freedom to fail — which have formed America's economic compass for over two hundred years. Under President Obama, Big Government is Back. Three decades after Ronald Reagan declared that federal activism wasn't the answer to America's problems, big government is back. The evidence is everywhere. There's President Obama's $787 billion program to stimulate the economy, including massive investments in roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects. There's his $275 billion plan to prevent home foreclosures, along with his $634 billion, 10-year proposal to improve healthcare. Stimulating Ourselves to Death. The massive cost of the stimulus doubled even before any legislation was written, much less approved. Originally tagged at $400 billion, the proposal quickly jumped to $825 billion, and latest estimates at press time have it costing north of $1 trillion. ... Given the size, will the stimulus work as advertised? Will the goods and services — be they concrete for new highway projects or groceries for hungry families — pump up flagging demand and boost stalled economic activity? If so, it will be the first time in modern recorded history. Is Socialism Overtaking Capitalism in the Way Schumpeter Foresaw? In his 1942 book, "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy," Joseph Schumpeter asked the essential question: "Can capitalism survive?" His unsettling answer was, "No. I do not think it can." Schumpeter's words were in no way meant to denigrate capitalism. Instead, he felt "its very success undermines the social institutions which protect it." History in many ways proved his views prophetic. Card Check: Good for Unions, Bad for America. The Obama administration's budget is full of proposals that threaten to weaken our staggering economy. Higher taxes on high earners and reduced deductions for their charitable contributions and mortgage interests. A cap-and-trade system that will impose higher costs on everyone who uses electricity. A national health insurance program that will take $600 billion or so out of the private-sector economy. But the most grievous threat to future prosperity may be off-budget — the inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act. More about the Employee Free Choice Act. Gregg: 'This country will go bankrupt'. Even though he was almost a member of the new Obama administration, New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg Sunday slammed President Obama's approach to handling the country's fiscal outlook. Grassley: Obama budget step toward 'socialism'. President Obama's budget of tax hikes to pay for massive new spending programs is a "trend toward socialism" that will stifle a creative free market, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said in an interview Monday [3/23/2009]. Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, also criticized the new president for going back on campaign promises to run an open and transparent government, citing Mr. Obama's use of a presidential "signing statement" on the recent stimulus law unilaterally cutting back protections for federal whistleblowers. Obama Sticker Shock. President Obama's 2010 budget looks more astounding by the day, especially when someone other than the White House budget office is analyzing it. The latest case of epic sticker shock came Friday when the Congressional Budget Office published its assessment, which found that the proposals would increase the federal deficit by $2.3 trillion more over 10 years than the White House had claimed. US lawmaker: Obama budget makes US worse than Cuba. President Barack Obama's 3.55-trillion-dollar budget plan will leave the United States with a worse budget deficit than Cuba, a leading Republican critic warned Tuesday. "This creates for us a higher deficit than Cuba's. This is not the kind of position we want to put the United States in," Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. Other Republican critics of Obama's spending policies, including his nearly 800-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, have variously warned that he risks turning the country into Argentina, France, Germany, or Zimbabwe. The 1966 Election's Warning to Obama. It was a historic tidal wave of rejection. Symbolized by, of all things, housewives boycotting supermarkets. And the active participation of seven future presidents of the United States. The 1966 "off year" or congressional elections should also serve as a political warning to the Obama White House as it pursues its strategy of pumping trillions of taxpayer dollars into the economy. Communicating Obama's Fiscal Disaster. President Bush, yes, spent money like a drunken sailor, and left the nation with a record $400-billion deficit. President Obama, however, is spending far more money than Bush, with a record $1.8-trillion deficit projected for his first year. Period. Repeat that statement. Repeat it to those who don't understand, or don't wish to understand. Repeat it until you're blue in the face. Make the person on the receiving end recite the numbers: $400 billion vs. $1.8 trillion. Watching the Trillions Pile Up. With another $2 trillion in federal interventionism announced within the last week alone, the price tag for America's economic "recovery" continues to soar to stratospheric, scarcely-comprehensible heights. First we had hundreds of billions for troubled — now "toxic" — assets. Then we had President Barack Obama's $787 billion bureaucratic bailout — an unprecedented expansion of programmatic, status quo spending that will create the "Mother of All Annualizations" for dozens of cash-strapped state governments that even now still refuse to live within their means. There's trouble in Toyland. The economy is in free fall, with Congress on the way to approving a budget approaching $4 trillion, just when we were getting accustomed to thinking in terms of billions, not mere millions. Some of us still stop to pick up a penny on the sidewalk, but who in Congress would stoop to pick up a mere million dollars? If You Like California's Sorry State of Affairs, You're Gonna Love Obama's Vision for America. Some of President Obama's critics say he wants to turn America toward European-style socialism but maybe he'll settle for imitating California. California, once known for its robust capitalism, growth and sunny optimism (after all, it's the state that brought us Ronald Reagan), has become a pitiful giant, pinned down by the same kind of big government that Obama envisions for the country. Obama budget breaks the bank. House and Senate Democratic leaders are looking to pass the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion federal budget for 2010 by the end of next week, but the lawmakers under them should take into account the shocking deficit impact and fight to reign in the proposal. We're not holding our breath that they will do so, despite the immense deficit predictions announced Friday [3/20/2009] by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Taking Debt To The Next Frontier. In his budget message, the president says "the time has come to usher in a new era of responsibility." But a new report shows the only thing his budget delivers is an unprecedented era of deficits and debt. Little Dictators. Rep. Barney Frank, the Democrat who sits atop Congress' efforts to deal with the financial crisis, has enough chutzpah for 100 politicians — which is saying a lot. In comments before testimony from both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chief Ben Bernanke Tuesday [3/24/2009], Frank said he wants to regulate pay on Wall Street — even for companies that aren't getting bailouts. Not Yet Ready for a Welfare State. Roadblocks. That's what Barack Obama has been encountering on the audacious path toward a European-style welfare state he has set out in his budget and other proposals. He continues to insist that America cannot enjoy real prosperity again without higher taxes on high earners, a government health insurance program, a cap-and-trade program that amounts to a tax on energy and the effective abolition of secret ballots in unionization elections. The fact that there are large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress made it seem that the path was open. But roadblocks have started to appear. Budget Smoke and Mirrors: Where's the Outrage? There has doubtlessly been great anxiety about the economy, but I think even greater anxiety exists over what President Barack Obama is doing and planning to do to this country. We've always had economic downturns, and we've always recovered, but we've never deliberately planned to spend ourselves into bankruptcy, from which we may not be able to recover. True, our smorgasbord of entitlements has threatened our long-term solvency for some time ... But Obama takes profligate spending to entirely new levels while pretending to be a fiscal hawk. Geithner: Markets won't solve crisis. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said government action, not the markets, will solve the banking crisis in offering a fierce defense on Sunday of the Obama administration's efforts to fix the financial sector. The Manchurian Candidate starts war on business. Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a Manchurian Candidate to destroy the US economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue? He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action. Communicating the Financial Disaster. How do we communicate the depths of the nation's fiscal depravity? How do we simply — very, very simply — explain the mindboggling generational debt being produced right now by President Obama and the Democratic Congress? Communicating this is crucial because Obama and the Congress, along with their supporters and media, are trying to blame this calamity on George W. Bush. Logically, of course, that is impossible. Politically, it will likely be accomplished — unless we can communicate the reality. Conquered From Within. As the media obsess about Obama on the Leno show and Michelle's new White House garden, the real story last week went virtually unnoticed. Namely, the Fed announcement that it will be pumping another trillion bucks into the economy. That's one trillion dollars it will manufacture out of thin air. The Europeanization of America: [Scroll down] But here we are 20 minutes in, and full-scale Europeanization is already under way: Europeanized health care, Europeanized daycare, Europeanized college education, Europeanized climate-change policy... Obama's pseudo-SOTU speech was America's first State of the European Union address, in which the president deftly yoked the language of American exceptionalism to the cause of European statism. Apparently, nothing testifies to the American virtues of self-reliance, entrepreneurial energy and the can-do spirit like joining the vast army of robotic extras droning in unison, "The government needs to do more for me..." A 'Truly Breathtaking' Departure. Team Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner Sunday afternoon [3/29/2009], just a short time after Treasury man Tim Geithner told the television talk shows that some banks will need large amounts of new TARP-money government assistance — even though the bankers don't want it. Does this smack of big-time government planning and industrial policy? Another lurch to the left for economic policy? Toxic Omnibus Anti-Energy, Anti-Civil Liberties Stew. Like its cousin, the $410 billion Omnibus spending bill that President Obama earlier signed into law, the Omnibus lands bill contains several bills from previous sessions of Congress wrapped into one. The final legislative package — which passed the House last week after clearing the Senate the previous week — actually contains a whopping 170 different bills, according to CNSNews.com. ... And as with the AIG bailout, there will be plenty of regrets for this big rush job's lack of initial scrutiny. The GOP's Alternative Budget: We will first consider President Barack Obama's plan. To be clear, this is no ordinary budget. In a nutshell, the president and Democratic leaders in Congress are attempting to bring about the third and final great wave of progressivism, building on top of the New Deal and the Great Society. So America is placed in a special moment in our history — brought about by the deep recession, Mr. Obama's ambitious agenda, and the pending fiscal tidal-wave of red ink brought forward by the looming insolvency of our entitlement programs. If this agenda comes to pass, it will mark this period in history as the moment America turned European. No New Deal II. The data show a significant difference between the economic situation today and that of the Great Depression. Additionally, one must keep in mind that, given the social support measures and automatic counter-cyclical "stabilizers" built in to government spending today (e.g., welfare, unemployment benefits, public pensions, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and numerous other social assistance measures), it is virtually impossible that an economy could shrink and human suffering and dislocation could be experienced to the same degree as during the Great Depression. Dems Manipulating Senate Rules Against Republicans. A procedure known as "reconciliation" has previously been used to push budget legislation through the Senate with a majority — not supermajority — vote. But in advocating for the procedure to be used on cap-and-trade legislation and health care instead of just budget bills, Democrats are throwing out any semblance of bipartisanship and thumbing their noses at the checks-and-balances system that is the crown jewel of the American system. Is This the End of Capitalism? Capitalism didn't tank the U.S. economy. Overbuilt housing did. Overbuilt housing tanked the economies of the U.K. and Ireland and Spain. If little else, we've learned that artificially cheap housing sets loose limitless moral hazard. Virtually every white-shoe financial institution in the world, plus the Russians, stuffed their balance sheets with securities carved out of the dreams of real-estate developers. Obama's $163,000 Tax Bomb. Reconciliation was created by Congress in the mid-1970s to enforce deficit reduction, the opposite of what the president and his party are aiming for. The immense increase in nondefense spending and taxes, and the tripling of the national debt in Mr. Obama's budget, have been the subject of considerable scrutiny since it was announced. Obama's Ultimate Agenda: [Scroll down slowly] His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax. Even Drunken Sailors Have a Credit Limit. President Barack Obama has something that a drunken sailor lacked: a printing press that prints government cash and credit, not to mention the power to tax when he runs a bit low. Generational theft is alive and well in America, and, according to my calculations, the Obama spending spree has cost the taxpayers, their children and grandchildren a whopping $4.27 trillion in spending and $2.4 trillion in new taxes to date. Banana republic budgeting should shame Obama, Congress. It was surely an act of hubris for President Obama to ask Congress to approve a $3.6 trillion federal budget for 2010 that runs a trillion-dollars worth of red ink its first year and then projects half-trillion deficits every year thereafter for a decade. Congress has never before been asked to consider spending of such magnitude, not even during wartime. Obama: The Charming Menace to Peace and Prosperity. Didn't the President, with a straight face, promise to reduce the deficit by half in five years? The Congressional Budget Office forecasts government spending over the next 10 years will quadruple the annual deficit of Bush's presidency. The CBO expects the nation's debt to double in five years and triple in 10. The Universal Pre-K Scam: Did you go to preschool? When I was growing up, few kids did. But now there is a new movement that says every child in America should have a chance to start school before kindergarten — at taxpayer expense. It's part of President Obama's massive spending plans. ... It's a popular idea. Sixty-seven percent of Americans favor universal pre-K funded by the government. But I doubt that most Americans have thought it through. It's easy to buy cars with someone else's money. America's Red Sea. America is diving into a Marianas Trench of red ink. There is barely a digit of black anywhere on the balance sheet, and spendthrift lawmakers are closing off numerous sources of positive revenue. Dr. Obama. Dr. Obama ordered the full dose of $700B worth of antibiotics plus the $150B worth of stimulants that came with them. But that wasn't enough for Dr. Obama. He ordered $787B worth of more stimulants and $410B of surgery on top of that, just for starters. His chief surgeon, Dr. Geithner, said he might need another $500B or $1000B. Once the immediate surgery was finished, Dr. Obama would put you in his chronic care facility, administering multi-trillion dollar procedures for at least the next 10 years. Biden, Emanuel, Clinton Garner 'Big Spender' Label. In fact, all the members of the last Congress who now are part of the Obama administration received failing grades for "taxpayer friendliness" — with the exception of Obama himself, who didn't cast enough votes to qualify. Presto: Another $750 Billion. The U.S. and Europe were widely expected to clash at the G-20 summit in London last month over how to address the global financial crisis. Voila, in just two days the problem was solved with a joint promise to increase International Monetary Fund resources by $750 billion to a total of $1 trillion. The U.S. portion of this new commitment is more than $140 billion. Yet Congress has debated neither the amount nor the proposed use of the funds. Instead, President Obama and his fellow leaders simply waved their hands, like a Star Trek captain, and said make it so. Obama's Soft Polls: Most polls currently have President Obama's "approval ratings" around 60%. That is not surprising, and likely will remain there or increase in the coming weeks. He's likeable. ... But adulation abroad and a perception of charm and charisma at home is not a mandate for the type of sweeping transformations to the domestic economy and foreign policy currently on the table. After all, Candidate Obama ran on "change we can believe in," not "revolution you must pay for." New Third Rail Is Rationing Of Health Care. In the service of his ultimate mission — the leveling of social inequalities — President Obama offers a tripartite social democratic agenda: nationalized health care, federalized education (ultimately guaranteed through college) and a cash-cow carbon tax (or its equivalent) to subsidize the other two. Problem is, the math doesn't add up. A Damaging First 100 Days. President Obama's first 100 days are nearly over and his supporters are already suggesting that he is the greatest president of all time. Hmm. Of course, only history will tell. But my single-greatest concern remains the fact that Mr. Obama is moving the country away from democratic free-market capitalism and toward a big-government, command-and-control vision of our nation's economy. What we are witnessing is a triumph of government bureaucrats over entrepreneurs, investors, and small businesses. Barack Obama's audacity of hype crumbles. On monetary policy, Obama has remained a bystander to the efforts of Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. Having reached close to zero interest rates in December, Bernanke announced the Fed would print money in an attempt to bring down real interest rates. Obama's First 100 Days. On domestic policy he's as liberal as McCain's supporters (and advisers) expected. With his trillions of dollars of spending, micromanagement of private industry, calls for tax hikes, and attempts to nationalize health care, Obama is shaping up as the most left-wing president since Lyndon Johnson. He makes Franklin Roosevelt look pretty conservative by contrast. Judging the First 100 Days. The President, with a gleeful seal of approval from his liberal allies in Congress, has already managed to bury future generations of Americans beneath a mountain of debt. ... In just 100 days, President Obama has laid the groundwork for the most intrusive federal overreach in the country's history, all funded with money we simply do not have. This agenda will not proceed uncontested. The 100-Day Assault on America. Aided by an eagerly compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic media, and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling leap into collectivism. ... Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" — whatever that means — from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses. Obama proposes spending billions (or trillions?) more on "creating or saving" — whatever that means — 4 million, 3.5 million or 2.5 million jobs. Pick a number. Leftward Lurch Has Wiped Out Reagan's Gain. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan's popularity and policies moved American politics firmly to the right. In only 100 days, Barack Obama's politics and policies have shifted America way to the left. The president is seeking to change the whole relationship between the government and the free-enterprise private sector. He is steering the country away from democratic capitalism and toward his big-government, command-and-control vision. We are witnessing a triumph of government bureaucrats over entrepreneurs, investors and small businesses. Get ready for Obama's coming hyperinflation. With an unprecedented deficit that's approaching $2 trillion, this budget proposal is a surefire prescription for hyperinflation. So every senator and representative who votes for this monster $3.6 trillion budget will be endorsing a spending spree that could very well turn America into the next Weimar Republic. For those too young to remember, that was the period in Germany in the years between the two world wars when people needed wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread. The same thing has happened in Zimbabwe in the last few years.Obama disowns deficit he helped shape. "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him (sic) — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance. Reflections: On February 10, the morning after the crucial Senate vote on the $838 billion kitchen-sink spending bill, the Washington Post bannered, "New Bailout May Top $1.5 Trillion." Libertarians barely had time to contemplate having failed to stop the largest spending bill in history before they were hit with another one, this time to funnel money to banks and other lenders. And this one (which other newspapers estimated at as much as $2.5 trillion, but what's another trillion here or there?) doesn't even require congressional approval — much like last fall's Monday-morning announcements of what Czar Henry Paulson had done over the weekend. Obama's Path to a Lost Decade. History shows us quite clearly that a government cannot spend its way out of an economic downturn. It didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, when the ten stimulus packages implemented over an eight year period failed to prevent the "lost decade." Nor did it work during our own Great Depression, when FDR's own Treasury Secretary lamented the fact that massive spending had brought them little in the way of increased employment and much in the way of debt. Yet spending our way out of this situation is precisely what the President is attempting to do, and the nearly $800 billion stimulus package is merely the tip of the iceberg. The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism. There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise — the principle at the core of American culture. Barack Obama cracks down on tax havens and loopholes. In what will be characterised by some as yet another example of the anti-capitalist policies being promoted by the US since he took office in January, President Obama is taking on big business head-on in what is seen as the biggest change to US corporation tax laws since 1986. The Day the American Dream Dies. With little fanfare, the Government Accountability Office released a document last week that points to the day when the American dream dies and is buried beneath a middle-class welfare state. You can see death coming for the American dream as surely as you can see cirrhosis coming for a drunk. We are bringing it upon ourselves — although not all Americans deserve what is going to happen. Memo to Capitalists: Be Very Afraid. As long as people have different worldviews, there will be vigorous debates about the effectiveness, fairness and morality of capitalism compared with other economic systems. But common sense supports history's empirical evidence in validating the generalized notion that robust economic production will accompany political and economic liberty rather than command and control systems. People will produce more when they are allowed to retain more of the fruits of their labor. You simply cannot expand the economic pie by separating rewards from efforts. ... Yet the current administration and its wholly owned congressional partners have embarked on a course to destroy capitalism from every imaginable front. Chump Change. After hearing the Democratic Party lay into President Bush last year for his "profligacy," "record spending" and "soaring deficits," we can't be blamed for expecting something else from the party now in power. Instead, we get a 19% rise in domestic spending in 2010 from 2008 (2009 has been wildly inflated by stimulus spending), coupled with $17 billion in bogus "cuts" and record amounts of pork-barrel spending. White House: Budget deficit to top $1.8 trillion. US red ink to top $1.8 trillion, 4 times record; Government borrows 46 cents for every dollar spent. Obama's eight bogus budget arguments. Assertion No. 1: "I pledged to cut the deficit in half" by 2013. Fact: The president doesn't mention that the deficit has quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush. This is like eating a 5,000 calorie meal, and then pledging to halve your calories from that level. From TARP to Obama to Command-and-Control. Speaking near Albuquerque, New Mexico, at a town-hall meeting on Thursday [5/14/2009], Pres. Obama said the federal debt load is unsustainable and warned of skyrocketing interest rates. He neglected to say that his massive spending-and-borrowing policies are directly causing this problem. Now, I have a thought. Stop this massive spending and borrowing. Obama Offers Security at the Expense of Liberty. The Obama administration is assiduous in the protection of this administrative class. It offers $6,800,000,000 to the state of California on one hand, and then threatens to take it back because the state cut the pay of public employee union members by $74,000,000. The government gives JPMorgan Chase $25,000,000,000, and then insists that it give up in the Chrysler deal what it would ordinarily receive in bankruptcy proceedings and turn it over to fund the health care benefits of United Auto Worker retirees. Our Government is Set to Explode. Democrats in Congress, with the support of the Obama administration, are set to upend a policy which for the past 50 years has saved taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, but cut into the ranks of unionized labor. They are preparing to in-source to the federal government thousands — possibly hundreds of thousands — of jobs formerly contacted out to private companies. Obama's Risky Debt. Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he's labeled "irresponsible"? Well, apparently much more than the massive amounts envisioned by President Obama. The final version of his 2010 budget, released last week, is a case study in political expediency and economic gambling. Obama's Even Riskier Debt. By far the biggest holder of federal treasury bonds is the United States Government itself ($4.2 trillion worth, as compared to $2.7 trillion held by foreigners). Most of this debt is owned by various trust funds, principally the Social Security Trust Fund. That makes the total national debt $10.5 trillion, not $6.3 trillion, 73 percent of GDP, not 40 percent. The big problem here is that many of these trust funds will have to start dipping into their stockpiles of treasuries in order to pay their obligations in the near future. Medicare is already doing so. Massive Expansion Of U.S. Government Gives Socialism A Shot In The Arm. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman got a lot of things right, but he was overly optimistic when he wrote in 1990 that socialism was dead. Liberals: The Enemy Within. When Bush ran up the national debt, he got clobbered by Republicans and Democrats, alike. But when, in just three short months, Obama tripled the deficit, nary a discouraging word did we hear from a single liberal. Massive inflation looms over all of us, but Democrats just keep smiling and giving each other high-fives while Obama cranks out funny money like a counterfeiter on speed. Statism the only thing being stimulated. The stimulus will do nothing for the economy, but it will dramatically advance the cause of statism (as Mark Levin rightly calls it). Last week's vote in California is a snapshot of where this leads: The gangster regime in Sacramento is an alliance between a corrupt and/or craven political class wholly owned by a public sector union-bureaucracy extortion racket. So what if the formerly Golden State goes belly-up? They'll pass the buck to Washington, and those of us in nonprofligate jurisdictions will get stuck with the tab. As Goes California, So Goes The Nation. If you are curious what Barack Obama's economic policies will do to our nation's economy, take a look at California and the economic collapse the once prosperous state faces. California's economic downfall is the result of liberal policies, policies not unlike what Obama is proposing for our great nation. California is an image of what is sure to come for America, should the federal government continue down the road of chasing Obama's proposed economic ruin. When will Barack Obama stop fudging it? The economy remains the President's overriding problem. Just how little he has got to grips with it was shown at his first cabinet meeting, held five weeks ago. He ordered colleagues to find a saving of $100 million in costs; but this was in the context of a total budget of $3.4 trillion. Senator Mitch McConnell, who leads the Republicans in the Senate, led the ridicule of this proposal, contending that Obamanomics meant the national debt, already at its highest ever level, would double in five years and triple in the next 10. Selective Sacrifice. Again and again President Obama has been asking all Americans to sacrifice during this season of economic hardship. But the president's call apparently does not extend to federal employees. At a time when the private sector is being ravaged by layoffs, pay cuts, and benefits loss, the federal government has embarked on a hiring spree. Even as the country's unemployment soars toward double digits, our government is handing out tens of thousands of jobs each month. Lessons of the Weimar Republic. Although not in exactly the same position as Weimar Germany, the United States now finds itself under the rule of its own charismatic leader and a Federal Reserve that together seem bent upon debauching our currency through inflation. By "priming the pump" in super Keynesian fashion, the Obama administration courts an economic disaster that could make Weimar Germany look fiscally sound. Obama and the Amazing Trillion Dollar Dreamcoat. Obama is amazing, a miracle worker in fact. So much so that he has decreed an end to arithmetic. No way can he spend a trillion here and a trillion there without it adding up. But the O administration is not very good at addition. Or subtraction. Geithner rejects charges US moving toward socialism. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner dismissed as ridiculous charges that the administration of President Barack Obama was moving the United States toward socialism. In an interview with The Washington Post, Geithner said the administration "had to do exceptional things to help protect the American economy, help fix this crisis, fix this mess." Recall the Stimulus, Let the De-TARPing Begin, and Set the Fed Free. [Scroll down] When you talk to traders and economists, the whisper story is that Bernanke and the Fed are no longer truly independent of the Obama White House and Treasury. ... Already the Fed has created more than $1 trillion in new cash, and the M2 money supply is growing at its fastest pace in 25 years. This monetary explosion explains what's really driving the dollar down and Treasury rates up. It's not huge budget deficits, but the growing fear that a less-than-independent Fed will keep pushing new money into the financial system in order to fund Obama's liberal spending policies. A political pattern to stimulus tour. Since Congress passed President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus bill in February, administration officials have traveled to at least 66 events across the country to tout the massive spending program or hand out stimulus cash to grateful local officials. But a POLITICO examination of the travel reveals a distinctly political trend line: Top officials have hosted events predominantly in states that Obama won in 2008. What's more, the examination revealed that Obama officials all but avoided Southern states that Obama lost. Barack Obama to increase stimulus spending. Saying, "we're in a position to really accelerate," President Barack Obama announced Monday that he is ramping up stimulus spending exponentially in the next three months, allowing the administration to "save or create" 600,000 jobs — four times as many as during the first 100 days since he signed the bill. The spending plans include national parks, summer youth jobs, veterans' medical centers, police and teachers. Palin's 'Told Ya So'. Palin: Well, when you consider that the federal government is about eleven trillion dollars in debt, and we're borrowing more to spend more... it defies any sensible economic policy that any of us ever learned through college. It defies economy practices and principles that tell ya 'you gotta quit digging that hole when you are in that financial hole'. The Second Coming of Jimmy Carter. Remember the good old days of the Jimmy Carter presidency when the US saw the combination of high inflation and high unemployment? We are sowing the seeds for a return to those days of national malaise. Six Ways Democrats Are Hurting America. [#4] The Democrats have said "yes" to a stimulus package that doesn't stimulate anything: Including the interest, the cost for the stimulus is going to be a colossal 1.2 trillion dollars. However, as of May 22, only 37 billion dollars of that money had been spent. Meanwhile, according to the latest data, which is for April, personal consumption for American consumers dropped 0.1%. So, why are we going 1.2 trillion dollars deeper in debt to the Chinese again...? Obama's giant misfortune cookie. In one of today's richest ironies, America's fiscal health — such as it is — hinges on the generosity of the Chinese Communist Party. ... The Chinese have urged Washington to stop spending and printing so much money, lest inflation turn China's $800.5 billion in Treasuries into a giant misfortune cookie. Enviro-nazis Ultimate Solution. Like many Americans last November, I voted for change. I had hope. I no longer have hope since the president I voted for never mentioned a fraction of the agenda he now espouses. I did not vote to lower my standard of living, humble as it may be. Nor did I ask to jump into the economic abyss in order to "save" the planet. When the economic chickens of this agenda do come home to roost, many people will change their perception of the whole quasi-religious scam known as "climate change." Once you view the fall you're about to take, it's natural to turn around and take a good look at who is pushing you. I voted for change, not economic suicide. The Failure of Obamanomics. Barack Obama has fatally undermined our currency, our solvency, our financial stability and — ultimately — our economy, all to spend money that has had no economic effect! Is Obama a failure? Not by his lights. His goal was never to stimulate the economy. His goal was to expand government spending, and he used the recession as an excuse to do so. And, by this standard, he is a raging success. With the stimulus spending, the government proportion of gross domestic product will rise from about 35 percent to about 40 percent, and with health care "reform" it will go soaring into the mid-40s, bringing us to parity with Germany en route to France! He's Telling You To Be Thrifty? On Tuesday [6/9/2009] the President tried to reinstitute the concept of "Paygo" or pay as you go — if you spend a dollar then the Congress has to save a dollar. However, he exempted about 2.5 trillion dollars of his priorities, including a health care reform jumpstart. It's just too much. When I saw that, I broke out laughing. Here's the president who has spent about $12 trillion in his first few months in office, sqandering it on everything imaginable. Now he's telling us to be thrifty? Never Waste A Crisis — Manufacture One. [Scroll down slowly] Because the current government refuses to consider or enact any or all of [several] tried and true remedies, we must consider the undesirable possibility that its members actually want the "crisis" to continue, or perhaps get worse. If we consider that the political Left, which has seized control of the modern Democrat Party, has a rabid appetite for power, then things may appear to be falling into place. Let's not waste a good crisis by getting rid of it; instead let's milk it for all it's worth. Time to stop the flood of federal regulation. At a campaign event a year ago, then-senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama noted that with government debt soaring to $9 trillion (it's $11 trillion today), Americans were in a hole. He asked his audience, "the first thing you do when you're in a hole is what?" The answer: "Stop digging." But this is 2009 and that was 2008, so that hole is getting wider and deeper. The gathering storm on Social Security and Medicare. President Obama, aided by Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has launched the federal government on the biggest deficit spending spree in human history. The federal government will spend at least $3.6 trillion in 2010, with an estimated $1.8 trillion of it borrowed, mainly from overseas creditors like China. Four Integrity Tests for President Obama. Accepting a huge spending bill loaded with pork earmarks it starkly contradictory to what Obama promised during the campaign. During the campaign this is what candidate Obama said: "We need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure we're not spending money unwisely." He has talked repeatedly about fiscal responsibility and real change in politics. Talk is cheap. This spending bill is not. Not with over 9,000 earmarks totaling some $12 billion. Media's Mask Is Slipping As Deficits Surge. A calm Sunday breakfast might have been ruined after a glance at the Washington Post's front page on June 14. A chart below the fold explained that under Obama's federal spending proposals, the U.S. would be required to borrow $9 trillion during the next decade. That's $9,000,000,000,000. The Post compared that, in today's dollars, to the financial burden of World War II: $3.6 trillion. That's not all of Obama's spending plan. That's only the part that's in the red. ... Sadly, this Washington Post article notwithstanding, the news media aren't questioning the new health "reform" drive. They are enabling it. Barack And His Dad: A Kenyan Economy For The U.S.A.. [Scroll down] I also pointed-out last summer that communism, itself, is a part of Mr. Obama's heritage. Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the biological father of our President, was a bureaucrat in the communist government of Kenya back when the nation first declared its independence in the 1960's. ... President Obama has demonstrated that he is skillful at seizing, controlling, and redistributing other people's wealth. But mere wealth redistribution is not the way of the industrialized world. It is the Kenyan-styled path to the Third World, and the path to the world's 82nd largest GDP. Obama's Worst Role. So what exactly is wrong with Mr. Obama's plan? The short answer is that he is attempting to stimulate demand, rather than stimulating supply. To make things even worse, he also is taking actions that will depress supply. ... Stagflation and other terms that haven't been heard since the miserable Carter years now are voiced again in economic forecasts. Give me, give me! We as a nation have been moving closer and closer to this moment, baby step-by-baby step, stride-by-stride, and now we are at the leaping stage. Government has just taken over GM; ABC will present little more than an Obama infomercial from the White House itself on the administration's health care "plan" and the president is even seeking authority to take over other companies. All the steps along the way, an income tax, Social Security, government hiring quotas, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, government bailouts, government subsidies, government housing and more. Watching How Hopenchange is Made: It seems clear that, if the public knew what is in this [Waxman-Markey] bill, and how much it may cost them, they would concur with this analysis: it is a "disaster." But the Democrats plan to ram it through without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text. The same legislative process that brought us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet again. Why so fast? Aside from the obvious reasons, there is a need to make room for the next bill to be railroaded through on a fast track by a one-party Congress. What is going on with the Cap and Trade bill? The bill is only available online at the House Rules Committee and is reported as "text of the bill to be introduced." Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454, that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees, there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer — but it's still being considered as H.R. 2454. Did someone mention Cap and Trade again? Washington's Plot to Explode Your Taxes. Everyone in Washington knows the record Federal deficits and debt are out of control and can't continue. President Obama knows it. The ultraliberal Democrat Congressional leadership knows it. Rank and file Congressional Republicans and Democrats know it. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been openly saying so. Obama's economic policies, adopted by the Democrat-controlled Congress, call for total Federal borrowing of $3.5 trillion this year alone! Recovery When? How About If? I have long tired of the economists and investment gurus debating "when our economy recovers" and how to position your investments for "when America bounces back" and so on, as if it's a foregone conclusion. Haven't they heard? The America that always recovers is not in anymore. Any assumption of a recovery fails to consider the idea that we now have a government run by people who ignore American history and who are hell bent on changing America's future. ... We cannot be on the verge of any meaningful recovery because we are in a downward swirl of liberal policy consequences — and we have a government determined to correct this by getting more and more liberal. A Cancer In The Capitol Is Killing Us. There is a rapidly growing cancer in the nation's capitol, a disease called progressive socialism which comes from repeated exposure to Marxism and Communism. This disease will become fatal to the American Republic in just a few short years if not treated and defeated in the next two elections. It's not too late to save America, but it will be very soon if we don't act now. The government-funded $10 tomato. How could we end up with a $10 tomato? The prices of tomatoes, potatoes, breakfast cereal and other commodities are generally kept fairly low because consumers control what they buy. No matter what we do in our current system of shopping, we will not see a $10 tomato until Obamanomics causes hyperinflation and we begin using tomatoes as currency. However, there is one other way that we could see a $10 tomato. That is if we get government involved in the food industry. When did the lowbrows take over the culture? [Scroll down] Look at Obama's unbelievable spending spree. No sane and sensible taxpayer could possibly believe that spending trillions and trillions of dollars on blue-sky fantasies makes any sense at all; the only reason Americans aren't in open rebellion yet is that half of them can't believe it's happening, and the other half are idiots. We haven't seen the effect (yet) on our pocketbooks. There's food in the stores still, and housing has gotten cheaper. But let Obama's budget affect our wallets directly and just watch the voters explode with rage. Europeanization: With U. S. unemployment set to climb to 10%, and Canada not far behind, the North American market economies will soon be looking at what used to be derisively termed "European levels" of unemployment. The question is whether these high unemployment rates are merely short-term blips that will be followed by quick recoveries, or whether high jobless numbers will persist, turning Canada and the United States into grim replicas of sclerotic Europe. Time to Get Mad. Why aren't millions of honest, decent, hard-working Democrats up in arms? I can guarantee that if a Republican president had done half the things that Obama has pulled off in his first half year, most of us on the right would be calling for his head. ... Even before grabbing up car companies and banks, he got the ball rolling with a trillion dollar, 1100-page pork-filled stimulus package that had to be passed, he insisted, within a few short hours or America was going to be turned into a pumpkin. Well, without anyone having had time to read anything but the price tag, it was passed into law. Obama then took his own sweet time signing it. In the months since its passage, the unemployment rate has soared, entire states are going belly up and, apparently, nobody seems to know what happened to the money. U.S. Red Ink Tops $1 Trillion for First Time Ever. Nine months into the fiscal year, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time. The imbalance is intensifying fears about higher interest rates and inflation, and already pressuring the value of the dollar. There's also concern about trying to reverse the deficit — by reducing government spending or raising taxes — in the midst of a harsh recession. 2010. Next year's elections are going to produce a political earthquake. That is because we currently suffer the most left-wing government in our nation's history. After just 6 months in office, the flower children that rule Washington in overwhelming numbers are already smashing through all records regarding federal taxes, spending, deficits, and debt. Obama and his ultra-left Democrats adopted a so-called stimulus bill raising spending a trillion dollars that never had a prayer of actually creating jobs and promoting long-term economic growth, because it was based entirely on old-fashioned, brain dead, proven to fail, Keynesian economics. Obama's War for Socialism. Yes, For Socialism. At some point of embittering clarity, Americans will open their eyes to the glaring significance of the Obama era and see the Power Grab Years for what they are. Whether this realization comes in time to stave off the eradication of the United States as we thought we knew it, or whether it comes too late, I predict it will surely come. A Rush to Disaster. "Now is not the time to slow down or lose heart," the president said, also warning that any health-care overhaul enacted by Congress "cannot add to the deficit, and I mean it." But in bombshell testimony Thursday [7/16/2009] that rocked Capitol Hill, the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned that proposals now before the House and the Senate would do exactly that — and then some. Obama's Insidious War on the Middle Class: Like a PacMan gobbling up everything in sight, going after folks making more than $250,000 a year is not enough to satisfy Obama's insatiable appetite for money and power. He wants more. Although it means breaking a campaign promise to only tax the "rich," Obama's mad rush for revenue to fund his social engineering has transformed his agenda into a war against the middle class. Just who do they represent? Virtually every day when Congress is in session, I get a press release or two from each of Montana's representatives explaining how they are looking out for our state. Usually, those press releases are proud announcements of how the senator or representative wants credit for the U.S. government agreeing to spend millions more of taxpayer money in Montana. For some reason, these announcements never seem to reference the national debt that they are expanding. Obama and the Last Hurrah of Liberalism. Over the past fifty years, regardless of who was in the White House or in charge of Congress, no one has been able to halt the incessant spread of left-wing radicalism in our institutions and the uncontrolled spending and growth of government. When a President as accomplished as Ronald Reagan was unable to do so it is apparent that no future Republican President or Congress, short of major national catastrophe, will ever be able to fully turn back this tide as they cannot overcome the apathy of the people and the hostility of a partisan media, entertainment establishment, academia and federal bureaucracies. Obama's Policies Would Redistribute Nearly $1 Trillion Every Year. By 2012, nearly $1 trillion from the top 30 percent of American families will be redistributed among the bottom 70 percent if Obama's proposals on taxes, health care, and climate change become law, according to the Tax Foundation. "Even if none of Obama's policies becomes law, the extent of income redistribution is remarkable," Scott Hodge, president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, said. "The top-earning 40 percent of families will transfer $826 billion to the bottom 60 percent in 2012." Andy Williams accuses Barack Obama of following Marxist theory. Williams, a lifelong Republican whose hits include Moon River and Music To Watch Girls By, told the Radio Times he thought Mr Obama wanted to turn the US into a "socialist country". A Community Organizer Takes On the World. The call du jour from the mountaintop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is for all of us to rise above, or in new age parlance "transcend," mere mortal self-interest. On the domestic level this means that capitalism — a mean, primal, greedy, and materialistic approach to economics that steals from the poor to give to the rich — must be replaced (slowly, but surely) with a more enlightened approach; one that emphasizes social justice and the equitable distribution of wealth. This is all the rage these days. It may be called "progressive," but it's really a barely-if-at-all disguised form of socialism. Are We Witnessing the Collapse of Liberalism? Democrats are indebting the nation to the tune of trillions of dollars. The greenback has been debased. Serious inflation is coming, and that inflation will trigger another economic downturn, one that might be sharper and deeper than we're now experiencing. What commonsense American believes that mountains of debt and looming inflation are good for a struggling economy? See also What's the rush?$230,000 per job. The Obama administration is attempting to spin the tepid job creation sparked by the $787 billion federal stimulus program into an economic success. But the numbers don't add up to a good return for taxpayers. In fact, the numbers don't add up at all. ... Even using the administration's more generous projection, it's still $160,000 spent for every job created or saved. In Michigan, the job-to-spending ratio is more skewed. The White House Web site, recovery.org, reports that Michigan has received $5.2 billion and has created or saved 22,500 jobs. That's $231,000 for every job. Glenn Beck, FOX's "Rodeo Clown". [Glenn] Beck, more thoroughly than any other FOX commentator, aims to connect the dots in a complex equation representing what "fundamentally transform America" means to the Obama administration. He's not fixated on the President because he knows Obama isn't leading the parade; Obama's riding the horse that's leading the parade. The horse is socialist progressivism. Perry: Obama 'hell-bent' on socialism. Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of "punishing" Texas and being "hell-bent" on turning the United States into a socialist country. Speaking at a luncheon for a Midland County Republican Women's group, Perry said that "this is an administration hell-bent toward taking American towards a socialist country. And we all don't need to be afraid to say that because that's what it is." ObamaJobs: Uncle Sam's Hiring Hall. Every serious person should welcome the president's proposals to lift the dormant economy and reduce unemployment. Not because every serious person would agree with them but because they are a clear test of how a left-wing government would run the American economy. If this works, hats off to them and we become France. If not, Americans may finally dump left-wing economics into the ash heap of history, starting next November and then in the next presidential election, which can't come soon enough. Obamacare was mainly aimed at redistributing wealth. It hasn't attracted much notice, but recently some prominent advocates of Obamacare have spoken more frankly than ever before about why they supported a national health care makeover. It wasn't just about making insurance more affordable. It wasn't just about bending the cost curve. It wasn't just about cutting the federal deficit. It was about redistributing wealth. Obama was known to be a big spender, even before he was elected in 2008. Obama To Seek $1 Billion From Congress For Central America Following Border Surge. Following the surge in illegal immigration from Central America last year, President Barack Obama will request $1 billion for the region in his 2016 budget, which the administration expects to release Monday [2/2/2015]. In a New York Times op-ed, Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the summer's crisis of unaccompanied immigrant minors from Central America illegally streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border. He argues that funding for Central America is needed because the "security and prosperity of Central America are inextricably linked with our own." Spending — why 'red' states shoulder the deepest cuts under Obama. Between the 2009 and 2013 fiscal years, funding for a wide swath of discretionary grant programs, from Head Start preschool education to anti drug initiatives, fell by an average of 40 percent in Republican-leaning states like Texas and Mississippi. By contrast, funding to Democratic-leaning states such as California and politically competitive swing states like Ohio dropped by 25 percent. Though Congress sets overall spending levels, the Obama administration determines where much of that money ends up. The Editor says... CBO: Deficits To Explode As Obama Leaves Office. Thanks to the recent recession and President Obama's trillion dollar stimulus, the federal budget deficit reached an all time $1.4 trillion high in 2009. Then, as the economy slowly improved and Obama's stimulus trickled to end, the deficit began to fall. According to the CBO, the deficit will continue to fall to $467 billion in 2016. Immediately after Obama leaves office, however, deficits are expected to rise steadily thanks mostly to growth in mandatory health care spending programs like Obamacare. By 2025 the CBO estimates that our nation's federal deficits will again top $1 trillion a year. For comparison's sake the highest deficit ever under President Bush was $458 billion. Obama spends money as if there is an
unlimited supply of it, which is why the national debt is so high. The 'Obama Debt' in Context. To pay off the "Obama debt" in one century, Congress would need to run a surplus of $67 billion each and every year for one hundred years to eliminate the debt rung up in just the last six years. Obama gradually reduces the amount of work required from federal workers. Obama takes executive action on paid family and medical leave. President Obama is announcing several initiatives Thursday aimed at helping working parents. One was achieved by executive action: Thursday morning [1/15/2015], the president signed a memorandum that grants federal workers six weeks of paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, plus the right to six additional weeks of unpaid leave. The directive also applies to federal workers caring for ailing family members. Beyond that, Mr. Obama needs the cooperation of the Republican-controlled House and Senate. Profs: Obama's 'free' community college plan to make four-year degrees more expensive. Two economics professors at the College of William & Mary are shedding some light on President Obama's so-called "free" community college tuition proposal. Professors Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman, experts in college costs, crunched the numbers and made a chart that shows Obama's "America's College Promise" idea to give away two years of community college to "responsible students" is far from free for taxpayers, the Washington Post reports. In the face of irrelevance, Obama buys attention with other people's money. Obama's two most recent policy proposals — federally funded community college and paid sick and maternity leave — fit this populist model well. Each offers something that appears to be free, while attempting to hide the very real costs from the public. Obama's college plan is not as promising politically — it is too hard to hide its $60 billion price tag. But his plan for maternity leave should have Republicans losing sleep at night. Unlike the Democrats' previous pitch to women, which mostly aimed to mobilize single women by obsessing over contraception and abortion, this plan is is designed to appeal to married women, a Republican voting bloc. Obama's free community college tuition proposal is flawed. President Barack Obama's proposal to give students two years of free tuition at community colleges is well-intentioned but ultimately flawed. It is too broad, too expensive and too dependent on cooperation from states such as Florida that are unlikely to invest in this initiative even if Congress approves it. A better approach would be to increase federal spending on existing programs for need-based financial aid rather than create another entitlement. Obama's Latest Giveaway - But there's no such thing as free tuition. The main flaw in the president's proposal is that it misdiagnoses the problem. Virtually no one is failing to get a degree because their local junior college is too pricey: Tuition at community colleges is somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 a year. It's not chump change, but neither does it impose the sort of crippling debt that the president likes to bemoan. President Obama to push for paid sick time for workers, will ask Congress for $2B toward leave programs. Renewing a push for paid leave for workers, President Obama on Thursday [1/15/2015] will call on Congress, states and cities to pass measures to allow millions of workers to earn up to a week of paid sick time a year, the White House said. Obamanomics: Obama's economic plan is a recipe for long-lasting disaster. ... Obama is proposing a trillion dollars in new spending. Where is he going to get the money, given the government's present huge budget deficit? From the filthy rich and blood-sucking corporations, that's where, he says. A terrific vote-getting scheme. But will it work? The Myths Of Clintonomics: Obama is even recycling Clinton's old economic team. Standing behind him at his first press conference were old Clinton hands Bob Reich, Laura Tyson, Larry Summers and Bob Rubin. The show of support was designed to calm the markets after the post-election stock sell-off. But it hasn't worked, probably because Wall Street knows that Obama is also recycling myths about the Clinton years. For starters, Clinton didn't turn the economy around. The recovery had already begun before he took office. In fact, the mild recession ended in 1991 — long before he was even elected. Obama and Marx: A crash course. It is high time for Obama and his allies to publicly assert their political and economic philosophy. If it is socialism, say so. If it is not, please explain why. This, of course, is made immediately relevant by Obama's famous comment to Joe the Plumber that, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." In particular he was talking about his tax plan, which is a plan for redistribution of wealth from top to bottom. Obama's 'Service in College' Program at Change.gov Promises $40 an Hour. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of the roughly 3.2 million high school seniors who graduate each year who aren't cut out for college, or aren't yet ready for what's left of its rigors, will not go into private-sector jobs that might make sense for them, but will instead erroneously or prematurely choose higher education, partially because of this perk. The Europeanization of America. [Under Barack Obama] Additional tax advantages for lower and middle income people will be enacted: a 10% mortgage tax credit that would average about $500 per household per year, a $4,000 tax credit for college tuition, a tax credit covering half of child-care expenses up to $6,000 per year, and even a $7,000 credit for purchase of a clean car. More important, all but the clean car credit would be "refundable," meaning people will get a check for them if they owe no taxes, which is simply a transfer of income from the government to individuals. Investors Flee From 'Change' Obama Hypes. Are Barack Obama's proposed tax increases adversely affecting our financial markets? We say yes, unambiguously. The senator has done a masterful job distracting attention from his tax increases with his $500-per-worker tax credit supposedly for 95% of Americans. ... With the bottom 40% of income earners not paying any federal income taxes, such tax credits would not reduce any tax liability for these workers. Instead, since they're refundable, they would involve new checks from the federal government. These are not tax cuts as Obama is promising. They are new government spending programs buried in the tax code and estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years. Senator Obama's Four Tax Increases for People Earning Under $250k. No matter what Senator Obama calls it, requiring us to pay more taxes amounts to a tax increase. This got me wondering what other Americans will have to pay when the tax cuts lapse. What Obama Really Means by 'Change'. We're days away from a national election, and no one in the media has even bothered to explain Obama's "tax cut." No one has broken down just what Obama is proposing and what it will mean for you, your family budget, your retirement savings and your job security. Obama's tax plan includes four main components: Higher marginal rates; higher estate taxes; higher corporate taxes; and higher taxes on investments. Barack Obama And The Economics Of Sesame Street: While most Americans find it distasteful, if not blasphemous, to single-out a minority group for undue maligning and punishment, Senator Obama has made "profiling" of a "minority group" a normative thing. We're not talking here about a racial or cultural or sexual minority. We're talking about a socioeconomic minority — the more economically productive people in our society, or, to put in Obama-speak, the group he vaguely defines as "rich people" — and punishing this minority group is, by his definition, "fair" and "neighborly." Five reasons to vote against Obama: [#1.] He wants to tax working Americans back to the Stone Age. He lies when he says he will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You know its nonsense because they can't keep their numbers straight from hour to hour. Obama claims everyone making under $250,000 is safe, or is it $200,000 (the infomercial) or $150,000 (Joe Biden)? On Friday [10/31/2008], Gov. Bill Richardson cut it to $120,000. Socialism Comes to America. Two more bailouts are pending before Congress — both of them sponsored by Senator Barack Obama. One is the Jubilee Act, which would cancel as much as $75 billion worth of Third World debt, and the other is the Global Poverty Act, which would cost an estimated $845 billion. Total potential cost: $920 billion. If they don't pass Congress this year, they could come back in an Obama Administration. 'Share the Wealth' With the World? Barack Obama doesn't simply want to "spread the wealth around" here in America: He's on record as favoring redistribution on a global scale. As the Democrat explained last year in Foreign Affairs, he thinks we need to be "sharing more of our riches to help those in need" around the world and promised to double American foreign assistance. He also proposed a multibillion-dollar Global Education Fund to eliminate what he calls the "global education deficit." Senator Government. The framers of the Constitution expected a limited federal government. They viewed the Constitution as a contract between citizens and government, designed to restrain the fed from undue intrusion into our bedrooms and our wallets. For example, the father of the Constitution, James Madison, vehemently objected to a 1792 congressional appropriation of $15,000 to assist some French refugees. Madison wrote, ["]I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.["]* Joe the Plumber vs. Joe the Hair-Plugger. Our Fact Check Unit ran the numbers on the Obama tax-cut plan and the number is correct: "95." It's the words "per cent" immediately following that are wrong: that's a typing error accidentally left in from the first draft. It should read: Under the Obama plan, 95 of the American people will get a tax cut. It's Americanism vs. Socialism on November 4th. "I think that when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody." There is so much wrong with not only this statement but this ideology it's hard to know where to begin, but I'll start with this: Senator Obama... it's not your money to give! Wealth redistribution is one of the core tenets of Socialism. The
Elephant in the Room: Chicago Robin Hood's plan. Obama would take from the rich (those making
above $250,000) and give all others a tax cut — with the bottom 40% getting a check. Obama is really good at spending other people's money. The Coming Obama Spending Explosion. If you worry about the skyrocketing federal deficits of the Bush era, just wait till the Obama administration hits town. Spending pyrotechnics will be spectacular if Barack Obama is elected and his liberal Democrat allies increase their majorities in Congress come Nov. 4. We already know that Obama has proposed more than $800 billion in new spending, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion "stimulus" package on top of the $1 trillion-plus in Wall Street bailouts already approved. To The Undecided Voter: Taxes are a nasty little reality of life. Nobody wants anarchy. Government is a necessity. Government, though, is not supposed to create winners and losers. Government is not, as Obama intends, to be used as an instrument of plunder. Credit That Obama Calls A Tax Cut Will Be Of Zero Help To Economy. Barack Obama says he supports a tax cut for 95% of all Americans. He is referring here to his proposal for a $500 refundable income-tax credit for all workers, except those in the top 5% of income earners. These folks, for some reason, are to be singled out for "special treatment" — i.e., tax increases — unless, as he recently told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, "the economy remains weak." So apparently even Obama recognizes that his tax increases would be economically harmful. A shearing, not a sharing. Mr. Obama — who calls American free enterprise capitalism "trickle down economics" — said he has to tax Joe [the Plumber] more and millions like him in order to "spread the wealth around." ... Mr. Obama wraps ideas like this in the mantle of "change," but it's hardly a new idea. That's what Democrat Huey Long, the demagogic Louisiana senator, preached in the 1930s, with his radical "share the wealth" campaign and his relentless class warfare attacks on the rich. Four Words: We Can't Afford It. The politicians in D.C. hand out hundred million dollar earmarks like Trick or Treat candy even as they glibly promise to "invest" billions more and scold anyone who might be so "mean" as to want to cut whatever the latest non-functional, but pleasant-sounding government program happens to be. However, there is a big problem with that sort of thinking: at some point, no matter what kind of happy talk our politicians give us, the bill is going to eventually come due for all the goodies they're using to buy votes — and they know it. You Can't Spread the Wealth Around. By now everybody has heard of Joe the plumber. It was Joe that Barack Obama told that it was government's job to "spread the wealth around" — Joe's wealth — in order to build the economy from the bottom up. ... The only problem is that economies don't really work that way. Job creation and the real sources of wealth generation have never and will never come from government taking money from some people in order to give it to others. 'Economic Disaster' Brought to You by Obama, News Networks. During an Albuquerque, N.M., town hall meeting, Obama complained about the criticism his spending policies had received from his opponent, Sen. John McCain. According to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Obama plans to increase government spending by $343.6 billion each year. That hike is more than the Gross Domestic Product of all but 30 nations, but Obama doesn't like to be called on it. Obama Is the Weatherman. In terms of what's actually happening in the world, this is decidedly not Obama's time. We're in an economic meltdown of unforeseeable length and enormity, and Obama wants to raise taxes on small businesses and pay for everyone's health coverage. The Stealth Candidate: [Obama] wants to socialize health care, initiate a massive transfer of wealth via the Global Poverty Act and would intervene in foreign conflicts solely for humanitarian reasons when our national interests are not at stake. He obviously regards the tax code as a license to punish wealth and equalize incomes in the name of "fairness" rather than a means to raise revenue for essential government services. Obama vs. business & jobs. Even The New York Times now is saying that Barack Obama's unswerving call for tax increases — to impose more "fairness" — is the wrong prescription for the current crisis in the U.S. economy. "The big issue for each candidate is not spending, per se, but how the crisis will affect their promises on taxes," editorialized The Times last Tuesday. Obama tax cut 'refunds' those who don't pay. Barack Obama says he will give 95 percent of all American workers a tax cut but does not mention that his plan would send checks to tens of millions of tax filers who pay no personal income taxes — payments that critics say look "suspiciously like welfare." Obama's Tax Cut is Actually a Spending Increase, Says Non-Partisan Group. The heart of Obama's tax cut proposal is in his use of refundable tax credits, which the [Tax Policy] Center describes as "credits available to eligible households even if they have no income tax liability" — in short, refunds available even to those who don't pay taxes. ... These refunds have the ability of reducing a taxpayer's liability below zero, meaning they can get a refund without actually paying taxes. Obama's 95% Illusion. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut. The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. Searching for Obama's 95 Percent. If Barack Obama can effectively claim that his plan cuts taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then the term "tax cut" has no meaning. The Case Against Barack Obama, Part 1. Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama promises to "cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers." That's not possible. Why? More than 30 percent pay nothing in federal income taxes. Socialism! There, I Said It. Already some 38 percent of Americans do not pay income taxes, and Barack Obama wants to increase that percentage dramatically. How ironic that he and other Democrats pretend to be targeting their message to "working-class" people when many of their constituents aren't working. But such is class warfare that the upper-middle class and wealthy are demonized as not earning an honest living. Cirque De Obama: According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, letting the Bush tax cuts expire, as Obama intends, will reduce our annual GDP by $100 billion with the loss of up to 900,000 jobs. Over 10 years, taxes would increase by some $1.7 trillion. For the 116 million Americans paying taxes, that's an annual tax hike of about $1,800 a year. Last year, Heritage analyzed the effect of eliminating the Social Security earnings cap, as Obama has also proposed. In the first year alone, the take-home pay of 10.3 million workers would be reduced by an average of $5,650. Taxes would also be raised on four million workers over the age of 50. Why Obama Can't Close the Sale. Mr. Obama has proposed a massive tax increase on investors, business owners, and the "wealthy." At a time when the American people rate the economy as the central issue of the campaign, a tax hike doesn't make a lot of political sense. Voters know that a tax hike won't help the economy. Moreover, Mr. Obama's tax plans would directly or indirectly harm U.S. investors by raising the capital gains and dividend taxes. Obama's America is Canada. What kind of "change" does Barack Obama want? He seeks to transform America into Canada. Mr. Obama is not proposing "new politics," but is a champion of the well-known, already enacted policies in the Great White North. His proposals are more reflective of Canadian values than American national ideals. For example, Mr. Obama's economic plan consists of attempting to redress the disparities of wealth in the United States. Obama is dangerously unfit to be president. Obama promises billions of dollars worth of new "entitlements," accompanied by a stifling regulatory bureaucracy and funded by higher taxes on the "rich." His claim that he wants to help the middle class is in fact a plan to tax it out of existence and transform all but a small political elite into wards of a state on the east European model. Obama's taxes could wreck economy. Whatever is left of the economy after the current round of crisis intervention by the Fed could go down the drain if Barack Obama is elected and carries out his plans for sharp increases in taxation. Even if Obama does not understand the linkage, most Americans do and will turn sharply against Obama's tax plans if John McCain hammers away at the risk they pose for us all. Supply-Side Slip. Cutting rates on the higher-income brackets spurs growth, and that's what the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 did after the turn-of-the-millennium recession and 9/11. Sadly, we don't expect Obama to pursue his insight to such logical conclusions. Doing so would undermine his campaign theme that the Bush tax cuts have caused our current economic woes. It also would weaken his case for redistributing wealth through the tax code. If middle-class voters figure out that his basket of goodies comes with a price — potentially even costing them their jobs — they'll start saying "Thanks, but no thanks." The dots are there, but we doubt if Obama will be the one to connect them. We Can't Afford the Democrats' Platform. Most of the Democratic Platform consists of promising benefits that will cost already burdened taxpayers aplenty. There's no mention of how these extravagant handouts will be paid for. For example, the Democratic Platform enthusiastically endorses the incredibly extravagant worldwide handouts in the bill sponsored by Barack Obama called "the U.S. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015." The Platform promises to "double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012." Obama's New Tax Welfare: In 1984, Walter Mondale ran for President promising to raise taxes if elected. He consequently made it to the dustbin of history even before the Soviets, averting a 50 state shutout by just 1,200 votes in his home state of Minnesota. The recently released details of Barack Obama's tax plan … confirm that Obama makes Mondale look like a moderate. For Obama pledges not just to raise taxes. He proposes to raise every major federal tax. The post-national candidate. The liberal media are trying to portray Mr. Obama's warm reception abroad as a powerful sign he is capable of being a world leader. As usual, they are wrong. Europe's socialists love Mr. Obama because he is one of them. Mr. Obama would transform the United States into a North American France. He champions a redistributionist, soak-the-rich economic philosophy. He would raise income and Social Security taxes on those making more than $250,000 per annum. He wants to increase tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Mr. Obama seeks to nationalize health care, expand government with nearly a trillion dollars in new spending, and impose burdensome regulations on corporations and businesses. The Right Stuff — and the Wrong. Barack Obama's quasi-presidential address offering a four-part solution to the financial crisis offers little more than veiled pork-barrel programs. It signals a mind more focused on elections than answers. Factors that Could Lead to Obama's Downfall: Barack Obama has voted against tax cuts or for tax increases 94 times. Obama has a liberal track record that should set off voters' alarm bells. Why should anyone believe he would now cut taxes when he has consistently opposed them for so many years? Fraud: Obama as Guardian of the American Taxpayer. The Candidate of Hope is hoping that while he caterwauls about our lost billions, you won't notice that he has already proposed the most jaw-dropping transfer of wealth in American history: taking nearly a trillion dollars out of the pockets of American taxpayers and doling it out to the world's worst regimes through its most corrupt intermediary, the U.N. The scam is better known as Obama's Global Poverty Act. Like Father, Like Son. Barack Obama's economic blueprint sounds like one his communist father tried to foist on Kenya 40 years ago, with massive taxes and succor shrouded as "investments." Obama's Shell Game: Senator Obama wants to "create jobs." So where does he propose to send the $50 billion? … The money would bail out spend-thrift state governments that have saddled themselves — and the taxpayer — with ridiculous and wasteful public employee union contracts. Remember, nearly half of all money spent by the states goes to fund education. And education has become a bottomless pit of spending to appease the radical NEA teachers union. Obama's museum earmarks draw fire. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama tried to direct more than $3 million in taxpayer funds to a Chicago museum whose chairman is one of the Illinois senator's largest campaign fundraisers. Mr. Obama has twice since fiscal 2006 sought to have taxpayers foot the bill for a new theater projector and other equipment at the Adler Planetarium on the Lake Michigan waterfront. Neither of the requests, which totaled $3.3 million, was approved by Congress, the museum said. Obama's $50 Billion AIDS Bill Up for Vote. Senators David Vitter (La.), Jeff Sessions (Ala.), and Jim DeMint (S.C.) are making a last-ditch attempt to block the irresponsible and budget-busting $50 billion global AIDS bill (S. 2731). … The legislation doubles funding for the U.N.-affiliated Global Fund, which disregards U.S. policies on abortion and "needle exchange." AIDS funding boondoggle: The Bush administration, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are all supporting legislation to fund the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) for five years. The PEPFAR bill before the Senate would more than triple funding for the program from the current $15 billion to $50 billion. Senate Passes Obama's AIDS Bill. Only 16 Senators, all conservative Republicans, voted against the massive $50 billion global AIDS spending bill (S. 2731) when it came up for a final vote on Wednesday night [7/16/2008]. The outcome, which included the addition of water projects for Indian reservations, demonstrated the complicity of both major political parties in out-of-control spending designed to benefit a powerful special interest group. Conservatives Protest Obama's AIDS Bill. In another sign of the leftward drift of the national Republican Party, only 24 Republican senators voted on Tuesday for an amendment to the global AIDS bill to prohibit AIDS funds from being used to pay for forced abortions and sterilizations in Communist China. Barack Obama's Global Tax Proposal. Barack Obama's $65 billion-a-year "Global Tax" proposal is creating a firestorm on the Internet, sparked by articles by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media in February. In response, left-wing supporters of Barack Obama are feverishly striving to defuse the controversy, attempting to discredit, dismiss, or diminish the story first revealed by AIM's Kincaid. Obama's Tax Plan Is Really a Welfare Plan. Barack Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities. Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer pays nothing in federal income taxes, the government would pay him the whole $1,000. Obama's Tax Proposals Make a Complex System Worse. Not all tax cuts are the same. The question isn't just how much money taxpayers get to keep or are given, but the impact that taxes have on how hard people work. Tax plans that try to help the poor can sometimes become traps, making it difficult for the poor to climb out of poverty. Obama's Tax Hike: As Barack Obama tries to convince the American people he will cut their taxes, he actually plans to undo the Bush tax cuts — and the Reagan low tax legacy. Two Cheers for Obama. Despite his enormous appeal, Obama is an over-the-cliff-and-tumbling-into-the-canyon-Left, big-government, tax-hiking spendthrift. ... Obama endorses a 45 percent minimum-wage increase, from $6.55 to $9.50. Why not simply triple it, to $19.65? Employers would love that. Obama's War on Women: [Scroll down] "[Obama's] plan would not raise any taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year, nor on any single person with income under $200,000." It amounts to a declaration of war on two-income families, a marriage penalty of punitive proportions. If those two single persons with income just under $200,000 get married, Mr. Obama is going to hammer them with a huge tax increase. For Obama, Taxes Are About Fairness. In fact, the idea of fairness is at the heart of his whole economic argument. And he goes back to it in almost every public appearance. He talks about it as a general theme: "It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share." He invokes it as a solution for Social Security: "[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share." Beware Of Investing With Obama. Barack Obama may have been a good community organizer in Chicago and may yet have a successful career on the stage, but don't hire him as your financial adviser. Starting next January he wants to take your money and invest it in the federal government, a failed enterprise where rates of return on investment have traditionally been negative despite frequent changes in management. More Reasons To Vote Against Obama. Mr. Obama is clearly a tax and spend liberal, as indicated by his record and his platform. As indicated, he already calls for over two trillion dollars in tax increases that would devastate the economy. The Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation says his increase in the capital gains tax would kill $2.5 trillion in capital formation over five years. European Levels of Taxation: Barack Obama's Tax Plan. Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has unveiled his economic plan of raising taxes on the successful. His plan would boost the top marginal rate to well over 55 percent — before the inclusion of state and local taxes — resulting in many individuals seeing their marginal tax rate double. The consequences of this policy would be a return to the bad old days of tax avoidance, with taxpayers disguising personal income as business income or capital gains and the migration of capital from the United States to abroad. The $5.7 Trillion Myth: Obama hasn't been in Washington for very long, but in his three years he's firmly entrenched himself among the bottom ten senators on the National Taxpayers Union scorecard of fiscal responsibility. On the same rating scale, McCain ranks as the third-most hostile senator to new spending. In his campaign promises, Obama has proposed $307.2 billion of new spending a year, which is about 40 times larger than the $6.9 billion in new spending that McCain has proposed. Obama's goodie bag: Back when Barack Obama was a state senator, the Illinois Legislature offered this perk: You get elected, you get to give out some money. … In all, Obama doled out more than $3.6 million in state grants in just the last half of his state legislative career, records show. Obama's Left-Wing Extremism: Barack Obama has proposed increasing every major Federal tax. He supports increasing individual income tax rates, allowing the Bush tax cuts, which cut rates for all income levels, to expire. He has proposed almost doubling the capital gains tax rate, from 15% today to 28%. He supports more than doubling the tax on dividends, from 15% to as high as 39%. He has proposed numerous corporate tax increases. He supports increasing the death tax back to the stratospheric levels that applied before President Bush. He supports increasing the payroll tax on higher income earners. In other words, if you run a profitable small business, you can expect to be plundered by the Obamanistas from every angle. If you work for a small business, you can expect to be looking for another job. Obama-economics: My fear is that we may well get to November without ever knowing Mr. Obama's true position — and thus never have a serious national debate. Given that both America and the world, following broadly free-market principles these last three decades, have enjoyed almost unprecedented prosperity … if Mr. Obama wants to go in a different direction, honor requires that he declare himself and make a public case for change, if that is what he has in mind. Obamanomics: [Scroll down] As for spending, Obama has been silent on what government programs he would reduce or eliminate. But he has many ideas on how to spend money: health care, education at all levels, subsidies for energy companies, and bailouts for irresponsible homeowners (who bought more house than they could afford). This suggests billions and billions in new spending. As for budget reform, Obama is no stranger to pork barrel spending, having clocked in with $740 million in earmarks in just three years. Adding up the cost of Obama's agenda: Last week, he pledged to give religious and community groups $500 million a year to provide summer education to low-income children. Other proposals are more costly. Obama wants to extend health insurance to more people (part of a $65-billion-a-year health plan), develop cleaner energy sources ($15 billion a year), curb home foreclosures ($10 billion in one-time spending) and add $18 billion a year to education spending. Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession. Some cite Bill Clinton's move to the economic policy center following his Hillary health-care and 1994 Congressional election debacles as a possible Obama model. But candidate Obama starts much further left on spending, taxes, trade and regulation than candidate Clinton. A move as large as Mr. Clinton's toward the center would still leave Mr. Obama on the economic left. Obama's 'no income taxes on seniors' draws critics. If you're a senior citizen and earn less than $50,000 a year, Barack Obama has a deal for you: a life free of federal income tax. Obama's health plan: [Scroll down] In order to lower the cost of keeping medical records we have to spend $50 billion dollars? Is it possible this is just a way for the government to get its hands on your medical records? Obama knows that the American people are leery of nationalized health care, I think his plan is a way to ease us into it. I predict in his second term he will propose we go to a completely government run program. Just How Stupid Are American Voters? If the Socialist Obama is elected, we can expect businesses to flee this country to more friendly locations overseas. They will take jobs and cash out of our economy and tax revenues out of our national coffers. Socialized medicine will bring the destruction of our healthcare system. What's The Worst That Could Happen? [Obama's] plan would create a new government-run, Medicare-like option, while imposing onerous regulations on insurers requiring them to cover everybody who applies for insurance, regardless of risk factors or preexisting conditions, at rates the government deems affordable. While it is technically true that as currently conceived it is not socialized medicine, Obama's plan would inevitably lead to a socialized system by expanding the role of government in health care while simultaneously destroying the private market. Obama: Healthcare for Illegals. Democrats' single most important domestic proposal — universal health insurance — may blow up in Barack Obama's face when voters are exposed to the deadly details. Obama has said, proudly and often, "I am going to give health insurance to 47 million Americans who are now without coverage." But are they "Americans?" That 47 million statistic includes illegal immigrants, who virtually all lack insurance. In fact, about one in four of those lacking insurance is here illegally. And they are, by far, the group most in need of health insurance. Details missing from Obama's Social Security plan. Barack Obama's bid to place a new Social Security tax on very high incomes is either a bold or foolhardy plan, depending on who critiques it. Lose Weight Now! Ask Obama How! "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times," declared the likely Democrat candidate for President. "That's not leadership." We can't — as in, we shouldn't — eat as much as we want? What an odd thing for Obama to say, even given how odd are a lot of things he says when Mr TelePrompTer is out of range (odd, too, that Obama singled out SUVs; they're his vehicle of choice). Icahn Says Obama Would Be 'Terrible' U.S. President. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said Barack Obama would be a "terrible" U.S. president whose election would bring higher interest rates and a loss of international confidence in the dollar. "I don't normally get involved in politics, but this time I am," Icahn told an investors conference in New York last night [5/21/2008]. "I don't think Obama really understands economics." Obama's Tax Evasion: Either the young Illinois Senator is ignorant of this revenue data, or he doesn't really care because he's a true income redistributionist who prefers high tax rates as a matter of ideological dogma regardless of the revenue consequences. Neither one is a recommendation for President. … Both candidates would have voters believe that taxes on investment income only affect the rich. But that's not what Internal Revenue Service returns show. Obama wants payroll tax on incomes above $250,000. The 6.2 percent payroll tax is now applied to all wages up to $102,000 a year, which covers the entire amount for most Americans. Under Obama's plan, the tax would not apply to wages between that amount and $250,000. But all annual salaries above the quarter-million-dollar amount would be taxed under his plan, Obama said. A Few To Support The Many. For those who like the politics of redistribution, Sen. Barack Obama is their man. The presumed Democratic presidential nominee's plan would soak the richest Americans and spread the wealth around. The Inanity of Obamanomics: When Barack Obama repeated his call to nearly double the capital gains tax rate last month, most observers wrote it off to fiscal naivety. But during last night's debate [4/16/2008], the Democrat frontrunner let slip that his motives were more socially than economically driven. And that his reasoning was nothing short of ridiculous. Obama denounces big corporate pay packages. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced huge pay packages for U.S. corporate chiefs on Friday [4/11/2008] in a drive to convert middle-class anger about the U.S. economy into votes. "Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year," Obama said…. Obama wants Wall St clean-up. Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday vowed to clean up a "distorted" financial system, accusing Wall Street of manipulating markets to generate swift profits instead of lasting growth. In a major economic speech, the Illinois senator called for an additional stimulus package worth $30 billion to stave off a recession and immediate action to save homeowners mired in a mortgage crisis. Obama May Levy $15 Billion Tax on Oil Company Profit. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal for a windfall profits tax on oil companies could cost $15 billion a year at last year's profit levels, a campaign adviser said. The Wrong Way to Kick An Oil Habit. High oil prices, like a walk under the summer moon, can drive normally rational people to do foolish things they later regret. For Barack Obama, it is a fling with a windfall profits tax on American oil companies — one of the most thoroughly discredited economic policies of the past few decades. A 2006 Congressional Research Service report found that Jimmy Carter's version of the tax generated less than one-fourth of expected government revenue while depressing domestic oil output between 1.2 percent and 8 percent and increasing dependence on imported oil between 3 percent and 13 percent. From Breadbasket to Basket Case: As the presidential campaign drones on, Barack Obama and the Democrats are fleshing out the promise of "change" with some specific, big-government policy proposals. Many are familiar, perhaps because they already have been tried — in Argentina. That country has gone from South American breadbasket to world-class basket case. … From nationalized health care and government-owned refineries to punishing taxes on the rich, Argentina has been there, done that. Why Wall Street fears Obama: Investors this summer have been placing their bets on an Obama presidency, and for the most part that hasn't been good for the market. Without giving him a chance to explain himself in detail on the campaign trail or at the Democratic National Convention, they are voting with their shares by tossing financial, health insurance, manufacturing and high-dividend stocks into the ash can, and are growing skeptical about energy companies as well. Are Facts Obsolete? As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better. Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s. The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression. Obama's Big-Government Vision: Senator Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he's aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation's rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing — exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn't want to hear. … The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. $60 Billion for "free" college tuition Obama's 'Free' Community College Plan Could Cost $34B Per Year. Previewing an item from his upcoming State of the Union address, President Obama announced a "Free Community College" plan Thursday evening for "anyone who's willing to work for it": [...] However, the president's announcement said that the plan could benefit as many as nine million students who could save an average of $3,800 per year. This would put the total cost at a little more than $34 billion. Obama's College Plan Bows to Elites. The major barriers to completing college do not include community-college tuition, which is low for everyone, and basically free for low-income families (you automatically qualify for a Pell Grant if your family income is less than $24,000 a year, and many others qualify above that line). Libby Nelson offers the wan defense that universal programs may enjoy greater support than those targeted at the poor, which would be more compelling if community college weren't already basically free for low-income families. Whether or not you think this program is a good idea depends on what you think the effects will be. Obama's Free Community College Proposal Is Ridiculous. Here's why: [#1] Nothing in life is "free": The lesson we should be teaching our students is that nothing of value is free. "Free community college" for students translates into "a tax increase for somebody else." [...] [#2] The federal government has no business in education: Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government. Education is not one of them. [...] [#3] You get what you pay for: If community college becomes "free," it will attract even more unserious students than the ones already enrolled in community colleges. Anecdotally, I'd say that about half the students in community colleges are not ready for college-level work. Dropouts are the Real Problem. "Give a man a fish and he'll eat today. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever." That old saying is one of the favorites of conservatives who see education as a path to a better future. But that saying assumes that the proverbial "man" is willing to learn. Therein lies the rub. Too many men (and women) are content to "eat today" rather than "eat forever." There are two indications that bear this out. First, let's use high school dropouts as an indicator of not being willing to learn. [...] So what does Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama propose? Another give-away program. We Don't Need No (Free) Education. So President Obama wants to make community college free. One wonders if a community college economics class is in order for him. Maybe then he would understand that labor is still a supply factor in a supply/demand chart. I'm going to say something that is hard for many to hear, and is something that is not politically correct — college isn't for everyone. In a national economy, we definitely need people who do not go to college, as well as people who do. We need non-college jobs, like plumbing, garbage collecting, and general contracting, to be filled. And I'm not being too elitist — some of these jobs pay more than my degree-requiring one does. Obama's math doesn't add up on free tuition, critics say. President Obama's plan to provide free tuition to community college students has landed with a thud among number crunchers, who argue that overburdened states cannot afford to fund the White House idea. As a political strategy, "free tuition" is as appealing a message as Obama could devise heading into his final two years in office. But when pressed on funding the measure, it gets messier for the White House. Even if Obama had the backing of Republicans to spend $60 billion in federal funds on the education program — he doesn't — the White House still would have a money problem. Obama Pitching Big Government Programs Ahead of SOTU Speech. As the President's State of the Union speech nears, he is launching trial balloons right and left — mostly left — to see what might prove a hit for his annual night of big policy initiatives. Some of the proposals on deck are cyber security and Internet proposals, two years of "free" community college, and changes in the way people qualify for homeownership. The tactic is a new twist in how presidents roll out their State of the Union proposals. In the past presidents have delivered their proposals only during the speech itself and then spent time drumming up support afterward. More free stuff from Obama: Two years of college at no cost to you. Some really big news coming from President Obama today: He's got an idea of free community college for everyone for two years. Like many exciting Obama ideas, it sounds too good to be true. Remember the $2,500 health insurance savings he promised on every family's health insurance costs under ObamaCare? But according to a video teaser POTUS taped sitting at — no, wait — sitting on his desk aboard Air Force One, Obama's going to outline the plan today at Knoxville's Pellissippi Community College as part of his State of the Union preview tour. Uhhhh, Community College Education Is Already Free, Mr. President. President Obama is announcing a $60 billion plan to make two years of community college "free." Hold on. The College Board reports that that a two-year public education is already effectively free. This is pork. Republicans not jumping to embrace President Obama's free community college proposal. Congressional Republicans aren't jumping to embrace President Obama's proposal to offer Americans two free years of community college — even though the White House called the plan bipartisan. In a plan that Obama said will be a key piece of his upcoming State of the Union speech, the President proposed a federal-state partnership to offer free two-year associate's degrees, two years of a four-year degree or job training at any of 1,100 community colleges in the U.S. Obama's Free Community College Idea May Be Hard Sell. President Obama unveiled the idea in a video posted to Facebook on Thursday night, then pitched it publicly at an event Friday [1/9/2015] in Knoxville, Tenn. "Community colleges should be free for those willing to work for it," Obama told a crowd at Pellissippi State Community College. "It's not a blank check, not a free lunch, but for those willing to do the work... it can be a game changer." The president called a community college education one of the "central pathways to the middle class." Obama proposes plan to make community college free for everyone. President Obama rolled out a new plan Thursday to make two years of community college free, or nearly so, for millions of students across the country, a major investment that the White House cast as changing the face of higher education. The program, inspired by new initiatives in Tennessee and Chicago, could benefit up to 9 million students, advisors said. At its heart is dedicated federal funding to cover 75% of tuition, with the states picking up the rest of the tab. Federal price tag for Obama's 'free college' proposal: $60 billion. The Obama proposal to provide millions of students with two years of free community college tuition finally has a price tag: $60 billion over a decade. That's according to Eric Schultz, the White House deputy press secretary, who spoke to media as President Barack Obama was heading to Knoxville, Tennessee, to announce the initiative. It represents "a significant investment," Schultz said, "but it's one the president believes is worthwhile because we need to make sure that America's young people are getting the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century economy." Obama: Let's bring community college costs 'down to zero'. Obama said he wanted to bring down the cost of a higher education "to zero" for potential community college students. "I want to bring it down to free," he said to a round of applause. "Community colleges should be free for those willing to work for it," he said. "Because in America, a quality education cannot be a privilege reserved for a few." He also said all entities involved in such a program, including the institutions, would have responsibilities to make it work. Access to such a free education wouldn't just be given away, he said. Obama proposes two 'free' years of community college for up to 9 million Americans — and it could cost as much as $34 billion per year. President Barack Obama wants publicly funded community college available to all Americans, a sweeping proposal that would make higher education as accessible as a high school diploma to boost weak U.S. wages and skills for the modern workforce. The initiative's price tag has yet to be revealed, and it faces a Republican Congress averse to big new spending programs. But it will likely be a centerpiece of Obama's State of the Union Address in a week and a half. But the White House tweeted on Thursday that 'President Obama's plan could save a full-time student an average of $3,800/year in tuition.' Rep. Van Hollen: Use Taxpayer Money — 'Costs of Community College are a Barrier'. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) says he wants taxpayers to fund community college education, "because the costs of community college are a barrier to many people." During an appearance on CSPAN's Newsmakers Sunday Van Hollen was asked about President Obama's plan that would provide free education for those that want to attend community colleges. Update: Obama drops proposal to cut tax benefits of 529 college savings plans. President Obama on Tuesday abandoned a proposal to end a major tax benefit of popular college savings accounts used by millions of American families after the White House faced mounting criticism from lawmakers and parents. White House officials said the backlash against the president's plan became "such a distraction" that it was best to drop the proposal, which would have removed the ability of families to withdraw money tax-free from the savings plans, known as 529s. That didn't take long: Obama abandons key SOTU proposal already. Other than his vow that under ObamaCare Americans' health care costs would decline, one of President Obama's most often-promised goals is helping the country's middle class. It's been severely beleaguered during his reign by fewer full-time jobs, stagnant wages and declining work hours. In his State of the Union peroration last week, Obama repeated this goal. One of his ideas was to make the first two years of higher education free in the nation's community colleges for anyone continuously pursuing a degree with adequate grades. One problem emerging during Obama's nearly 73-month presidency is that his free stuff isn't really free. Somewhat related: $845 Billion to fight poverty in other countries Mr. Obama has learned nothing from the sorry condition of the welfare state in this country. In fact, he wants to enroll more people in the welfare system. Congress Contemplates Giving Cash to Foreigners. Why are Republicans in Congress trying to help Barack Obama? Republicans allowed a bill that carries his name, among nine others, to pass the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote last week — without any hearings. That means there was no roll-call vote so no member can be held accountable. The same bill passed the House by voice vote last year. … Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas. Barack Obama's Global Poverty Act: Senator Barack Obama, the eminently likable possible Democratic nominee for president, has sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" that would require the United States to increase foreign aid by approximately $65 billion per year. If the Senate passes this bill, it will be Mr. Obama's first significant legislative accomplishment in Washington (he has only been a senator since January 2005). As such, it merits our scrutiny for clues about his worldview. Obama's Global Tax: Senator Barack Obama's sponsorship of Senate Bill 2433 aligns with the emerging core theme of his general election campaign. The change he promises will bring much-needed relief, not just to America's victims of economic injustice, but to victims worldwide. On December 7, 2007, Obama introduced the Senate version of the Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S.2433). Obama's Global Tax Bill Coming Soon. The Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S.2433) is coming up for a Senate vote sometime after the July4 recess, according the office of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Once Harry Reid and the Democrat leadership put it on the calendar, we could have as little as a week to prepare for the vote. The bill is sponsored in the Senate by Barack Obama. … If passed, it will cost taxpayers $845,000,000,000 over the next 13 years, in addition to our current foreign aid expenditures. Proud Pagan Witch Backs Obama's Global Tax Bill. While Senator Barack Obama struggles to keep the public in the dark about the nature of his pro-U.N. Global Poverty Act, a recent "Bay Area Interfaith Leaders' Luncheon" was held to lobby for Senate passage of the bill, whose cost has been estimated at $845 billion. An actual witch who spoke at a "Pagan Pride" festival in San Francisco was one of the listed participants. Obama's Global Tax: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. What Does This Say About Obama's Political and Legislative Philosophy? Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has introduced the Global Poverty Act, which will impose a U.N. tax upon every American in an effort to reduce global poverty by the year 2015. The Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) was rushed through Sen. Joseph Biden's Senate Foreign Relations Committee without hearings in February 2008. If passed and signed into law, it would force the U.S. to spend 0.7% of its gross national product on U.N.-run poverty programs around the world. Obama Supports Global Tax From United Nations. Barack Obama and his liberal allies such as Senator Biden have signed on to a bill that would allow the U.N. to tax America (and Americans) an estimated $845 billion over the next 13 years. Obama's plan represents perhaps the greatest affront to our national sovereignty since the War of 1812. $920 Billion More to Bail Out the World. With one socialist "bailout" bill apparently on the way to passage by Congress, two more are pending — both of them sponsored by Senator Barack Obama. One is the Jubilee Act, which would cancel as much as $75 billion worth of Third World debt, and the other is the Global Poverty Act, which would cost an estimated $845 billion. Total potential cost: $920 billion. Warning: Obama is dangerous. There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France. They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a "militaristic" approach to foreign policy. Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations. Though Mr Obama has done a good job, as all recent serious Democrats have done, of emphasising his belief in American virtues, his record and his programme suggest he is firmly in line with this wing of his party. Barack Obama, Control Freak: Senator Obama is for making college "affordable," as if he has never considered that government subsidies push up tuition, just as government subsidies push up agricultural prices, the price of medical care and other prices. He is also for "alternative fuels," without the slightest thought about the prices of those fuels or the implications of those prices. All this is the old liberal agenda from years past, old wine in new bottles, a new face with old ideas that have been tried and failed repeatedly over the past generation. Tea parties and other organized rejection of Obama's plans This subsection is now located on a page of its own — here. A few words about FDR's New Deal Bankrupting America. The financial crisis in which the nation finds itself today can be traced to FDR's four terms, during which the nation went through the Great Depression. It was an economic event that could have and should have been much shorter if liberal "solutions" had not been initiated. FDR never saw an entitlement or regulatory program he would not endorse, starting with Social Security. His successor to office, Harry Truman, pushed through Medicare. The debacle known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began back then, growing out of the notion that the government had to guarantee everyone they could live in their own home. By the time they neared collapse, they owned more than half of all the mortgages in the nation. Don't Repeat the Errors of the New Deal. The historical model that the Democrats are choosing to hold up as they ponder our financial crisis isn't Harry Truman's Fair Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It is Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. At least three economic reforms under discussion now were also central in the New Deal package. Trouble is, these reforms didn't necessarily work well when they were first tried — and some failed outright. The Supreme Court and FDR's Power-Grab. How great a chance do we have to overthrow ObamaCare in the courts? To answer that question, we need to look into that bleak pit of falsehood and mendacity that America's left would like us to ignore at all costs: the historical record. We need to look at the original effort to nationalize the American economy, the one attempted by Obama's model, Franklin D. Roosevelt, by means of the New Deal. The Old New Deal. The New Deal ... actually began under Hoover, who initiated new spending programs and jobs programs, and tried to inflate the money supply and bail out the banks. He was blasted by FDR for his big government policies, and FDR won the election. Once in power, FDR went nuts, instituting a program of central planning that combined features of the Soviet and Fascist models. It was one idiotic program after another. The New Deal Didn't Do the Job. "I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. ... And an enormous debt to boot!" Surely this must be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denouncing the Bush administration's economic policies. Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again. The words came from none other than Henry Morgenthau Jr. — pal, lunch companion and loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. How Government Prolonged the Depression: The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn. The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn't restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office. Just a few more zeroes. Part of the problem is that the model is all wrong here. The economic problems we face today are not remotely comparable to those we faced in 1931 or 1932, not so much less serious or more serious as simply different. Although Democrats continue to worship at the altar of the New Deal, even liberal economists concede that it didn't "solve" the Great Depression but, indeed, certain of its features might have even made things worse. How to cause a depression: Tucked within the economic stimulus bill the House passed last week was a clause requiring state and local public works agencies to buy American iron and steel for their reconstruction projects, and the Senate expanded it to all manufactured goods. It was modified slightly on Thursday as Senators had a second thought. If the nation is going to spend $43 billion to $100 billion on infrastructure revitalizing the civil engineering, architecture and construction industries, it sounded reasonable that the spending should also be used as a catalyst for other American products like U.S. Steel's steel, DuPont's plastics, 3M's chemicals and so on. But a brief history lesson will show them the folly of their ways. A whiff of Smoot-Hawley. In 1930, as the Great Depression tightened its grip on the country, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Act, erecting a high and onerous tariff wall around the U.S. economy. The lawmakers thought they were helping American workers; instead, they greatly lengthened and deepened the Great Depression, here and worldwide. Smoot-Hawley's Ghost Appears as Economy Tanks. The rising protectionist tide hasn't reached crisis proportions yet. But the camel's nose is under the tent. Unless governments get serious about arresting the trend soon, the chatter about 2009 morphing into a replay of the Great Depression will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 increased duties on more than 20,000 goods, inviting retaliation by other countries. Within two years of the law's enactment, global trade declined 70 percent. The Ghosts of Smoot and Hawley. Despite pleas from no fewer than 1,028 economists and Henry Ford, President Hoover signed the bill into law on June 17, 1930. It worked, sort of. Merchandise imports fell by $1.738 billion in the next year and half. Unfortunately, our trading partners retaliated, and our merchandise exports fell by even more — by $2.232 billion. Obama is headed for a one-term presidency. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the New Deal's Big Government spending failed to end the Great Depression. That is clear to anybody who reads Paul Johnson's masterful chapter on the New Deal in "Modern Times." Or Amity Schlaes' superb "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression." Or the utterly convincing data-driven study by UCLA professors Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian that concluded the New Deal lengthened the Great Depression by at least seven years. The New Deal Put "Great" in Depression. You can't say this often enough. The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. If you want a book-length treatment, a good one is Amity Shlaes readable Forgotten Man, now out in paperback. Witless protection: Some think the New Deal rescued the United States from economic crisis in the 1930s. Others argue precisely the opposite. But whatever their ideology and whatever their credentials, most of the pundits, historians, and economists who debate the Great Depression agree about one thing: Whatever may have caused the crisis, protectionism, trade barriers, and, yes, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act helped ensure that it lasted as long as it did. So uncontroversial is this view that it is virtually U.S. government policy. New Deal or Raw Deal? Not only did FDR raise the top income tax bracket to 79%, but he also proposed to Congress raising it to 99.5%. This proposal did not get through Congress. In April of 1939, after more than eight years of the New Deal, the unemployment rate was 20.7%. Henry Morgenthau, a very close friend of Franklin Roosevelt, and his Treasury Secretary, testified before Congress with brutal honesty about the greatest experiment in Keynesian fiscal policy. He said, "We have tried spending money. We are spending more 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 promise." Same Old New Deal. Fidelity Investments' CEO calls President Obama's economic plan "New Deal II" and says it won't work any better than it did for FDR. Whitewashing FDR: When it started becoming fashionable to compare the current economic malaise to the Great Depression, decades of scholarship flew out the window overnight. In place of the policy nuances that have been debated over the years by historians and economists, we were offered a simple-minded, three-act morality play in which Herbert Hoover embraces unchecked laissez faire, producing and aggravating an economic crisis, until Franklin Roosevelt rides to the rescue. A Bad Deal Revisited — Obama and FDR. The theme of this script has already been written, and some of the rehearsals have already been held. Barack Hussein Obama is to play Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the New New Deal. George Bush gets to be Herbert Hoover. Obama himself has drawn the parallels on numerous occasions, which have been echoed repeatedly in the media — both favorably, by liberal supporters, and unfavorably, by those who dread the harm it could do to the country. The Reality of the New Deal: Seventy-six years ago in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR launched its intended solution, the New Deal. If, as it now seems, the current financial crisis's closest counterpart is the Great Depression, it is paramount we understand both it and its intended solution. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the Depression's cause — not its cure — came from the government and the New Deal did less than both its supporters and critics claim. You Know The Real Reason Why Time Mag Is Going Down the Drain? The Content! Given that it's such old news that the New Deal was an economic flopperoo and that President Obama is pushing a New Dealish-like economic stimulus package, you'd think that maybe Time would be interested in engaging the whys and wherefores of such things. Or in anything like a critical analysis of FDR and BHO. It needn't be negative or libertarian, but something other than idle idol worship might actually pull some eyeballs. Be Prepared for the Worst. A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. The Ghosts Of '38. That little-remembered year during the depths of the Great Depression was one of the most edifying in electoral history. With FDR in the White House, and still very popular, a rogue Congress with radical ideas embarked on a series of legislative initiatives that helped push a recovering economy back into depression. Help Your President — Kill ObamaCare! Government expansion — in this case, ObamaCare — and economic prosperity supposedly go hand in hand. Henry Morgenthau served as FDR's Treasury secretary. Thus Morgenthau, who served from 1934 to 1945, was to FDR what current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to Obama. Morgenthau wrote in 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work." Rationing Both Jobs and Basketballs. FDR liked to visit the boys living in Civil Conservation Corps barracks. He had good time eating, joking, and making little speeches. Maybe Barack will do the same for us. Visit us in our shanty-towns, shoot some hoops, and flash that toothy grin. FDR appreciated the propaganda value of these visits. Everyone looks so happy and content in their government-created work camps. That was one of the things the CCC did — it created endless footage for the sole purpose of singing its own praises and paying homage to FDR. Big Government Is Not A Solution. [Scroll down] During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt made similar demands: "This nation asks for action, and action now. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work... I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis — broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency..." That was in 1933. Roosevelt got the big government programs he wanted — but activist government chilled the private sector. Seven years later, unemployment was still at nearly 15 percent. Let's not try that again. Year by Year Through the Great Depression: Seventy years ago the leaders of both US political parties turned away from the policies that had created an economic powerhouse we call the Roaring Twenties. For ten long years Americans suffered through wrenching economic dislocations: deflation, inflation, a four-year economic contraction, endless unemployment, mindless political experiments, and ruthless attacks on businessmen for political gain as their leaders stayed Stuck on Stupid. Did FDR End the Depression? 'He got us out of the Great Depression." That's probably the most frequent comment made about President Franklin Roosevelt, who died 65 years ago today. Every Democratic president from Truman to Obama has believed it, and each has used FDR's New Deal as a model for expanding the government. It's a myth. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression — not during the 1930s, and only in a limited sense during World War II. A Man, a Plan... On February 5, 1937, just 16 days after his inauguration to his second presidential term, Franklin D. Roosevelt called a surprise meeting of his cabinet in the White House's West Wing in which he unveiled to the cabinet, Congress, the press, and the nation a proposal for a dramatic reorganization of the federal judiciary that became known as his court-packing plan.
A Failed Obama Hero. Let's think about President Obama's failed economic stimulus program. Before getting to the nitty-gritty of why stimulus packages fail, let's look at the failed stimulus program of Obama's hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wrote in his diary: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... 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!" Guess Who? Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed the country's woes on the problems he inherited from his predecessor, much as Barack Obama does today. But unemployment was 20 percent in the spring of 1939, six long years after Herbert Hoover had left the White House. Whole generations have been "educated" to believe that the Roosevelt administration is what got this country out of the Great Depression. ... In more recent years, there have been both academic studies and popular books debunking some of the myths about the New Deal. Nevertheless, Professor Folsom's book "New Deal or Raw Deal?" breaks new ground. Was U.S. shuffled into socialism by New Deal? Last week, I explored the notion that perhaps — just perhaps — Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was part of a larger plan to detour the United States into socialism. It seems absurd, of course. We all grew up admiring FDR for his wisdom and courage and were taught that he had saved the country from the Great Depression through his government-funded stimulus programs. But nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight, and with our generation holding the bill for 75 years of "stimulus," "welfare" and "entitlement" programs, it is appropriate to study President Roosevelt's policies with the same intense scrutiny that we apply to President Obama's. They are at root, after all, the very same policies. The Great Depression II. With the New Deal, the Second New Deal, TVA (rural electrification), FERA (emergency relief), CCC (youth work program), AAA (farming subsidies), NIRA (industrial regulation and public works), PWA (public works), WPA (public employment), FDIC (banking regulation), and Social Security all exercising unprecedented Federal power, investor uncertainty was justified and profound. ... Without doubt, the Crash of 1929 was extremely serious — almost as serious as the great unraveling that started in September 2008. The Great Depression from 1932 to 1942, however, was Roosevelt's fault. Does Obama Have Any Idea Why New Deal Failed? Take the National Recovery Act (NRA), for example, which was FDR's program for industry. The NRA set the prices of thousands of products. Merchants who gave discounts to customers were subject to fines and imprisonment. For example, the fixed price to press a pair of pants was 40 cents. Jacob Maged of Jersey City, N.J., gave a 5-cent discount because his shop was far from the main shopping area. He needed to give discounts to attract customers and stay in business. "You can't tell me how to run my business," Maged insisted. Yes, they could, Maged discovered when he went to jail for charging his customers a nickel less. Neither FDR nor any of his New Dealers, however, could clearly explain why jailing merchants for giving discounts created jobs or made American industry more competitive. Headline edited to conform to website standards of family-friendliness. The use of AIG as a scapegoat Unfortunately, too many people form their opinions based on emotional outbursts and TV sound bites rather than sound reasoning. These are exactly the people Obama and the Democrats are inciting with their phony outrage over bonuses paid to AIG executives. The whole purpose of this endeavor is to stir up envy and outrage against people who make a lot of money, as one of the first steps toward "spread[ing] the wealth around" through outright socialism. Obama, Congress Knew About AIG Bonuses for Months. Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back. AIG is Obama's Katrina. The bill that allowed for the AIG bonuses was hastily written. It was rammed through without discussion or debate. Republicans were systematically excluded from the bill. Not a single Republican was allowed to participate. When Democrats showed up to the conference committee, they brought the finished conference bill with them and didn't allow Republicans to see it. Then it was posted online in the middle of the night. And the very next day it was passed, almost exclusively on Democrat votes. President Obama promised he wouldn't sign anything into law until it had been online for five days, so that the American people could read it. If this had been done, business experts and finance experts would have analyzed the bill, and we could have caught this and stopped it. A Hidden Agenda behind the 90 Percent Tax? Taking advantage of the populist revolt against Wall Street and AIG bailouts, the House Democrats have passed a vengeance tax on TARPed financial firms that amounts to a 90 percent marginal tax rate on bonuses. ... Yet one wonders about this 90 percent tax rate. If it passes the Senate, will it ever be repealed? This could be the ultimate class-warfare spread-the-wealth redistribution scheme, aimed squarely at punishing success and penalizing the so-called rich. AIG — It's the Contracts! There seems to be a simple fact missing from all of the coverage of the AIG "bonus" fiasco: the sanctity of contracts. Congress can not be allowed to violate them. Altering a contract's terms is the function of the parties to the contracts or of the courts when one of the parties defaults. The Bonus Tax Is Just Plain Stupid. Like Bernie Madoff, I've got the government coming after my money. Unlike Madoff, I didn't do anything wrong. The House of Representatives, alas, thinks otherwise. Last Thursday, 328 members voted for a bill that would slap a 90% surtax on my bonus, with Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel dismissing the payout I received in January as "repugnant to everything that decent people believe in." The Senate is considering a similar bill. The Real AIG Conspiracy: What is wrong with this picture? Is there not something over-inflated about the outrage led most vociferously by Senator Charles Schumer and Rep. Barney Frank, the two leading shills for the bank giveaways over the past year? And does Pres. Obama perhaps find it convenient that finally, at long last, he has been able to criticize something that he believes Wall Street has done wrong? Cry, the Beloved Republic. Forget Halliburton, Enron, etc. — AIG is the metaphor of our new century. Let's get this straight: Our president takes over $100,000 from AIG in campaign donations. Then he signs into legislation a bill crafted by his own party, with input from his own Treasury secretary, giving mega-bonuses to the execs of this bankrupt, federally bailed-out company — and then goes on the stump to trash the culture of Wall Street as typified by ... AIG, of course. Defending AIG: When a company is collapsing — as AIG certainly was at the time these contracts were negotiated — everybody who has an alternative is looking to jump ship. Think about it. If you knew that your employer might not be around in a few months and you had very specialized skills that were much in demand elsewhere, would you be willing to go down with the ship? Not likely. But if your employer offered you a handsome financial incentive to stick around, you'd be far more likely to take the risk. Well, that's exactly what AIG did when it negotiated retention bonuses. Off With Their Heads. This is nuts. I mean, really folks ... we have gone bat-guano insane over this AIG bonus brouhaha. You're being manipulated. The Dems' AIG Bonus Scam. [Scroll down] It's a farce — a sham. What's going on here is that the news media finally got around to mentioning that this $165 million for bonuses is part of the more than $170 billion of taxpayer money that Congress and President Obama insisted must be awarded in haste to the failed insurance giant American International Group, Inc (AIG). The public, understandably, is really angry. So the Democrats are terrified that the public might actually start figuring out what an incredibly incompetent job President Obama and the Congressional Democrats are doing. Congress ignores Constitution to cover blunders. Political pandering and posturing are alive and well and flourishing in Washington to the detriment of the American taxpayer. And from day to day, Senators and Federal officials change their stories regarding their involvement in the AIG bailout. First AIG, Then All Banks... Next, It'll Be You. The AIG bonus debacle is the latest stomach-turning episode. The political class's bungling of the bailouts has made the scandal not just who knew what when, but who should have known what when, rushing through trillion-dollar spending bills that elected officials — much less the public — hadn't even skimmed. More grotesque than taxpayers funding unseemly bonus packages has been Congress's pitchforked attempt to make up for that misstep. Punitive, 90 percent, retroactive taxes on bonuses are only the beginning of the policy fallout of this political scandal. And So Begins Another Week Of Malfeasance. With the braying of 328 yahoos — members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate legal earnings of a small unpopular group — still reverberating, the Obama administration Monday [3/23/2009] invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. Employees Fear for Their Lives: The Other AIG Outrage. Employees of American International Group not involved with the shady credit default swaps that led to the company's near-collapse last year are angry for being unfairly blamed for a mess they say they had nothing to do with and are scared by threats of violence against them and their families. American Mob Rule. In the last three months, we've been reduced to something like the ancient Athenian mob — with opportunistic politicians sometimes inciting, sometimes catering to an already angry public. Take the AIG debacle. ... Politicians rushed before the cameras to demand all sorts of penalties for these greedy investment bankers. Soon, they passed an unprecedented special tax law just to confiscate 90 percent of these contracted bonuses. Those who shouted the loudest for the heads of the AIG execs had the dirtiest hands. U.S. is sleep-walking to socialism. President Barack Obama has just fired the chairman of General Motors, and if that doesn't give you pause, here are some other interesting items. The administration is trying to figure out how to seize troubled companies and the House threw a hissy fit aimed at undoing perfectly legal private contracts. "We own AIG," said Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, speaking on behalf of the federal government as he tried to justify some sort of renewed, murderously angry French Revolution, this one in our country and aimed at executives receiving bonuses. Ready, Blame, Fire. Heads must roll! The chief watchdog of the government's $700 billion bank-bailout plan says top executives of struggling financial institutions must be fired if the economy is to have any chance of recovery. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, told The Post that letting banking leaders off the hook for the mess their companies are in will plunge the country into a deeper hole. Obama and Mob Rule. Barack Obama is ignoring the words of the Democratic Party's founder, Thomas Jefferson, who warned, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." The mob is in the form of nightly polls taken by President Barack Obama's political advisers. ObaMob Rule. Obama is using the mob-incitement tactics of his mentor, Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky. The flash point he used was justified citizen outrage over AIG bonuses. Now he has claimed for himself the right to fire people in private businesses. Using his new-media outreach program and his e-mail database of 13 million people, Obama is further attempting to influence policy changes through protests outside AIG offices. He has even organized targeted doorbelling activities in support of his plans. Bankrupt Tribune gives bonuses after berating AIG. Two months after denouncing a troubled financial company for doling out hefty management bonuses, a bankrupt news media company is doing the same thing. Nationalizing General Motors and Chrysler This subsection is now located on a page of its own — here.
Jump to Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. 
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Document location https://akdart.com/obama12.html Updated February 17, 2023. ©2024 by Andrew K. Dart |