Why IS the Economy So Bad? Part II

Two examples this week of why our economy is struggling.
First, we have this video, of Dick Blumenthal (D) who is running for the Senate in CT. See him here on how a job is created. Warning, this is painful to watch.

Next, we have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-08) telling us that food stamps and unemployment insurance are the way to get the economy growing again.

For every dollar a person receives in food stamps, $1.79 is put back into the economy…It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance. The biggest bang for the buck.

Ah, to be so blissfully satisfied with Keynesian economics. Basically this is just a restatement of the “Parable of the Broken Window”. Unfortunately, what is more accurate is the “Fallacy of the Broken Window” which you can see here.


But back to Madame Pelosi’s specific issue.
First, there’s the multiplier issue. There’s some basis for this multiplier number, but not nearly as much as Keynesians would have you believe.  And it completely ignores the subtrahend in the equation. Even if it’s true that by spending this $1 and having it thus be respent elsewhere adds $1.80 to the economy, it ignores the $1 that was taken from someone else. Actually it ignores the government overhead in taking that money and redistributing it as well. Which might end up adding up to more than the $1.80 you got from the food stamp person.
And, don’t forget, if you hadn’t taken that $1 from the other person, he could have spent it as well, creating that same $1.80 of increase to the economy. Without the subtraction of the government getting involved and passing it around.
Really, it doesn’t take much math skills to figure this out.  My 7 year old (well, she’ll be 7 at the end of the month) was able to understand this.
But, Madame Pelosi can’t. And quite obviously President Barack Obama (D-USA) can’t.
And Dick Blumenthal doesn’t understand how jobs are created. And I seriously doubt that he’s alone in this.
As I said before, the people running our economy, don’t understand economics.
Get out and vote on November 2. Call your friends. Bang on your next-door-neighbor’s door. Get them to vote. The flood needs to take out all these people.
24 days and counting.

Intraders Giving Up On Dems

You can currently buy Democrat control of the Senate after 2010 Elections at 46.6.

Intraders see the wave, and the flood that’s coming after it.

25 days.

John McCain, Savior Of The Country?

So says this post by Gregg Opelka, on Big Government.

But with the powerful patience of a nemesis, Palin persevered. She wrote her book, Going Rogue: An American Life. And once liberated from the quotidian shackles of governing a state, itinerant Palin became the de facto voice of the insurgent Tea Party. Championing candidates like Sharron Angle, Joe McConnell, Christine O’Donnell, Sean Duffy, Kelly Ayotte, Rand Paul, and a host of others, Palin put an intrepid, undaunted “Everywoman” moral face on the Tea Party, simultaneously becoming its living imprimatur. The Palin stamp of approval has proved victorious in nearly three out of four of Palin’s numerous endorsements thus far. In broadest terms the midterm election has become the battle of a very overrated Superman versus a very underrated Everywoman

[…]

And for that we have John McCain to thank. If November brings a Republican landslide, he will have lost the presidential election, but saved the country.

We Have To Pass The Bill, So That You Can Find Out What Is In It

Yes, it’s an old quote.

It’s still one of the dumbest things any sitting member of Congress has ever said. And you have to work to make it high up on that list.

Well, Speaker Pelosi (D-CA-08), you passed it. And now we’re finding out what’s in it.

What have we learned?

It’s not deficit neutral as promised.

It’s costing fortunes to businesses, which is keeping them from hiring, which is slowing the economy even further. Of course, we were told that it would help the economy.

If you’re in Texas and on Medicare, you might not be able to keep your doctor, even if you like your doctor.

Instead of increasing coverage, it’s decreasing it, as major health insurers are no longer doing children-only policies, rather than face the bill of dealing with existing conditions.

We were also promised that we’d be able to keep our existing coverage. Wrong. More wrong.

Having to fill out a tax form for any transaction over $600 is definitely not a boon to small businesses.

And now, the Secretary of DHHS, Kathleen Sebelius has started writing waivers for large corporations because they started screaming that they were going to go out of business if they had to adopt the coverage plans required by the government.

Let that last one sink in a moment.

Kathleen Sebelius has the power to decide which corporations act in accordance with Obamacare. She can let McDonald’s off the hook, but require it of Burger King if she wishes. She can let the UAW-owned GM off the hook, but require it of Ford.

Does anyone think this is a good idea? ANYONE?

This is insane.

I try to keep it clean and civil here, but the law is crap. It’s beyond crap. Anyone who actually voted for the thing should be compelled to explain how any of the above is good for America. They won’t be able to. None of it is. And most of what’s above is not surprising to the legions of people who were trying to prevent the bill from being passed. We were told that we were crazy, and that we didn’t understand the bill. That was a lie. We knew, and they knew, and they still sold us a crap sandwich.

It’s all bad, and it’s getting worse. We still don’t know all about the law, it’s direct consequences and it’s unintended side effects. But everything we find out is bad.

Madame Speaker,  you have failed your country.

Someone take the gavel away from this bitch.

26 days until we make that happen. Speaker Pelosi, the flood is coming for you.

UPDATE: Flopping Aces has one I missed, and should have mentioned as it’s already affected my wife and I. If you use a Healthcare Spending Account (HSA) to pay for OTC pharmaceuticals, you’ll need a prescription for them starting January 1. This covers everything from aspirin to vitamins to humidifiers.

And it’s bending the cost curve dramatically upwards in some places already.

ObamaCare does exactly the opposite of what it claims to do in nearly every instance.

The Westboro Baptist Church

I really didn’t want to comment on this, but it’s become evident that I should.

Although I have finally come to the conclusion that the Libertarian party is not for me, there are still quite a few areas in which we agree. One is unequivocal support for the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

For those of you who are unaware, the case of Snyder v. Phelps has arrived at the United States Supreme Court. Albert Snyder is the father of slain American soldier Matthew Snyder. And Fred Phelps Sr. is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

Phelps and his congregation, if you want to call them that, have become famous for their disruptive picketing of funerals for American soldiers, with rather disturbing signs and catcalls.

<sigh>

Fred Phelps and his group are vile and offensive. What they’re doing is just as vile and offensive.

However, I stand by what I said above. I have unequivocal support for the First Amendment. As much as I loathe them, I think it would be a mistake by the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Snyder.

Over the years, the Court has ruled to limit the First Amendment on occasion. Pornography and obscenity immediately come to mind as well as limits where speech could be harmful (i.e. the infamous yelling of “fire” in a crowded theater).

It seems to me that the only options that Court has to limit Phelps free speech are to a) determine that his group is not “assembling peaceably” or to b) say that the offensive speech is somehow obscene or equivalent to obscenity.

In the former case, it seems that the group should still be allowed to assemble, after having addressed whatever the Court deems as not peaceable. The latter case is more disturbing.

If the Court decides that “vile and offensive” speech can be limited the same way pornography and obscenity can be limited, this seems less like going down a slippery slope and more like falling off a cliff.

What if the government later decides that Rush Limbaugh’s speech is “vile and offensive”? Or Glenn Reynolds? Or yours? Or mine?

Oddly, the funerals they are picketing are for the same group of people that fought so hard to ensure that they have that right.

As Yoda said:

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

This is a very dark path.

Let me repeat myself, even more strongly. Fred Phelps and his group are among the most vile and disgusting groups of Americans it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. It pains me to support them, but free speech is a very big deal to me.

P.S. As I was writing this, J.E. Dyer made a similar post at the Green Room at HotAir. I like his solution.

But then there’s the American way.  And pay attention here:  the marvelous thing about this is that it’s what a bunch of Americans came up with because there was a problem, and demanding that the government step in and referee it for them was clearly the wrong thing to do.  Most readers probably know I’m building up to the Patriot Guard Riders, the group of motorcycle riders who volunteer to show up at military funerals – at the families’ request – and create a cordon of honor sequestering the family and the honored deceased from the WBC protesters.

I urge everyone to watch the video at this link.  There are other videos of the Patriot Guard online, but this one is by far my favorite because of the narrator and his priceless accent.  He is of a piece with the glimpse we get of the Patriot Guard: thoroughly, recognizably, inspiringly American.  Listen to his pride in what the Patriot Guard does.  Watch the Guard raise a sea of American flags to hide the protesters and encourage the family.  Watch the riders act as an escort for the funeral procession.  Look at the Guardsmen; look at the whole scene.

Remember November

27 days.

Check out the site for their other videos: www.remembernovember.com

Democrats Are The Gift That Keeps On Giving

I was going to write about Dick Bluementhal’s spectacular response on job creation today, but that will have to wait.  Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL-17) made a statement that’s just too amazing to ignore.

And we will see a terrible price that we will pay years down the road for letting our children down when they need us the absolute most.  I’m not going to be part of that, so every minute that I have here is going to be spent debunking the myth that this country’s in debt and we just can’t spend.

He’s going to return to Washington to keep fighting against the myth that this country is in debt.

Wow. That’s a relief. I’ll sleep so much easier knowing this man is in office fighting for me an my children.

 

How do people like this get into office in the first place? Can we remove him, please? Bobby Schilling is running against him.

This man needs to be a victim of the flood. 27 days.

We Can’t Afford The Tax Cuts. Really?

Read this. I’ll wait.

No, I know you probably won’t read it.

How much do the Bush tax cuts “cost” us?

Now, thinking like a government official, this means that extending the tax cuts would “cost” the government $3.7 trillion over ten years. This sounds like a lot of money, but let’s put it in perspective and look at how much the federal government will be spending over the course of the next ten years.

Federal spending for the next ten years is currently projected at almost $42 trillion dollars. Interest payments on the debt add another $4.5 trillion. Extending the tax cuts to all but the $250,000 and up group would create a shortfall in receipts of $3 trillion. Extending the tax cuts to everyone creates an additional shortfall of $700 billion.

The President says that this $700 billion would “drastically expand the deficit”. Really? How so? It’s less than a sixth of just the interest payments on the debt! And it’s not as if you’re projecting the deficits to shrink, which would increase the impact of the $700 billion. No. You’re projecting them to stay at around this $1 trillion per year level.

Mr. President. The problem isn’t that we’re not taxing enough. It’s that we’re spending too much.

See, here’s the problem in a nutshell. The government isn’t like the private sector.

In the private sector, if funds are tight, we trim the fat. We find less expensive ways to do things. We hold off on new purchases, etc. In short, we cut our budgets.

In government, particularly at the federal level, they never make cuts. Everything just grows. There’s never any incentive to make things more efficient. In fact, the opposite is true. The incentive is to spend every single penny in your budget, to make sure no one thinks that you don’t need it all.

Now, I’m not one of those budget hawks that says we need to make cuts everywhere except defense.

No, we need to make cuts everywhere.

Yes, we have the best military in the world, and yes, I want to maintain that. But, it suffers from the same inefficiencies as the rest of the federal government. We spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. I think it’s easy to argue that we’re not getting our money’s worth.

I’m not talking about cutting personnel or eliminating bases or aircraft carriers. I’m talking about doing the same things we do in the private sector. Find inefficiencies and find ways to eliminate them.

Surprisingly, I’m also not talking about drastic cuts.

Look at this chart.

Freezing spending results in a balanced budget by 2016. Allowing 2% annual growth in the federal budget still results in a balanced budget by 2020. Obviously we can’t freeze spending forever. Inflation will happen, and COLA isn’t an entirely evil thing. But we’re spending far too much now. Freezing will allow what will amount to gradual spending cuts. And government workers are overpaid, anyway, with better benefits and don’t lose their jobs during a recession.

For the video that goes with the chart, click here. It’s worth a watch.

Of course, our current President and our current Congress will never agree to such a plan. The Congress we can do something about in 28 days. And brinkmanship may be the only option with the current President. Pass a frozen budget and force him to veto it.

Then he can get on TV and explain to everyone why he shut down the government. Yes, I know Republicans tried this with Clinton, but they played it wrong and he’s a master of politics. President Barack Obama (D-USA) is a master at being a crybaby. I’m pretty sure the Republicans come out the winner in a stalemate such as this. If it can’t be done, we’ll have to reign in as much as we can and plan to fix it in 2013.

But the first part starts in 28 days. Beware the flood, Democrats. It’s coming for you. And it’s getting bigger and bigger.

Detroit Home Value

I was looking for something for my 40 days and 40 nights series, and was actually coming up empty. That is until I stumbled across this article on Reuters. The author totally misses the point, but don’t worry. I’ll extract it from his drivel.

Let’s start with this chart.

Now, this dramatic drop off in price is primarily related to foreclosures. And the author concludes that racial segregation and discrimination helped to exacerbate the problem. In other words, blacks were targeted for foreclosures at a much higher rate than non-blacks.

Rather than looking for his race card, he should be looking at his friends Barney Frank (D-MA-04) and Chris Dodd (D-CT), who were the single greatest government contributors to the housing crisis. Their laws forced lenders to lend money to people who could not afford them. They wanted this because mortgage lenders were racists, apparently. No, mortgage lenders don’t care a whit about race. They care about risk. These mortgages were very high risk. But since Frank and Dodd said that blacks couldn’t be denied housing, they got the loans.

And what happened? The increase in demand led to increases in value. Which led to increases in taxes and insurance. Since the people were already in a loan relationship they couldn’t afford, this just increased the risk of default. Then the economic collapse, which started earlier in Detroit than elsewhere. You’re already close to defaulting on your loan anyway, and then you lose your job.

Result?

Foreclosure.

Result of that?

Lowered property value. Not just yours, but your neighbors.

This spirals on until you get a graph like the one above.

Now, besides being afflicted by the laws set on us by Frank and Dodd, Detroit is one of the most reliably Democratic cities in the country.

Let’s look at that picture again.

Did I mention that Detroit is one of the most reliably Democratic cities in the country?

Draw your own conclusion.

But do it in the next 29 days. Or you’ll get hit by the flood.

The Space Race

Today in 1957, the Space Race officially began. The USSR launched Sputnik, and the world would never be the same.

Jobs Creation Rant Of The Day

I’ll just link to this and not quote from it. This is a family blog after all. Despite using rather, err, colorful language, the overall point is well made.

My only additional comment is that I’m not sure I have a problem with the government assisting people in finding new jobs, via training, etc., especially if it’s done on a local level. The whole “teach a man to fish” vs. “give a man a fish” thing.

Hat Tip: Doug Powers @ Michelle Malkin

Wow. Just, wow.

8/28 vs. 10/2 in pictures.

Remember 8/28 was a true grass roots moment. People took off work to come on their own. They paid their own way and took time out of their lives.

10/2 was organized by unions, and in some cases, people were forced to go. The unions bussed everyone there they could get. We call this “astroturf”.

I’m sure someone will attempt to make the claim that more people were there on 10/2 than 8/28.

Your response should be “LOL!”

Personal Responsibility vs. Public Responsibility

Conservatives believe in the individual. They believe in personal responsibility.

Liberals believe in government. They believe in public responsibility. They engage in doublethink every day of their lives. They honestly believe that a strong government allows more individual freedoms while the opposite is unequivocally true.

What does that all mean for America? Take a look at the video below and you’ll see.

 

If liberals can’t even clean up after themselves (that’s a public responsibility), how can they possibly clean up government? They can’t. They don’t take any personal responsibility.

You see this every day when the left has a new boogeyman. Let’s go through the list of some of the evils that liberals remind us of every day.

• George W. Bush
• Sarah Palin
• Rush Limbaugh
• Glenn Beck
• Fox News
• Republicans
• The Koch Brothers
• John Boehner
• The Cambridge Police

With liberals, it’s never “their fault”. The stimulus has utterly failed. Democrats have controlled Congress for four years. They’ve had super majorities in Congress and the White House for two years. And it’s still the fault of the Republicans and President George W. Bush (R-USA) that we’re in this economic state.

It’s never the fault of Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) or Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA-04) who denied for years that there were any issues with Frannie and Freddie, and who in fact consistently tried to make the impending mortgage crisis worse.

There’s plenty of corruption in the Republican Party, but never the Democrat. Attacks on Charles Rangel (D-NY-15) are racist, as are those against Maxine Waters(D-CA-35).

The video above shows clearly the differences between liberals and conservatives. If you take the time, you can see the differences in the other things that I mentioned, but this is clearly a case where a picture paints a thousand words.

Guess what, liberals? It’s not always “the other guy’s fault”, or “the other guy’s problem”. If you want to fix things, you have to take responsibility for your actions. You have to take responsibility for your party.

As the Republicans have learned via the Tea Party, sometimes this means cleaning your own house first.

We’ve made a good start on cleaning our house. Democrats, you’re on notice. In 30 days, we’re going to clean up yours.

The flood is coming.