OBama’s economic policy is clear, all right
One of Obama’s biggest boosters, Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, bemoans the fact that somehow, the great articulator/communicator/orator has failed to clarify his economic policy. Oh, if only he could explain to the slow-on-the-draw people the big picture—which is, which is…what, exactly?
Clift can’t quite articulate it either. The closest she can come is this:
The straightforward Cash for Clunkers and the recently lapsed real-estate rebate are the highlights of his economic program, while the stimulus bill is tarred (unfairly) as wasted money and the administration’s mortgage-rescue program founders in a sea of red tape.
But commenter Richard Lavallee (July 2, 9:58:21 PM) offers to help Clift out, and I think he pretty much nails it:
Obama’s economic policy is crystal clear. Destroy the middle class and small businesses, nurture and seduce large corporations with bailouts in exchange for government control and large party campaign contributions, throttle the credit markets to prevent entrepreneurial activity, use massive unemployment to drive up public payrolls, drive up taxes to soak up investment potential, empower job-killing environmental radicals, force government control of carbon, and thereby control over life itself, rely on the Supreme Court appointments to further erode the property rights of european-americans, and enslave the nation to the communist Chinese with gargantuan debts.
Cloward-Piven, anyone?
[NOTE: In related news, most Americans don’t seem to have gotten the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Clift-et al memo that the stimulus really helped the economy and created jobs.]
(in childlike voice) “Barry, tell us a story…”
I agree that the stimulus plan put money in the hands of the unemployed, thus creating some spending that would not have been there otherwise. But that is frightened, desperate spending, not confident spending. Real demand comes from employees and small businesses that have some feeling of confidence in what is coming down the pike.
All the actions of the Obama and the democrat Congress, as pointed out by Richard Lavalle in his comment, have destroyed confidence and created fear. Obama could make a big difference if he would just quit bashing businesses and give up his programs designed to redistribute wealth. (Unlimited unemployment benefits, healthcare reform, cap and tax, card check, etc.)
Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are trying to kill the goose (the private economy) that actually creates the golden eggs (wealth). Are they that evil or just brain dead? It makes no difference what their motivation is. In the end the effects are the same. Electing fiscal conservatives is the only way to combat them. November is coming soon. Let us all do our duty in this election cycle.
And the band played on as they watched them rearrange the deck chairs….
So, are these folks capable of acting in any other fashion for the purpose of building confidence in this nation and its leadership? I believe they are incapable of doing anything other than exactly what they want to do. They don’t respond to pressure from the electorate, they apply pressure against those who aren’t down with the program.
November can’t get here soon enough. That said, after the election, expect America to receive its dose of punishment for the rejection past and future. Remember Nixon? More of that kind of mentality.
November is the hope against change in which we pray that they rollback or help on the largest tax hike in American history hitting us next year
Obama wants everybody to be on welfare.
That’s his plan.
Next up… global amnesty for 20 million illegals.
Carry Shouting Thomas’ point one step further (Obama wants everyone tobe on welfare). When evryone is on welfare, then where do the welfare checks come from? There is no longer a private economy to tax.
The left just doesn’t get the fact that socialist economies are parasitic and can only exist if they have a host to tax; it’s like an adolescent who doesn’t work and relies exclusively on an allowance from those who do.
As Margaret Thatcher so succinctly put it, eventually one runs out of other people’s money!
1. Eleanor Clift does not mention that Obama neglected the economy because he was fully occupied by rounding up votes, offering sinecures, and cutting deals to ram his unpopular healthcare bill through Congress. In fact, she does not mention the bill at all.
2. I’m all for getting out of the Obama/Pelosi/Emanuel fire, but I don’t want to get back into a Bush/Rove/DeLay-type frying pan.
3. Here is Paul Ryan’s budget analysis. I just downloaded it because of the introduction:
I want to know more about Ryan and his ideas. (“The Party of Ideas.” Once upon a time I heard that somewhere–and liked it.)
Both the Cash for Clunkers and first time home buyers tax credit simply brought sales forward and were followed by a corresponding dip in sales when they ended. They accomplished nothing and cost a lot of money.
Only 4% of the stimulus money was dedicated to traditional infrastructure. Most people agree that it had little effect on the real economy while it did save the jobs of some state workers at great cost (i.e. debt).
The bottom line is wealth isn’t being produced to sustain our country. They can shift, allocate, rearrange and redistribute all they want and it won’t change that fact.
This is like a farmer spending all his energy working on the distribution of his crops to the market and ignores actually planting and growing crops for a sustainable future.
Again with the great communicator myth. Obama communicates very clearly, through word, subtext, and action “I belong to Tribe X, and I will look out for their interests.” Tribe X goes wild, believing that no matter what happens, they’ll be okay. They cannot get over how wise his plans are – because they reinforce a cultural vision they believe is the only proper one. Tribe X then sets out to help deceive select other tribes who have votes Obama needs.
So come to think of it, he is a great communicator. Similar to what one would see from party leaders in the Balkans.
Steve H. said, “This is like a farmer spending all his energy working on the distribution of his crops to the market and ignores actually planting and growing crops for a sustainable future.”
Excellent analogy, Steve.
gs,
You can find out all about Paul Ryan’s roadmap for America here:
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
Read it, digest it, and ask your candidates for House and Senate if they will support those ideas.
All I know is, there is no good news ahead. We might stop further damage beginning next January, but with a veto power and the ability to issue Executive Orders, a politicized bureaucracy, a supine Media, a radical Bar, and an Academy in La-La Land, the best we can do is drift until Jan 2013. Lewis Carroll, here we come.
To Obama, the economy truly is moving in the right direction; all those tech jobs that have been lost were the wrong kind of jobs.
What’s the point of being King of the World if mere peons like us can wear business suits, work in air-conditioned offices, and operate computers better than he does?
When he promised “shovel ready”, he meant that literally. 🙁
–
If we stay the course a lot of liberals (and conservatives, but we know what’s coming) will run smack into the reality of a host of new taxes and defensive layoffs as small businesses do what they have to do to survive. So, come 2011, the ranks of conservatives will be given a goosing.
I read last week that 150 small businesses in Texas were unable to obtain some sort of EPA approvals. I have no idea what polluting activities were involved, if any, but, unless the businesses involved local trash collection, the natural response would be to move the businesses to Mexico, which would not only finess the EPA but obviate the need to deal with the very costly healthcare laws and regulations as they begin to come into effect. So, why are we losing jobs?
Obama could make a big difference if he would just quit bashing businesses and give up his programs designed to redistribute wealth. (Unlimited unemployment benefits, healthcare reform, cap and tax, card check, etc.)
Obama can no more give this up than he can give up breathing. It’s hard-wired into his socialist DNA, and for him to go against it would be to go against his very nature.
OMG, maybe that commenter over at Clift’s place actually is not engaging in hyperbole when he says that Obama wants to “enslave the nation to the communist Chinese” — just look at what Marty Peretz (yes, the New Republic guy!) says today on his blog: “The news buried in today’s Financial Times story about BP being ‘braced for shake-up at top’ reveals that, aside from ExxonMobil or Royal Dutch Shell (notice how these are already combines of previous companies), PetroChina seems to be preparing for an ‘opportunistic bid.’”
Cash For Clunkers Rear Ends Rhode Islanders at Legal Insurrection is a must-read for progressive geniuses like Clift who think the program had any merit at all. You’d have to read Prof. Jacobson’s article to appreciate how Obamanomics will help tank an already diminished cash flow for many, especially the poor and unemployed, in the smallest, floundering, unionized-progressive-Democrat state.
J.J. formerly Jimmy J., yes, we’re (almost) on the same page. Clicking ‘home’ on the page I linked takes me to your link.
The roadmap PDF is a 100-page document, so thanks for your recommendation that the time will be worth it.
America is in a fight for its very life against its president.
He wants to destroy America.
The one and only question is whether Americans still want America to be America.
Period.
If they do not, Obama will succeed in destroying America. If they do, he will fail.
Practically the entire thing will be settled this November.
Right now there is no way to tell what will really happen then.
Yesterday we learned at work that the insurance plan will have to change because costs went up 30%. Our company is a small family successful engineering firm which employs around 50 people, in short, the enemy.
A peculiarity and blessing of the blog age is that we now see the average Joe commenter is much more on the ball than Mr. Highly Paid Upper West Manhattan columnist. Richard Lavallee, whoever and where ever he is gets it; Newsweek columnist Eleanor Clift clearly suffers from some sort of cranial vapor lock, which probably explains Newsweek’s runaway success.
They’re not even good Keynesians! They haven’t started any infrastructure projects. Where’s the WPA, the CCC, the Federal Arts Project? That’s true incompetence — not even being able to carry out your own failed economic theory!
Richard Saunders Says:
Where’s the WPA, the CCC, the Federal Arts Project?
“We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges.” If you can stomach a lot more along those lines, look here.
The commenter at the Newsweek blog pretty much nailed it.
As for his remark about enslavement to the Chinese, I’ve often wondered about the policy of locking up natural resources and putting them off-limits to development. If we default on our debt, China may end up owning those resources. Is that a bug or a feature?
The president, senate, house, and army of bureaucrats. That is who we are against, or rather, that is who is against those who feel as I do.
There is no way out of this without a fight. That’s why they want the guns. That’s why they have always wanted the guns. And if another “civil war” happens, it will anger me to the extent that I will do all I can to be sure my side wins. McCarthy was right. And the ones who knew it best are those who attacked him the loudest.
Richard Saunders–weren’t all those, to use their pure bullshit phrase “shovel ready” projects, supposed to be today’s equivalent of the old CCC? Nothing is as it seems with this crew of “wreckers” and, obviously, the aim of each and every one of their programs and initiatives–no matter how apparently vital or great sounding the program–is not to shore up or to repair our economy, but to wreck it a la “Cloward and Piven’s strategy, else some of these programs, just by chance, would have had to accomplish their stated goals, but none ever do.
As I said elsewhere, there has to be a much higher penalty paid for what is not ignorance or incompetence, but for what is deliberate sabotage than just being voted out of office, to retire on a fat pension and sit back, secure, to watch the conflagration you have started grow to consume the Republic and all it’s citizens.
From what some of these malevolent clowns have said, they–despite what looks like a blowout in November, that will rip control of the House and perhaps even the Senate from their hands–are planning to defy the will of the majority of people that the November elections will have expressed, and to use their still existing majorities to ram through even more of their wrecker’s agenda during the lame duck session of Congress in the interval after the November elections and before the Congress changes its membership in January.
Perhaps if they knew that they could be called to account after they fled the Congress they had used to carry out their campaign of deliberate sabotage, perhaps if they knew that they hazarded their pensions, their cushy retirements, and their freedom if they carried out their wrecking, there would be a lot less wrecking going on.
Here’s an unhappy thought: We’re going to have to find some way to negate all the actions that they’re now using currently precedented processes to take. Every federal branch and agency is now being used against the nation itself, and against the people. Ergo: Our only hope is going to lie in some manner of dismantling our own government. Yoiks.
This gets uglier all the time.
Clift is using the same damned dumb notion that these wizards use all the time: They haven’t gotten their message out. The problem is, instead, that their message is getting out just fine, thank you very much, and is beginning to come through loud and clear.
Damn. Happy Birthday, United States of America and Betsy.
Will ya still need me, will ya still feed me, when I’m 64?
For the best cash for clunkers takedown I’ve seen, watch this:
All right then – once more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THqnKKLD2rw&feature=related
If useful idiots had any redeeming qualities, Eleanor Clift would lack them.
Neo- My impression is that Cloward-Piven is bottoms-up, facilitated by the fabled community organizers. What we have here is top-down.
One has to conclude that Obama’s economics policies have little to do with economics and lots to do with “transforming” America.
The Cash for Clunkers program cost $24,000 per vehicle per incremental sale according to Edmunds in addition to raising the prices of used cars for people who depend on the used car market. Within months the incremental sales were lost to a sales dip caused by sales being pulled forward. How is any of this good for the economy? It had to be driven by an ideology that is offended by old cars (gas guzzlers?) in the inventory.
The latest outrage is Obama’s economics is his plan to give $2 billion for new solar plants and green jobs. The 1,000 permanent jobs created would be at a cost of $1.3 million each. How does this make sense?
When solar energy is economically competitive, it will be undertaken by the private sector.
Re China . . .
Apparently China is buying up lots of the oil sands areas in Canada. It’s also buying up molybdenum sources wherever it can. (Love that word)
It’s pretty clear to me and to most of you that there is a concerted effort to bring down the United States. I blame George Soros, Maurice Strong, and that communist couple mentioned on neo-neocon’s blog a few times. The ones who backed Obama and his minions in the first place.
We know there are big forces in play.
Ms. Clift’s opinions are predictable – Democrats/Liberals are smarter by definition and Obama is the smartest of all liberals.
If the Obama policies were to result in Ms. Clift losing her job, her income, her wealth, her health and any prospect for maintaining, much less increasing, her economic prospects, her opinion would not changes. As she waits weeks/months/years for healthcare in the future, she would still be claiming that Obama had delivered her to liberal heaven. She would even agree that at her age, it would be a waster of government resources to treat her for a condition that would have been inexpensively cured in 2010.
Mr. Frank, I think your “transforming” theory works. It is not that Obama wants to destroy the middle-class – that would be too obvious – but to weaken it enough so that it cannot prevent the elites from doing what they think best. And yet, retain enough $ to be milked. They don’t want the middle-class to cease to exist – oh, perhaps someday they will – but to have only marginal political power. They think we have too much power, and must be trimmed a bit, then a bit more.
It is a far more subtle plan than mere elimination. They will even grant what perks and presents they think they can, to keep many asleep. It is the approach of the narcissist. Whatever you have always seems to be too much to them. They see themselves as the beleaguered victims, fighting valiantly against a great horde of potential oppressors.
This is why they regarded a 50-50 Senate under Bush as “control” of the Senate, but with their own 59-41 advantage, continue to complain that the Republicans are obstructionist; and succeeded, BTW, in convincing the majority of Americans that Republicans have been in control of much of Congress when the opposite has been true for decades. Nothing is ever enough, because they are unable to effect all the wonderful plans they have. They feel cheated, no matter how thorough their dominance. Like the Antisocial Personality Disorder who perpetually believes he is one-down in the world, and is thus “allowed” to cheat and steal to make up for that oppression, they exist in a state of perpetual grievance. Think Germany before WWI, or many Middle-Eastern nations today.
So they hope to transform our society, into one in which we exist but know our place.
That is why I often object to the rhetoric here that suggests that liberals are out to destroy American institutions and the free market. They find this off-putting and ridiculous because they are conscious of wanting no such thing. They only want their rightful place as rulers: 70 in the Senate, 300 in the House, 7 on the Supreme Court. They think that is about fair, on account of their superiority.
Again: November is only the first round of a ten-round fight. Winning back a few seats to prevent the worst excesses, or even squeaking out a 51-49 majority will not be enough. It would not be a victory, and would deserve no more than a celebration of a few days.
On reassessing McCarthy, and with the benefit of Artfldgr’s bibliographic guidance (just finished the second Mitrokhin archive book – thanks Artfldgr!), I’ve reached the same conclusion.
Kinda like consomme, in fact. Meatless and vegetable-less consomme. That clear.
Yes, McCarthy was right. I would add that so was the John Birch Society (at least mostly).
I was never a member, but about 25-30 years ago I briefly worked in a factory operating a machine that cut strips of aluminum for Venetian blinds. I was in my 20s and still very much a leftist. An older woman who worked at the machine next to me was a JBS member, and we would often get into political discussions. She was a very nice lady and we got along fine.
Looking back, I think she had her head screwed on straighter than mine was at the time.
Probably the most insidious thing the Left has done is portray as paranoid laughingstocks those with well-founded suspicions about the motives of fellow travelers. Journalists and Hollywood have so much answer for in this regard.
Not everyone pointing out extraordinary coincidences, wildly improbable events, and dogs that didn’t bark is a lunatic raving about “precious bodily fluids.”
Conversely, the same malefactors are also answerable for treating real paranoid laughingstocks as worthy of serious consideration. (Oliver Stone call your office.) This has two pernicious effects: 1) to the extent that people take these conspiracy theories seriously, it mainstreams them, and 2) to the extent that people laugh them off, it marginalizes anyone who raises questions regarding appearances versus reality.
I am just starting to read M. Staunton Evan’s very important, interesting, exhaustively researched and footnoted, and very well written 2007 book, “Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.” A work whose thesis is that —particularly in hindsight, and with the advantage of all the previously secret records that have been pried out of the FBI through FOIA requests, the VENONA papers, and material from KGB files–Senator McCarthy’s charges were accurate and that, moreover, the McCarthy has been very successfully and pretty much universally demonized by several generations of supposed scholars and commentators, who did not bother to actually consult the relevant documents, as Evans has done. But, then, in the era of “Joe the Plumber” and Sarah Palin, we can see quite clearly how such demonization and belittlement is done, and how useful a political tool it can be.
Reading the first few chapters, two things have struck me so far.
First, is the fact that Evans found that, over and over again, many of the primary documents essential to understanding and evaluating the truth or falsity of McCarthy’s charges, the files, for instance, of the various Congressional Investigating Committees, that are supposedly preserved and safeguarded in the National Archives–particularly material naming them and laying out the details of the cases against various accused Communist agents–have mysteriously disappeared; the indexes to the materials say they were there, the cover letters to them are often still there, but the guts, the actual contents have been ripped out of the files, leaving little paper stubs where the pages themselves had been securely attached to their folders.
Indeed, the text of the first speech Senator McCarthy gave that supposedly kicked off his ruthless, deliberate “persecution” of the innocent, printed in the West Virginia newspaper the “Wheeling Intelligencer,” is now missing–in the “Intelligencer’s” own microfilm archive, in the microfilm copies of the “Intelligencer” in the Wheeling public library a few blocks away from the Intelligencer’s headquarters, and the microfilm for this particular month is even “missing” from the Library of Congress microfilm holdings for the “Intelligencer.” Curious, is it not?
But then, again, given the exploits of the likes of former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and his theft and destruction of highly classified National Security documents that were supposedly securely stored, watched over, and tenaciously safeguarded in the National Archives–thefts and destruction easily accomplished, and just as easily minimized by those in power, and hardly even punished–I guess we can all see how such incriminating evidence might just happen to “disappear” over time.
The other thing that has been startling is the staggering viciousness of the contemporary ad hominem attacks on McCarthy, attacks so vicious that I believe they would not be made today for fear of legal action, “public figure” or not. Thus, for instance, we have this portrait of McCarthy from “New Yorker” correspondent Richard Rovere’s 1959 book, “Senator Joe McCarthy”:
“No bolder seditionist ever moved among us–not any politician with a swifter, surer access to the dark places of the public mind…Like Hitler McArthur was a screamer, a political thug, a master of the mob, an exploiter of popular fears…He was a master of the scabrous and scatological, his talk was laced with obscenity. He was a vulgarian by method as well as probably by instinct…He made little pretense to religiosity or to any species of moral rectitude. He sought to manipulate only the most barbaric symbols of America–the slippery elm club, the knee in the groin, and the brass knuckles…He was–a prince of hate…He was morally indecent…McCarthy had become liberated from the morality that prevailed in his environment…”
But back then, in that much more naé¯ve and less informed time, the MSM had a much tighter lock on the “narrative,”–“Front Page” and all that–greatly benefitted from the public’s perception that members of “the fourth estate” were above the fray, were of superior intelligence and education, were intellectually honest, and from the particularly naé¯ve belief that they actually, comprehensively and objectively researched the material they printed, and for reporting the truth.
Sorry, the quote from Rovere’s biography of McCarthy should have read “Like Hitler McCarthy,”… not “Like Hitler McArthur”
Wolla:
As to the missing newspaper editions, perhaps letters to every public and university library in West Virginia and all surrounding states would either produce the microfilm you are seeking or confirm your implication by uncovering that all microfilm copies are missing.
If you were to determine that there are 10 libraries with microfilm copies of that newspapers and all 10 collections are missing the microfilm for that time period and that those libraries have no other gaps in common with the other libraries.
That assumes that the company that made the original microfilm copies did make copies of the editions in question.
You could also place an advertisement in the West Virginia paper(s) for any old copies. Some people keep old newspapers for decades and often these collections are not thrown away when that person dies. I know that my grandmother had 30 years of the local paper and about 20 years of TV Guide when she died.
Wolla: Not so very much has changed since the 1950s. We doubters, doing our own homework, may think it has, but that may be wish fathering thought. I don’t know how the public would have polled then, but I do know that 46% still today approve of Baraq’s performance. And 47% pay no federal income tax. Jeez! Makes me pull my hair out.
Richard Lavallee could have just as easily been making a 1930’s commentary on Mussolini.
Tom–yeah, had I not been paying attention, and had a lot of people not started to post all sorts of analyses in on the Internet, I would never have known that of the 38% of citizens who currently pay no Federal income tax, and that this already unacceptable and dangerous percentage is slated to reach 48-49% under Obama.
If you had asked me before I had seen these figures, I would have guessed that maybe 10% or maybe perhaps even close to 20% of our citizenry didn’t pay taxes, but 38% headed to 50%? That I would not have credited and, when you learn of this number, just this alone changes the entire landscape, and reveals a grave threat to our Republic that I am sure the MSM would like to have kept hidden. Because, once you realize that close to 50% of the country has a vital interest in keeping the same gang in power and in keeping the gravy train rolling, has no real investment in America getting better and a lot invested in seeing it stay just as it is or in getting more dependent on government, you realize just how deep a hole we are in.
Artfldgr and Shouting Thomas, well said.
The left has been trying to destroy the middle class for a very long time. If they don’t renew the Bush tax cuts, things are going to get ugly next year. I’m just going to sit back and chow on popcorn for this showdown.
Wolla Dalbo – July 4th, 2010 at 8:46 am
“Perhaps if they knew that they could be called to account after they fled the Congress … there would be a lot less wrecking going on.”
=================
Agreed!
On another site I had suggested that “when we establish USA 2.0” we establish a method to revoke citizenship and expel such malefactors as we have working against us in Congress today.
If our current crop of legislators understood that they could be exiled to Bangladesh, they MIGHT pay a little more attention to the “oath-of-office” thing. Who knows? — maybe they’d even take the time to READ THE DANG BILLS before voting. Or maybe they still wouldn’t…. ~=sigh=~
This is a fundamental theoretical flaw in our democracy. If we ever have to implement USA 2.0, as A_Nonny_Mouse says, we need to tie voting to paying taxes.
To paraphrase that great thinker Earl Butz, “If you no playa the game, you no make-a the rules.”
It is fundamentally immoral for people to have a say in the allocation of resources to which they themselves have no contributed.
Or “not contributed,” even.
Occam’s Beard Says:
If we ever have to implement USA 2.0, as A_Nonny_Mouse says, we need to tie voting to paying taxes.
If I ask my fellow citizens to support me, it is reasonable to expect that they will not treat me as a peer. That should not imply that I forgo all my civic rights and privileges: just some of them. It also should not imply that I vote in proportion to my income; the requirement to receive a ballot should be that a voter pulls his weight in society. I would also draw a distinction between going on welfare and receiving temporary benefits like unemployment insurance (which, in principle, the recipients have paid for).
The “positive rights” cooked up by the Left–the “right” to a job, the “right to healthcare”, etc etc–do not distinguish between people who pull their weight and people who do not. The usual game: distort the language so as to delegitimize opposing views–or to completely excise them from vocabulary.
gs, I agree with you completely.
On its face, giving the recipients of charity (as distinct from unemployment benefits, which are not charity but rather mandatory insurance) a vote in how much charity they should receive is madness. If they lack character, of course they want as much as possible, and will vote accordingly.