366 days until we the people speak with votes

[BodybyFisher]

In conclusion: we have a guy trying to fix the problem, of course he wont be able too for the system wont let him, it will just have to run its coarse its the way of human life. Try not to hate your President of the United States to much he has been handed a large plate and after all he does represent to the rest of the world the best in all of us.Mike

I vehemently disagree with the statement that we have a GUY trying to fix the problem, he is trying to collapse the US and instill his TRICKLE UP economy. I said it before his election, he will be the most dangerous president ever to be elected in the history of this country and he MUST be stopped NOW.

Research Solyndra, research Gulf Oil Rigs, research Keystone Pipeline to see how Obama is killing energy in this country, Why isnt the KEYSTONE PIPELINE a NO BRAINER for him?

I was with a relative who works for the POST OFFICE and he said he WANTS FUEL to go to $10 a gallon so we are MOTIVATED to produce alternative energy, funny so does Obama....see this

http://www.americant...for_10_gas.html

See this

Obamas policies are gutting the middle class!

http://pjmedia.com/b...e-middle-class/

See this

5 ways Obama is dividing us as a country

http://guerillatics.com/?p=16838

This man is DANGEROUS, is NOT trying to FIX anything and he needs to go NOW before he screws anything else up.

[GTOken]

I don't understand what you republicans are whining about the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer isn't that what you want?Mike

No kidding.. doesn't that just really suck? I like the current administrations plan to make EVERYBODY poor. Spread the wealth, but only spread the debt on some.

So you think that making everyone poor is ok? ....... (snipped the rest)

I must apologize, I thought my remark dripped with sarcasm.

As for this,

"a guy trying to fix the problem, of course he wont be able too for the system wont let him,"

He *is* trying to fix a problem, its just that the problem as he sees it is not what the majority of the country sees. Thank goodness for our system or we would really be in deep do-do.

"Try not to hate your President of the United States to much he has been handed a large plate and after all he does represent to the rest of the world the best in all of us."

I don't hate him, I just disagree with his view of this country. And the statute of limitations has run out on blaming others, this is all his doing now. Its way worse now than when he took over and he has caused all of it. And I for one dont think he represents this country well at all.

[BodybyFisher]

Thanks for clarifying your sarcasm, , I thought your comment was out of place given your earlier comment in this thread,

[mike5514]

Thanks BBF and GTO it is refreshing that we can discuss this. Maybe we can look at this one issue at a time.Mike

[mike5514]

BBF you shouted out Mrs Obama imploring kids to be engineers/teachers etc and not hedge fund managers funny I just saw the movie Margin Call it was about wall street traders and the large amount of money they made. They were in trouble with sub prime mortgages and one of them said you know I was a engineer I built a bridge once, the bridge saved commuters 20 miles one way of their commute millions of gallons of gas was saved over a years time because of that bridge. Of course it wasn't said exactly that way but point is made he actually created something that did good. But people will go were the money is there will always be hedge fund managers they may be called something else but they will be there.

The boss of exxon or BP said 30 to 40% of the price of gas at the pump is because of wall street speculation. That mean that when we buy gas 30 to 40% go to some one else living large. But that's OK the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer I don't like it but that is the system.

Taxes. I think jim said poor don't pay taxes don't quote me. "Everyone pays taxes" there is Sales tax gasoline taxes house taxes car taxes my 8th grade teacher said there was 17 hidden taxes in a loaf of bread I still don't believe her. Its known that general electric did not pay taxes but they have hidden taxes in goods and raw material they own buildings etc. Yes they GE and the poor don't pay federal income taxes but they do pay taxes. Maybe some of the homeless don't pay taxes if they get their food from a soup kitchen and clothes from charity. And not to worry they wont be able to vote (No address)

True Obama is trying to get some regulations to avoid another collapse. But it will never happen (never) the rich and powerful will never let it happen they live on chaos and they are much more powerful than your President

So not to worry as soon as the dust settles we will be back to normal.Mike

[WarrenJ]

So not to worry as soon as the dust settles we will be back to normal.Mike

Pretty much all of the developed western countries are in the same boat as is the U.S. We have no hope of paying our debts back with sound money. If the U.S. government's tax revenues were to double, we'd still be in deficit. Now THAT is scary!

I don't know what the future holds, but a "return to normal" is not something I'd wager on. I don't think this can will be able to be kicked much further down the road.

Regards,

Warren

[BodybyFisher]

BBF you shouted out Mrs Obama imploring kids to be engineers/teachers etc and not hedge fund managers funny I just saw the movie Margin Call it was about wall street traders and the large amount of money they made. They were in trouble with sub prime mortgages and one of them said you know I was a engineer I built a bridge once, the bridge saved commuters 20 miles one way of their commute millions of gallons of gas was saved over a years time because of that bridge. Of course it wasn't said exactly that way but point is made he actually created something that did good. But people will go were the money is there will always be hedge fund managers they may be called something else but they will be there.

The boss of exxon or BP said 30 to 40% of the price of gas at the pump is because of wall street speculation. That mean that when we buy gas 30 to 40% go to some one else living large. But that's OK the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer I don't like it but that is the system.

Taxes. I think jim said poor don't pay taxes don't quote me. "Everyone pays taxes" there is Sales tax gasoline taxes house taxes car taxes my 8th grade teacher said there was 17 hidden taxes in a loaf of bread I still don't believe her. Its known that general electric did not pay taxes but they have hidden taxes in goods and raw material they own buildings etc. Yes they GE and the poor don't pay federal income taxes but they do pay taxes. Maybe some of the homeless don't pay taxes if they get their food from a soup kitchen and clothes from charity. And not to worry they wont be able to vote (No address)

True Obama is trying to get some regulations to avoid another collapse. But it will never happen (never) the rich and powerful will never let it happen they live on chaos and they are much more powerful than your President

So not to worry as soon as the dust settles we will be back to normal.Mike

I won't even attempt to respond to this, you are SO misguided.

Is this the mike that lived in Kansas and moved to lived in South Carolina or North Carolina? Did you have an older Caddy with a P0741 code?

[BodybyFisher]

Explain your GE comment, they did not pay taxes last year. They GE are in bed with Obama. They GE own LOTS of the MSM

See this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_General_Electric

GE is complicit in this GREEN ENERGY mess and a SERIOUS danger

[mike5514]

Warren I dont know about being unable to repay our debt we know we can balance the budget it was balanced in clintons last year but I think that this country has always had a national debt. The GDP is usually measured by percent of GDP these numbers are not correct but right now it is (guessing 22% and normal is 17%) when you look at this figure 4,5,or6% above normal. it does not look so bad. does anyone know the correct figures?

Now just who do we own this money too? We owe almost half of it to us! we owe it to social security,medicare,savings bonds, general fund etc.

Outgo is 30% defense and 19% interest, the 30 year bond is around 3% and 10 year notes are around 1% a plus is that we will be paying this back with cheaper dollars. I was told once if you can get money for under 5% grab it. Right now social security has 2.5 trillion dollars in the (bank).

Before the crash in 08 I did not have any debt but now my debt to income ratio is 24.3% just like the GDP ratio will I be able to pay back my debt absolutely barring sickness in 3 years my debt should be down to 0.(I have not included my house payment in these figures.

AS the wars wind down I expect our national debt to decrease and as the gdp increases the % of debt to GDP will decrease. No more wars.

Warren I think your double revenue analogy is wrong but if you do increase revenue and build things putting people back to work the GDP will increase also. You can not make money without investing money.

BBF im not from Kansas or the Carolinas and have never had a PO 741 transmission code and I dont feel misguided.

Our president is in bed with everyone! I can only assume he has our best interest foremost in his heart. And yes GE did not pay any Federal Income Tax last year.

Green energy I believe is one of the major issues of the day like every fledgling industry it will have its ups and downs there are a lot of auto and computer company's that have failed over the years but today they are the engines of our society.

Most of our oil comes from canada the pipe line will bring more oil from canada and will cross areas of the US over aquifers of water that are vital to 5 states.

Green energy is a must and the president should work with companies to bring it to maturity.

I have no idea why a poor man would worry about a rich mans taxes. Mike

[Texas Jim]

Warren I dont know about being unable to repay our debt we know we can balance the budget it was balanced in clintons last year but I think that this country has always had a national debt. The GDP is usually measured by percent of GDP these numbers are not correct but right now it is (guessing 22% and normal is 17%) when you look at this figure 4,5,or6% above normal. it does not look so bad. does anyone know the correct figures?

Now just who do we own this money too? We owe almost half of it to us! we owe it to social security,medicare,savings bonds, general fund etc.

Outgo is 30% defense and 19% interest, the 30 year bond is around 3% and 10 year notes are around 1% a plus is that we will be paying this back with cheaper dollars. I was told once if you can get money for under 5% grab it. Right now social security has 2.5 trillion dollars in the (bank).

Before the crash in 08 I did not have any debt but now my debt to income ratio is 24.3% just like the GDP ratio will I be able to pay back my debt absolutely barring sickness in 3 years my debt should be down to 0.(I have not included my house payment in these figures.

AS the wars wind down I expect our national debt to decrease and as the gdp increases the % of debt to GDP will decrease. No more wars.

Warren I think your double revenue analogy is wrong but if you do increase revenue and build things putting people back to work the GDP will increase also. You can not make money without investing money.

BBF im not from Kansas or the Carolinas and have never had a PO 741 transmission code and I dont feel misguided.

Our president is in bed with everyone! I can only assume he has our best interest foremost in his heart. And yes GE did not pay any Federal Income Tax last year.

Green energy I believe is one of the major issues of the day like every fledgling industry it will have its ups and downs there are a lot of auto and computer company's that have failed over the years but today they are the engines of our society.

Most of our oil comes from canada the pipe line will bring more oil from canada and will cross areas of the US over aquifers of water that are vital to 5 states.

Green energy is a must and the president should work with companies to bring it to maturity.

I have no idea why a poor man would worry about a rich mans taxes. Mike

There is SO MUCH of that post that I so totally disagree with, that I don't even know where to start...

Reckon I will just keep quite...don't want to start a fight... :angry2:

[mike5514]

Jim please don't get angry just take one issue you disagree with and post a reply.Mike

[Cadillac Jim]

The national debt has exploded beyond all reason since Obama came in. It's at the highest levels relative to GDP since the depths of WW II. The Congressional Office of Management and Budget projects the Obamacare costs alone to exceed $1T in a decade or so and to bring down the Republic in a few decades. Etc. etc. etc. Look it up before BBF does.

[mike5514]

Jims 97 you are right the highest debt to gdp ratio since WW 2 that is a stark reminder that wars are very expensive in terms of money and the more important loss of lives. Wars should be paid up front all cost accounted for before you send a army to invade another country but I guess that is not reasonable.

It is harder yet to pay for a war with borrowed money and its much harder to pay for 2 wars with borrowed money it is even harder if you cut taxes.

And it is extremely hard to pay for a bank and wall street bail out plus the 2 wars after cutting taxes using borrowed money. The real hard part is paying this back with borrowed money when you are in a severe recession.

These events were done by the previous administration Bush and Paulson designed the bail out program and the democrats went along and voted for it.

Now we the people including the present administration are left with these IOUs and I agree they must be paid the question is how? the dems want the rich to pay for it the repubs want the poor and middle class to pay for it. I will gladly help pay for it, my wife and I will send to a debt collection fund 200 bucks a piece and Im sure warren buffet and some of his rich friends will help also.

A little about me I was a registered repub. most of my voting life I even voted for reagan twice. After reagan I change my registration to dem. After seeing all the hate grow over the past 20 years I became a independent. I can tell you now if the hate keeps growing it will divide us and do irreparable harm to our country. My annual income is roughly 32676 The last year I paid income tax was 2009 because I had to use my IRA to pay my bills.

You say this is the highest debt to GDP ratio since WW 2 well we survived that but only because we were together then if we don't come together now the rich and powerful along with the military industrial complex (Eisenhower warn us about) will take over this country. We have to collect more revenue put people back to work building bridges. We cannot continue to lay off teachers, firefighters and police.Mike

[GTOken]

The reason our economy tanked is solely due to the collapse housing market (bubble). That whole mess can be laid at the feet of Dodd and Frank (and the dems). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That is *the* root of our economic situation. You can try blame the recession on the cost of the wars but its a drop in the bucket. We don't need any more government bridge building projects. We need government to get rid of overly far reaching regulation that do little and cost businesses who know how much. Out government is making it so difficult and expensive for a company to set up shop here they are simply moving out of the country. Its as simple as that. We have too much government. You want to try and punish people that have been successful? Go ahead and try. They are not tied to staying here. If you run them all out of the country what will be left? A bunch of poor whiners left begging the government for more hand-outs.

[mike5514]

I'm of the opinion the housing crises came about when (because of deregulation) banks and brokerage companies were allowed to merge their investments into mortgages, bundling them and trading among their clients and each other creating artificial markets causing home vales to inflate past their normal parameters along with banks giving loans to people that cant afford them telling them they will be able to get fixed income loans at lower rate when their adjustable mortgage payment is due to double and triple. If the banks would give these home owners the 3 to 4% mortgage payments of to day most would be able to stay in their homes. This lack of compassion plus the loss of jobs doomed a lot of home owners.

Dodd a Repub. and Frank a Dem. sponsored the bill after the mortgage crises to curb the wall street influence into the home mortgage industry and our everyday life. The stock market is a wild and scary ride.

Fan and Fred became the patsy in this mess. Fan and Fred's sole responsibility is to insure a viable housing market by accepting loans the banks don't want.

I refinanced my mortgage to 5% in 2010 and the bank within one month sold my note to Fanni Mae. Kept my fees and when on to loan the money they got from fran to someone else.

A republican gingrinch made millions as a "historical adviser" to Fan and Fred. Its not correct to blame the Dems for that mess.

"the cost of the wars but its a drop in the bucket" What in the heck ever gave you that idea? History has proven that the cost of war is ghastly both in money and the hard ship of its people.

Why are foreign companies building plants in the US like Toyoto, MB., KIA etc if the business climate is bad here. Our companies are sitting on 2 trillion cash and thousands are doing extremely well making record profits.

My advice is don't let the political sound bites you see on TV form your judgement. These people have a agenda and it may not be a good one.Mike

[BodybyFisher]

Lets discuss TALKING POINTS, that the LEFT has formed and shoved down our collective throats during the year, with a complicit media. After all the media is liberal and THESE misconceptions are disseminated to the masses. Unfortunately, neither the media or our affirmative action leader like facts. Proper references are given at that end.

December 31, 2011

Leftist Talking Points of 2011

By Matt Palumbo

Talking points of the left conjured up this year have been about as numerous as they have been wrong. Many of these talking points previously existed, but never before have they been used with such frequency, and never before have they received so much media attention.

First off, who better to call for higher taxes than a billionaire himself? Warren Buffett's claim that he was paying a lower tax rate than his secretary helped the left build a case for higher taxes. After all, even if the average person previously did not want taxes on anyone raised, Americans certainly do not want to be paying a higher rate than a billionaire is. Then came the analysis. As the center-left Brookings Institute showed, of the 237,000 millionaires filing taxes in 2009, only around 1,000 paid a smaller percentage in taxes than their secretaries (or a person earning the same salary as the average secretary). As it would later turn out, these people are the only ones on Buffett's radar. In a CNBC appearance, Buffett clarified his position, saying:

[M]y program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low - not just high incomes, not just some guy making $50 million playing baseball, his taxes won't change. Make $50 million appearing on TV, his income won't change. But if they make a lot of money and they pay a very low tax rate, like me, it would be changed by a minimum tax that would only bring them up to what the other people pay.

Buffett then estimated that his plan would apply to only around 50,000 people, but as the Brookings Institute estimate showed, Buffett is far-off in his estimation.

Whether or not Buffett is even part of those thousand people is an issue that should be raised. As the largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway, the 35% of BH customers' money paid in corporate taxes means 35% less income for Buffett. It is after that money gets taxed that Buffett pays an additional 15% dividends tax, the tax he complains is too low because it amounts to a smaller percent than the one his secretary pays. If Berkshire Hathaway were to generate one million dollars in revenues to pay out to Buffett, the million would be reduced to $650,000 after corporate taxes are paid, and then further reduced to $552,500 after the dividends tax is paid. Technically speaking, the two taxes combined result in about 45% of Buffett's potential income going away to the government. There is one flaw in this analysis, however: Berkshire Hathaway owes over one billion dollars in unpaid taxes dating all the way back to 2002. So this analysis works under the assumption that Buffett pays taxes in the first place.

The pay gap between CEOs and the average worker has also become a talking point. This gap is around 185 to 1, but it has been as high at 298:1 in the '90s and 277:1 in the mid-2000s. The leftist blog Daily Kos tried to claim that the gap was as high as 475:1, but that is just laughable.

There are two other pay gaps that no one directs attention to. These involve celebrities, and our friend Warren Buffett. As the University of Michigan economist Mark Perry has noted, the top 100 celebrities earn on average three times as much as did the CEOs of 386 companies in S&P 500. Oprah earns three and a half times more than the highest-paid CEO does, but we have yet to see anyone accuse Oprah of being a testament to greed. Celebrities work fewer hours than CEOs, so comparing their hourly pay would result in an even bigger gap.

Since Buffett has been misused by the left as a champion for higher taxes, I thought it would be interesting to find the pay gap between Warren Buffett and his secretary. As I blogged earlier, their income difference amounts to a pay gap of 1,048 to 1, far larger than the average CEO-to-worker pay gap -- and the recipient of zero media attention.

Since the rise of the Tea Party brought the issue of excessive taxation to the table, what better way to argue for higher taxes than claim that taxes are already at all-time lows? If we focus our attention on the top marginal tax rate since the '50s, this argument does seem valid. No one would question that the top rate was over 90% in the '50s but is below 40% today. It must be noted, however, that those making $250,000 a year today would be making around $26,600 in 1950 dollars, which would not put them in the top tax bracket at that time.

What is crucial here is not what the tax rate itself is, but what percentage of income that person or household is paying after deductions are accounted for. After accounting for various factors; such as the fact that most households today have two working spouses (quite different from the '50s), that the social security tax burden has increased heavily over the years, and that there have been changes in deductions, the picture changes. Peter Schiff calculated that a house making $250,000 pays 40% of its income in federal income taxes, while that household's counterpart in the '50s paid only 22%. Even the lower brackets are paying more. The lowest tax rate for married couples in 1950 amounted to $38,321 today, while now, the lowest bracket is $17,000 -- a $21,321 increase in income subject to taxation. Both the effective tax rate at median income and taxes as a percentage of personal income are higher today than they were in the '50s.

The rich have always been scapegoats, but with the onset of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), the focus has been specifically on the 1%. Although it is true that income inequality in America is high relative to other nations, the OWS protesters picked the wrong time to complain. Since 2007, there has been a 39% decline in the number of American millionaires, and the top 1%'s share of all income has declined four percentage points since 2008. The portrayal of the top 1% being composed of corporate bankers by the OWS crowd is contradicted by the actual statistic, where only 14% of the top 1% is involved in banking or finance of some kind. To break down the 1% by profession, around 1/3 are entrepreneurs or managers of a nonfinancial business, 16% are doctors, 8% are lawyers, and 6.6% are engineers, scientists, or computer professionals.

One key aspect of the top 1% is that they tend to be older, and thus in their peak earning years. It needs to be kept in mind that the 1% is just a statistical category, and looks quite different when the individuals within it are examined. Far from being their own distinct classes, income categories are things that people move into and out of all the time. If a snapshot was taken of individuals in the top 1% in 1996, we would see people whose income declined 26% by 2005. This happens despite the 1% category having an increase in its share of national income during that very same time period. Individuals and categories are not the same.

It is good news that many of these talking points were recycled and revamped from previous ones, thus requiring much less effort to refute. As it seems, jobs are not the only thing the left is trying to "save or create."

Matt can be emailed at mpalumbo12@live.com or reached through Facebook at facebook.com/matthewdpalumbo.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/12/leftist_talking_points_of_2011.html at December 31, 2011 - 10:41:47 AM CST

[BodybyFisher]

In 1995 I was working in a MAJOR NY COMMERCIAL BANK, and I sat next to the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) officer who was being grilled by an ACORN like group. The question was asked of the officer, Why did this Black mans loan get rejected, when this white mans loan get approved. The officer asked for the folders and said, the black mans credit was bad and he did not have sufficient income to support the loan and the white mans credit and income supported the loan. She went on to say that we do NOT discriminate due to race, creed, sex or religion and all loans are judged against our lending guidelines.

What happened was, the democratic led congress FORCED, extorted and threatened banks to LOWER their lending guidelines to approve loans and FNMA and FHLMC digested those loans. DODD and FRANK were 100 percent behind this and continually stated that FNMA and FHLMC were healthy when they were NOT.

I was a residential lending officer from 1976 through 1979 for an S&L and we had a less than 2 percent loan failure rate because we STUCK to prudent lending guidelines!

See how OBAMAS and DEMOCRAT policies are hurting the middle class.

Obama’s Policies Are Gutting the Middle Class

Posted By Tom Blumer On December 16, 2011 @ 12:05 am In Culture Bytes,economy,Money,US News | 91 Comments

It was more than a little disconcerting to watch President Barack Obama pretend to be a friend of the middle class in Kansas on December 6 ^[1], and to watch the press lap it up as if it was the gospel truth. The record shows that Obama’s and his party’s policies, plans, and proposals have done more harm to the middle class than any administration in my lifetime.

One of Obama’s core claims is that the policies of the past, coming from largely Republican administrations espousing and carrying out conservative ideas, are what brought the economy to the brink, and that those ideas and policies must never again be considered.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that those ideas and policies were often not conservative enough, Obama’s historical revisionism is about as brazenly dishonest as it gets. After all:

• I don’t recall the Community Reinvestment Act, which over several decades morphed into a sledgehammer forcing banks to act against their own interests or face endless litigation at the hands of ACORN-like groups, being a Republican or conservative policy.
• I don’t recall current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s determination to make mortgage financing available based on ethnicity instead of ability and willingness to pay when he ran the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton something that Republicans or conservatives cheered.
• Finally, I don’t recall the systematic undermining of the market for mortgage-backed securities undertaken by Democratic Party cronies who ran the frauds by design ^[2] known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having Republican or conservative approval. While it’s true that Fan and Fred had some RINO defenders, none of them — and for that matter almost no one else in the country besides Democratic insiders — knew that for fifteen years ^[3], Fan and Fred “routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring,” presenting them as being of higher quality than they really were. As a result, mortgage-backed securities holders unknowingly bought hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of junk.

The housing and mortgage lending messes, which were almost entirely the creation of Democratic Party policies and Democrat apparatchiks’ backroom scheming, are what brought the economy down. It certainly wasn’t the straw-man, “on your own” mindset Obama chose to demonize in his speech.

The principal economic policy features of the quarter-century stretch Obama wants to send down the memory hole were tax cuts (with booming tax receipts, which the smarties ^[4] said would never happen) and at least some regulatory restraint (but really not enough). The president claimed that this set of policies “doesn’t work. It has never worked.”

Horse manure. Until things came to a head in housing, as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out on December 7 ^[5]:

The U.S. economy grew at an average pace of 3.3 percent from 1983-2007, inflation … was slayed, and the stock market rose by 1,400 percent. Median middle-class incomes rose by roughly 50 percent. Reaganomics worked. But Obama acts as if that generation of steady growth … never happened since it doesn’t fit into his disingenuous narrative.

Once we were in the mess, the policies the newly-elected Obama chose to get us out were the ones which so obviously failed to get us out of serious difficulty in the past — which leaves Obama’s seriousness about wanting to get us out open to question. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s statist “solutions” for the Depression never brought unemployment below 12% ^[6] during the 1930s. Similarly, three years of round after round of Keynesian stimulus, Keynesian money-printing, and unprecedented Keynesian deficits, combined with previously unseen regulatory excesses, have left the private sector’s output smaller than it was almost four years ago. We still have supposedly grown men and women on the left who continue to claim, during the worst recovery since World War II, that the best form of economic stimulus is continuing to give money to those who aren’t working.

We’ve had a chance to see what the policies Obama said would work will continue to bring us if sustained. It has not been pretty, especially when compared to the analogous Reagan-era time period:

• In the 29 months since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has added a bit less than 2 million seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs. Federal government employment is virtually unchanged despite substantial job losses at the postal service, while previously bloated state and local governments have shed over 550,000 jobs. During the first 29 months after the last full quarter of the Reagan-era recession when the workforce was about 25% smaller, what “doesn’t work” brought us over 7.3 million additional jobs, including more than 400,000 in the public sector.
• During the nine quarters after the most recent recession ended, the economy has grown by 5.5%. During the analogous nine quarters under Reagan, what “has never worked” caused the economy to grow by 14%, a full 2-1/2 times faster.
• The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate since the most recent recession ended has gone from 9.5% to 8.6% — and November’s reading ^[7] had many disturbing “going Galt” elements ^[8] underlying it. The comparable drop during the Reagan era? From 10.1% to 7.2%, over three times greater.
• The economy’s cadre of temporary, seasonal, and part-time workers continues to swell. Incredibly, the economy had only 417,000 more full-time workers ^[9] in November than it did at the end of the recession. The comparable Reagan-era period saw 6.9 million full-timers added. Employers are avoiding and will continue to avoid adding full-time help as long as they can until they see whether the malaise known as Obamanomics will get another four-year run, and whether the monstrosity known as ObamaCare survives court challenges.

Slow growth, out-of-control regulation, and chronic uncertainty have caused millions of the unemployed to stay that way, making them even more unemployable with each passing day. Millions of others are seeing their skills underutilized. Team Obama’s gutting of the middle class thus far has been quite effective. Give ‘em four more years, and they might just finish the job, all the while pretending to be the average American’s best friend.

(Thumbnail on PJM homepage based on a modified Shutterstock.com ^[10] image.)

Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-policies-are-gutting-the-middle-class/

URLs in this post:[1] in Kansas on December 6: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/06/remarks-president-economy-osawatomie-kansas

[2] the frauds by design: http://www.bizzyblog.com/2010/01/10/fan-and-fred-fundamental-frauds-by-design/

[3] for fifteen years: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703278604574624681873427574.html?mod=rss_Today

[4] the smarties: http://www.bizzyblog.com/2010/03/08/ruining-a-country-for-smarties/

[5] on December 7: http://blog.american.com/2011/12/why-obama-needs-to-make-reaganomics-disappear/

[6] never brought unemployment below 12%: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.html

[7] November’s reading: http://www.bizzyblog.com/2011/12/02/the-november-employment-situation-summary-1202011/

[8] “going Galt” elements: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/key-charts-nfp-report-records-jobless-duration-and-people-who-want-job-civilian-labor-force-plu

[9] had only 417,000 more full-time workers: http://www.bizzyblog.com/wp-images/FullTimeWorkersThru1111.jpg

[10] Shutterstock.com: http://www.shutterstock.com/

[BodybyFisher]

Jim alluded to this above, and this article showed up today

Happy end of 2011--the US had a debt of $15,222,940,045,451.09 at the close of Friday, December 30! President Barack Obama (D) inherited the debt from...President Barack Obama (D); on December 31, 2010 the country's debt was $14,025,215,218,708.52, an increase of over a trillion dollars and lots of change in just one year. When Obama took over from President George W. Bush ® on January 20, 2009 the national debt was $9,188,640,287,930.39, it has zoomed up over $6 trillion in just four years. But good news--under the skill of the vacationing President Obama, the debt did not increase on the first business day of 2012, Tuesday, January 3 from the last business day of 2011. Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge comments on a historic event.

US debt to

GDP

is now officially over 100%, or 100.3% to be specific, a fact which the US government decided to delay exposing until the very end of the calendar year.

So much for "the most transparent administration in history." If the country owes more than its GDP, if debt increases who will pay it? How? Well kiddies who fell for hope and change, there is your hope, how is that for a change? Four more years?

Page Printed from: http://www.americant...toric_debt.html at January 04, 2012 - 09:08:42 AM CST

[BodybyFisher]

Obama’s Political Blitzkrieg

Posted By Roger Kimball On December 31, 2011 @ 7:11 am In Uncategorized | 60 Comments

The thing you have to admire about the Obama administration is its ability to fight furiously on several fronts at once. The economy. Individual liberty. The rule of law. National security. In his pursuit of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (as he promised ^[1] his followers in October 2008), Barack Obama has managed to undermine them all. It’s been an impressive, if also a depressing, performance.

Just a few reminders: On the hustings,

^[2] for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over the course of eight years. That was, I readily acknowledge, profligate behavior. But Obama has vastly outstripped George Bush, adding more than $6 trillion to the national debt in just under 3 years. $4 trillion, $6 trillion: if only there were some means of making it as gargantuan a task to write or read those words as it is to comprehend what such numbers portend. There is no way, so I hesitate to remind you that Obama is set to ask for another $1.2 trillion in spending money. When that happens, the federal debt will clock in at more than $16 trillion. Thanks for the hope, Barack!

What else has Obama accomplished on the economic front? There are big things like soaring unemployment — the administration admits to something approaching 9 percent; really it is 11 percent ^[3] — and S&P’s downgrade of U.S. credit, the first in history. And don’t forget “the staggering decline ^[4]” of household wealth in the U.S. In the third quarter of 2011 alone, total U.S. household wealth declined by 4.1 percent: that’s $2.2 trillion in three months. Look at the value of your house and your retirement funds: you’ll see what I mean. Thanks for the change, Barack! Then there are the myriad ham-handed initiatives like the government takeover of GM and its subsidizing a movable electrical machine to toast marshmallows ^[5]. There is his energy policy, which, as the Washington Post put it, is “infused with politics at every level ^[6]” (h/t Powerline ^[7]). Under Obama, the effect of the

^[8] is not to safeguard the environment but to make it more difficult and more expensive to create or conduct business in the United States.

Then there is the rule of law. Start at the top, with Attorney General Eric Holder, whom Charles Krauthammer ^[9] called “one of the worst attorneys general in U.S. history.” Voter intimidation by the Black Panthers? You must be racist ^[10]. “Fast and Furious,” a clandestine program that funneled scores of weapons to Mexican drug thugs, one of which was used to kill Brian Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol agent (to say nothing of the hundreds of Mexicans killed with the guns)? AG Holder said he didn’t know about it, but ABC reported ^[11] that he was briefed on the program in July 2010.

The list goes on. But let’s leave the domestic side of things to one side and consider the issue of national security. There are a host of issues there, too, from the gutting of military budgets on down. (Don’t miss Patrick Poole’s “Obama’s National Security ‘Not Top 10′ of 2011 ^[12].”) But this week’s most sensational news concerns one Yusuf al-Qaradawi ^[13], a Doha-based jihadist. On December 29, The Hindu ^[14] reported that the Obama administration had turned to al-Qaradawi to help broker a deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Some data points:

* In 2003, Qaradawi issued a fatwa calling for and applauding the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

* He gleefully predicts that Islam will “conquer” Europe and America.

* He extols the terrorist activities of Hamas as “martyrdom operations.”

* He eagerly abets hatred of Jews and the state of Israel (“Oh Allah,” he preached in 2009, “take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers and kill them, down to the very last one”).

So why is the Obama administration turning to this man to negotiate with the Taliban? (Why are we “negotiating” with the Taliban at all?) Is it more “smart diplomacy”? The Hindu opines that the deal, which reportedly provides for the release of terrorists in Gitmo, lifting of UN sanctions on its leadership, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political group, is an effort to give the U.S. “a face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan which is due to begin in 2014.”

This story has not been corroborated by the Obama administration; neither have they denied it. If true, it would be a stunning act — one in a series — of capitulation to the forces of radical Islam. And that is doubtless why The New York Times devoted a long front page story to the report, detailing Qaradawi’s hate-filled pronouncements and providing a history of his efforts to advance the cause of Sharia law. If the report is accurate, noted the Times, “It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.”

WAIT! Sorry, that wasn’t The New York Times. Somehow, our former paper of record hasn’t got around to this story yet. Leave aside the front page: there’s nary a mention of it by the Gray Lady. No, the analysis I quoted comes from Andy McCarthy at NRO ^[15], who begins by somberly observing that “the surrender is now complete” and ends with that sentence about “one of the most shameful chapters in American history.”

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. . . . In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

Depressing, isn’t it?

Article printed from Roger’s Rules: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/12/31/obamas-political-blitzkrieg/

[mike5514]

BBF Im completely overwhelmed by all your facts Im only a high school grad and I can not begin to research all of your facts so I will pick one.

Taken from a FOX NEWS article OCT 07,2011

Deficit proj. for 2011. 1.3 trillion down from record high in 2009 of 1.4 trillion (bail outs, stimulus, auto loans)

revenue individual taxes 1.1 trillion up 22%

corp tax (did not say) down 6% (notice corp taxes went down and fox wont say how much they were)

deficit compared to size of economy 8.6% of the GDP (I have heard higher/lower figures) but these are from FOX

unemployment down 24% (they say by dropping off the unemployment rolls) some do get jobs some of them are 2 earner family's survive with one job and some live on the under the table pay they do not report.

From the CBO

interest payments as a percent of GDP 6.5%in 2011 and 4.1 in 2012. scheduled to go down each year to 2020. (final year projected 2020) (I think this is the GOV. Buying the high yield 10 year notes and selling the lower yield notes.

These are the most facts I can gather in one day (I already have a head ache)

don't go deep in the forest studying real and fake trees its confusing enough to just step back and look at the forest. Keep it simple!Mike

[BodybyFisher]

Please provide a link to that article so I can look it over. I have no idea what FOX is talking about, that is contrary to everything I have heard and read. thanks.

By the way, I know the data is overwhelming, it IS overwhelming, that is why we need to send sharp people to Washington.

[Cadillac Jim]

Obamacare-driven debt has already begun ramping up, and in a few years will equal all other debt increases together, but continue to increase linearly until the currency fails. The Obamacare law gamed the OMB and CBO accounting processes by avoiding all costs for the first ten years, thus producing a misleading figure for debate in passing it.

The simple fact is that the Obama/Pelosi spending has threatened the Republic and their in-place Obamacare is sufficient to bring down the United States in time, unlesss Obamacare itself falls of its own weight. For example, the 36 million uninsured out there that now get their health care for free at hospital emergency rooms will be put into the same system that you and I, with our HMO and other coverages, but there is no plan to increase the number of doctors and the infrastructure to support that, and this is not addressed in the OMB/CBO analyses. Nor is the flight of doctors from the profession, which has already begun.

[GTOken]

Starting January 1, I will see a 20% increase in my healthcare cost strictly due to Obamacare. <bastard>

[mike5514]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/07/deficit-hits-13-trillion-for-2011-budget-office-says/

BBf I tried to copy link but I don't know how. If you will notice individual revenue up 1.1 trillion up 22% To me that seems to be mostly from job increase.

You will also notice that corp taxes are going down by 6%. To me that leaves credence to the fact that some are not paying their fair share.

http://forecast.org/gdp.htm

bbf This is a org.site on the bottom graph is the gdp growth for 6 months. I tried to find interest payments as a percent of gdp but I could not.

Jim Health care is the problem (not the president) and has been long before this president. The simple fact that people that can afford health care go to ERs along with non ins. covered people. Example I had a kidney stone (bad) went to emergency room (packed waited 7 hours) Now I have paid into medicare since its inception My wife and I pay 200 month total for part B plus we have the yearly deductible around 140.00ea. I had to pay the ER co-payment of 50.00. (some one I know with no insurance has jobs on the side),had the same problem they signed a paper and paid nothing!!!!! Stop and look at that! Something is wrong!!

It gets better! My wife had a kidney stone later. Hers wasn't bad so she went to a doctor She ended up paying over 200.00 in co-payments to the docs and labs,etc. I said next time we go to the er.

I say those that can afford ins buy it and get off my back those that cant the feds will pay it That is exactly what the affordable health

care act is!! If you can afford it Pay it I have had car ins and health ins all my working life.

GTO insurance company's have been raising ins rates long before you were born .What! do you think they stopped? and now the president is responsible? Dont be misled by the rich and powerful.

[GTOken]

Mike,I gotta tell ya, Your type are very hard to suffer through. Yes I know insurance rates rise. But not 20 freaking percent in one year. You know what causes that? People going to the ER wanting stuff for freaking free. When will you libs figure out stuff just shouldn't be free when other people have to pay. "Health care" should be totally a personal responsibility without dependence on any one other than yourself assuming your are an adult (not a child). Health "insurance" on the other hand should only cover *catastrophic* illnesses. Not runny noses or ingrown toenails. People need to get back to self reliance and get off this FREE kick. Quit asking me and your neighbor to pay for your stuff when you are perfectly able to pay for it yourself.

This year everyone was just so joyful when our dear leader forced insurance companies to include children up to 26 yrs old on the parents polices. THAT is why insurance went up 20% this year. Who can we say did that? Did we think that was going to be FREE?