Unhappy Birthday Stimulus

The 862 Billion albatross is one year old today. President Obama is currently spinning this boondoggle as the savior of our nation. You see, if it hadn't been passed America would resemble the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max, complete with that wacky Thunderdome.

Mr. President, the American people simply aren't buying your snake oil anymore.

If you're wondering how such a large expenditure of the public wealth could have been frittered away to so little benefit I offer exhibit one from the Wall St Journal:

"Government data indicate that most of the jobs supported by stimulus spending belonged to public employees at the state and local level, including about 325,000 teachers and school staff.
Subsidizing those jobs avoided layoffs, or state and local tax increases that could have further undermined the economy. But they didn't result in substantial hiring of people who had lost private-sector jobs."

That's right the stimulus was meant to protect politically connected and Democratic supporting government employees from sharing the pain of the Great Recession with their fellow citizens. Sometimes, even with politicians at all levels of government watching their backs their arrogance will get the best of them and they will get their due. Like those teachers' at Central Falls High School in RI that refused to work an extra 25 minutes.

Exhibit 2:

A poll done by USA Today of 884 small business owners:

How has the Obama administration affected small-business success?

It has had a positive effect: 11%

It has hurt me: 77%

No effect: 13%

The majority of Americans work for and historically job growth comes from small businesses. The job market will recover when the Obama administration gives up its statist ambitions that are threatening to wipe out the small companies that enable the middle class to exist.

Democrats and the Party of No

When she was a newly minted House Minority leader, Nancy Pelosi hired an adveritising/marketing agency to get their advice on the best way to regain the majority. The advice as she relayed it was to oppose the Bush agenda lock, stock and barrell, in essence to become the party of no. After spending an hour fruitlessly trying to find the article I have given up. Maybe someone else will have better luck digging it out of the recesses of Google. From January of 2005 until November of 2006, Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues in the Senate followed this advice to the letter. They opposed President Bush on Social Security reform and refused to submit their own plan for saving the system from bankruptcy. On Iraq, they offered no solutions to achieve victory, in fact they were eager to declare defeat and cede that country to Al Qaeda. Cut to January 2007 and incoming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1576122,00.html.

When the G.O.P. pushed through a bill granting Bush the ability to suspend the
ancient right of habeas corpus for terror suspects, the man who would become the
Democratic Senate majority leader after the election, Harry Reid, said, "The
framers of our Constitution understood the need for checks and balances, but
this bill discards them." Across the country Democratic candidates for both
chambers of Congress painted their opponents as rubber stamps for Bush's failed
policy in Iraq. And the day before the Nov. 7 vote that would vindicate his
chairmanship of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, New York's Charles
Schumer said voters were flooding to Democrats in part because they had decided
that the country needed "some checks and balances in this government."

But when it comes to actually taking any action to check Bush's war
powers, there's not much bite to the Democrats' bark. Which raises the question:
will Democrats use their new power to rein in what they say is an overreaching
President? Or will they choose to continue what proved to be a successful
political strategy when they were in the minority: criticizing the
Administration for unpopular policies while avoiding taking action themselves
that could prove equally unpopular?

Politically, however, it's hard to
argue with a winning strategy. The ACLU's three races fly in the face of Harry
Reid's victorious approach throughout the 109th Congress: hammer the President
in every public forum on Iraq and executive overreach, but never, ever get on
the wrong side of tough national security policies.

If being the Party of NO was good enough for the Democrats, in fact they claimed it as the patriotic thing to do, why isn't it acceptable for Republicans to follow suit when they are in the minority?

The Democrats have shown little (Senate) to no(House) interest in negotiating with Republicans. As President Obama told Senator Kyl (R-AZ), "I won, I trump you on that". Holding the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate the Democratic strategy is to craft legislation that realizes progressives' dreams, in the case of nationalizing health care, a dream they have had for over a century. When Republicans predictably refuse to sign on to legislation they haven't had any input on drafting they will be labeled obstructionists by the Democrats and a compliant, complicit media.

Being labeled the Party of No scares the daylights out of Sen. McConnell, but it shouldn't. The fact is that Obamacare is not popular with the electorate and Republicans have nothing to lose in standing up for the rights of the people. From the invitation that Rahm Emmanuel sent out for the health care summit the fix is already in "Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package". As far as Obama/Reid/Pelosi are concerned this summit is just political theatre. They will make nice on camera and then ram a hyper-partisan bill through.

When President Obama met with House Republicans at their retreat he claimed he wasn't an idealogue. He could go a long way to proving that by pledging to veto any health care legislation that comes out of the Senate via reconciliation. If he refuses to make that promise Republicans should proudly accept the mantle of the Party of No! Or as that sign at one of the tea party rallies put it: The Party of Hell No!

The Ground We Should Fight 2010 On

From the inestimable Michael Barone:

Public-sector unions bleed taxpayers
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
February 7, 2010
(AP File)

Growing up in Michigan in the heyday of the United Auto Workers, I long assumed that labor unions were part of the natural order of things.

That's no longer clear. Last month the Labor Department reported that private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year and now represent only 7.2 percent of private-sector employees. That's down from the all-time peak of 36 percent in 1953 and '54.

But union membership is still growing in the public sector. Last year 37.4 percent of public-sector employees were union members. That percentage was down near zero in the 1950s. For the first time in history, a majority of union members are government employees.

In my view, the outlook for both private- and public-sector unionism is problematic.

Private-sector unionism is adversarial. Economic studies show that such unions do extract premium wages and benefits from employers. But that puts employers at a competitive disadvantage. Back in the 1950s, the Big Three auto companies dominated the industry and were at the top of the Fortune 500. Last year General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt and are now owned by the government and the UAW. Ford only barely escaped.

Adversarial unionism tends to produce rigid work rules that retard adaptation and innovation. We have had a three-decade experiment pitting UAW work rules against the flexible management of Japanese- and European-owned nonunion auto firms.

The results are in. Yes, clueless management at the Detroit firms for years ignored problems with product quality and made boneheaded investment mistakes. But adversarial unionism made it much, much harder for Detroit to produce high-quality vehicles than it was for nonunionized companies.

As economist Barry Hirsch points out, nonunion manufacturing employment rose from 12 million to 14 million between 1973 and 2006. In those years, union manufacturing employment dropped from 8 million to 2 million. "Unionism," Hirsch writes, "is a poor fit in a dynamic, competitive economy."

Moreover, federal laws passed since the 1950s now protect workers from racial and sex discrimination, safety hazards and pension failure. They don't need unions to do this anymore.

Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits -- and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.

The results are plain to see. States such as New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower.

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson. He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism. But he is doing his best to increase the power -- and dues income -- of public-sector unions.

One-third of last year's $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments -- an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions. And a successful one: While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.

Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400,000,000 to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic party.

But it may not turn out to be a perpetual motion machine. Public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who depend on the private sector for their livelihoods. The next Congress may not be as willing as this one has been to bail out state governments dominated by public-sector unions. Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for $100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s. Or they may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas.

Obama's Democrats have used the financial crisis to expand the public sector and the public-sector unions. But voters seem to be saying, "Enough."

A quick primer:

President Obama used TARP money to bail out GM and Chrysler to benefit the UAW. These companies acknowledge that the taxpayer will likely never be repaid. Instead the president is proposing a fee on banks' to recoup these losses.

The stimulus, as admitted by the administration was designed to bail out spendthrift state governments and protect public employees from layoffs.

There is no reason why public workers should be allowed to unionize and then use memeber dues to advocate for ever bigger government.

It's Always About Him

The president's ego is still quite healthy, even if his poll numbers aren't. Rasmussen has him at 44% approval and 55% of Americans disapproving of the job he's doing. None of that matters to our self reverential Commander in Chief though because one of his supporters wants to be buried in his t-shirt. Unbelievable.




UPDATE: She had health insurance. From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

"When Melanie Shouse began feeling ill, eventually finding a lump in her breast, she couldn't afford a doctor. She and her partner had just used their savings to open a business.
A year later, doctors told her she had terminal, stage four breast cancer.

She spent the next 4½ years fighting for health care reform that she didn't live to see pass.

Ms. Shouse died Saturday (Jan. 30, 2010) at her home in Overland. She was 41.

...In a speech in November at the Arch grounds, she spoke about the need to "take on the Big Insurance Monopoly and liberate American families from the slavery of skyrocketing insurance premiums and canceled coverage, which leave millions of us in a state of perpetual fear and insecurity ..."

Using herself as an example, Ms. Shouse said she had put off going to a doctor because her health insurance policy had a $5,000 deductible. She called it "'hit by a bus' kind of insurance."'

NASA, Part Of The Warmist Racket

Et Tu NASA? The saddest part of this is that President Obama wants NASA to focus on "climate change" as its new mission. No longer will they be the government agency that inspires the adventurer in every child, but the apparatchik.

"The Science & Public Policy Institute has published an important paper on the manipulations to which surface temperature records have been subjected in order to promote the global warming dogma. It's called Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? You should download and read it all; this is the executive summary:

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant "global warming" in the 20th century.

2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.

5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.

6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.

8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century "global warming".

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC "chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations."

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit."

Pres. Obama's Debt Bomb

Yesterday President Obama unveiled his budget for fiscal year 2011 and it comes in at a whopping $3.8 trillion, running a deficit of $ 1.6 trillion. For those of you keeping score at home, this deficit is the largest in our nation's history, beating the previous record of $1.4 trillion set just last year. President Obama promised that he and the Democratic majorities in Congress were going to "bring real change" to Washington DC. In the first three years of his administration President Obama will increase our national debt by $4.4 trillion. Somehow, I don't think the American people had this kind of change in mind back in 2008, when candidate Obama promised to actually cut federal spending.


Right wing zealot Rush Limbaugh lost no time attacking our president's fiscal profligacy "By President Obama's own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years." Oh wait, that's from the New York Times.


What are the spending levels that has the Times so concerned? President Obama envisions growing government to the point that even after raising taxes by $2.3 trillion, federal spending will outstrip revenues by $8.5 trillion from 2011-2020. If Congress agrees to go along with the president's spending requests our national debt will be $18 trillion by 2020. The president has traded in his "spread the wealth" rhetoric for a policy of spreading debt to future generations of Americans. President Obama's agenda is a budget buster of epic proportions. The American people simply can't afford his vision for turning our country into a European-style social democracy.

In considering the president's proposed budget and what it means for our future. I hope you take a moment to reflect on these words from our fortieth president.

"This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

Pres. Obama's Bowing problem

This time it's notorious trickster and Tampa FL Mayor Pam Iorio who gets our president to fall for the "your shoes untied" gag.

Note to President Obama:

You are the elected leader of a proud, sovereign nation. We bow to noone. Either get a spine or see a chiropractor.