RightField
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I like that state of being, we need more of that.
I'm just going running......I'm tired, worked half the night and now I need a run and a nap.
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Politics and the US Economy
- Thread starter RightField
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I like that state of being, we need more of that.
I'm just going running......I'm tired, worked half the night and now I need a run and a nap.
Karen Kraft
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RightField
Literotica Guru
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Good idea.
You run; I'll masturbate.
Then we both will deserve a nice nap.
I like your plan much better.
RightField
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Obama: Circling back to the iceberg
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, August 22, 2011
Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove.
That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.
The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.
"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work."
"Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."
Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation.
The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.
First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.
In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.
Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent.
Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring.
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, concurs, stating that "prominent" among the obstacles to hiring is the "lack of clarity about the cost implications" of ObamaCare.
"We've frequently heard strong comments," reported Lockhart, "to the effect of, 'My company won't hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.'"
Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).
In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.
Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.
Read more: Obama: Circling back to the iceberg - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/print_752463.html#ixzz1Vm7BQs1i
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, August 22, 2011
Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove.
That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.
The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.
"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work."
"Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."
Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation.
The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.
First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.
In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.
Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent.
Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring.
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, concurs, stating that "prominent" among the obstacles to hiring is the "lack of clarity about the cost implications" of ObamaCare.
"We've frequently heard strong comments," reported Lockhart, "to the effect of, 'My company won't hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.'"
Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).
In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.
Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.
Read more: Obama: Circling back to the iceberg - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/print_752463.html#ixzz1Vm7BQs1i
Perry seems to be already running as the President, unlike his Republican cohorts who are running as candidates for their Party's nomination...
...and even though his lock on his Party's nomination is probably assured, the President seems to be running as a candidate, too.
...and even though his lock on his Party's nomination is probably assured, the President seems to be running as a candidate, too.
Sean Renaud
The West Coast Pop
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Then why did we cut taxes to increase productivity?
RightField
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It's the Spending, Stupid
By Paul Kengor
Liberal Democrats have failed to heed the lessons of economic history, and it's killing our economy. In the 1980s, they blamed President Reagan's tax cuts for fueling deficits, when, to the contrary, Reagan's tax cuts had a tremendous stimulative effect, and his deficits were fueled by recession and spending. In fact, that's the lesson of the long history of this country, and particularly since LBJ's Great Society: deficits have been caused not by a lack of taxes but by recession and, most of all, by excessive spending.
The failure to learn that lesson is again on painful display, as President Obama and liberals/progressives traverse the country pointing the finger at the evil rich for not forking over enough income. Apparently, the 36% rate paid by the wealthiest Americans is somehow robbing the poorest Americans, whose federal income-tax rate is 0%; something you'd never know from Democrats' shameless class-warfare demagoguery.
Because I comment on this topic so frequently, I'm forced to address these issues practically every day. As a public service, I'd like to make it easy for everyone to see the numbers and understand the root of the problem.
The answers are as easy as going to Google and typing in the words "historical tables deficit." Two sources pop up: CBO historical tables and OMB historical tables. "CBO" is Congressional Budget Office; "OMB" is Office of Management and Budget. These are the official go-to sources for data on deficits, debt, revenues, and government expenditures.
Either source will work. To keep it simple, I'll focus on the OMB numbers. Click the OMB link and look at Table 1.1., "Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits: 1789-2016." That's an official scorecard of spending by the federal government since the founding of the republic.
Looking closely at the chart is an eye-opening experience. As the first two columns show, receipts (i.e., revenues) and outlays (i.e., expenditures) moved up and down throughout our history. In 1965, however, something unusual, something literally deviant, began: Spending increased every single year, non-stop, consistently, without exception, into the Obama presidency, from 1965-2009.
There are few constants in the universe: gravity, the sunrise, Democrats' class-warfare rhetoric. Add another constant: spending by the federal government; it rises every year.
Significantly, revenues don't increase every year. The most dependable reason for declines in revenues is not a lack of tax increases, or high enough income-tax rates, but recessions. Since 1965, as the chart shows, annual revenues declined seven separate times.
At the start of the Great Society, in 1965, revenues and expenditures were nearly equal, with expenditures only slightly higher, leaving a manageable deficit of $1.4 billion. By 2009, however, annual expenditures ($3.5 trillion) had far outpaced annual revenues ($2.1 trillion), leaving a record deficit of $1.4 trillion.
Significantly, the biggest one-year drop in revenues was from 2008-9, when they declined from $2.5 trillion to $2.1 trillion. Worse, President Obama and the Democratic Congress, elected by a clueless American public, responded with an $800-billion "stimulus" package that did not stimulate. In other words, they responded in the worst way: with another $800 billion in government spending. That gave us the record deficits/debt we now face. The math is very simple.
Government spending, which has hampered growth rather than spark growth, caused this fiscal crisis -- not a lack of tax revenue.
It's crucial to realize that this spending addiction is a new thing in American history. Previous generations of politicians showed much more restraint. Prior to 1965, expenditures were not following an ever-upward trajectory; expenditures decreased year-to-year many times, including nearly two-dozen times between 1901 and 1965, and even including the administrations of big-government liberal presidents, like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
This changed in the mid-1960s.
The federal government has a serious spending problem. Liberal Democrats either don't understand this or don't want to understand.
How do we communicate the crisis to the wider public, beyond charts and data?
I suggest comparing the situation to a household: Your family's annual revenue probably has not enjoyed a 40-year-plus consecutive increase. For some years, you were paid less. Perhaps you lost a job, took a pay cut, or switched jobs. Maybe your spouse was laid off, or left work to have a child. You bought a house one year, another 20 years later, spent a ton of money on your children's college education, lost on a bad investment.
I doubt your family's yearly revenue has been a steady upward climb since 1965. Life doesn't work that way, obviously.
And yet, imagine if each successive year, without fail, you spent considerably more money than the previous, including money that isn't yours. You added debt each year, creating massive debts for your family and children. You paid taxes with a credit card.
How long would this go on before you ended up with a credit downgrade or in jail? Get the picture?
So do Obama and the Democrats. And yet, their version of economic facts is not this one; reality doesn't fit their ideological/political purposes. And to imagine the likes of Warren Buffett, who come along and merrily aid and abet their objectives, telling the public that our fiscal crisis is due not to spending but a lack of sufficient taxes. Warren Buffet is the perfect dupe for Democrats.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, the slogan for Bill Clinton and Democrats was, "It's the economy, stupid." For Republicans in 2012, it should be, "It's spending, stupid."
By Paul Kengor
Liberal Democrats have failed to heed the lessons of economic history, and it's killing our economy. In the 1980s, they blamed President Reagan's tax cuts for fueling deficits, when, to the contrary, Reagan's tax cuts had a tremendous stimulative effect, and his deficits were fueled by recession and spending. In fact, that's the lesson of the long history of this country, and particularly since LBJ's Great Society: deficits have been caused not by a lack of taxes but by recession and, most of all, by excessive spending.
The failure to learn that lesson is again on painful display, as President Obama and liberals/progressives traverse the country pointing the finger at the evil rich for not forking over enough income. Apparently, the 36% rate paid by the wealthiest Americans is somehow robbing the poorest Americans, whose federal income-tax rate is 0%; something you'd never know from Democrats' shameless class-warfare demagoguery.
Because I comment on this topic so frequently, I'm forced to address these issues practically every day. As a public service, I'd like to make it easy for everyone to see the numbers and understand the root of the problem.
The answers are as easy as going to Google and typing in the words "historical tables deficit." Two sources pop up: CBO historical tables and OMB historical tables. "CBO" is Congressional Budget Office; "OMB" is Office of Management and Budget. These are the official go-to sources for data on deficits, debt, revenues, and government expenditures.
Either source will work. To keep it simple, I'll focus on the OMB numbers. Click the OMB link and look at Table 1.1., "Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits: 1789-2016." That's an official scorecard of spending by the federal government since the founding of the republic.
Looking closely at the chart is an eye-opening experience. As the first two columns show, receipts (i.e., revenues) and outlays (i.e., expenditures) moved up and down throughout our history. In 1965, however, something unusual, something literally deviant, began: Spending increased every single year, non-stop, consistently, without exception, into the Obama presidency, from 1965-2009.
There are few constants in the universe: gravity, the sunrise, Democrats' class-warfare rhetoric. Add another constant: spending by the federal government; it rises every year.
Significantly, revenues don't increase every year. The most dependable reason for declines in revenues is not a lack of tax increases, or high enough income-tax rates, but recessions. Since 1965, as the chart shows, annual revenues declined seven separate times.
At the start of the Great Society, in 1965, revenues and expenditures were nearly equal, with expenditures only slightly higher, leaving a manageable deficit of $1.4 billion. By 2009, however, annual expenditures ($3.5 trillion) had far outpaced annual revenues ($2.1 trillion), leaving a record deficit of $1.4 trillion.
Significantly, the biggest one-year drop in revenues was from 2008-9, when they declined from $2.5 trillion to $2.1 trillion. Worse, President Obama and the Democratic Congress, elected by a clueless American public, responded with an $800-billion "stimulus" package that did not stimulate. In other words, they responded in the worst way: with another $800 billion in government spending. That gave us the record deficits/debt we now face. The math is very simple.
Government spending, which has hampered growth rather than spark growth, caused this fiscal crisis -- not a lack of tax revenue.
It's crucial to realize that this spending addiction is a new thing in American history. Previous generations of politicians showed much more restraint. Prior to 1965, expenditures were not following an ever-upward trajectory; expenditures decreased year-to-year many times, including nearly two-dozen times between 1901 and 1965, and even including the administrations of big-government liberal presidents, like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
This changed in the mid-1960s.
The federal government has a serious spending problem. Liberal Democrats either don't understand this or don't want to understand.
How do we communicate the crisis to the wider public, beyond charts and data?
I suggest comparing the situation to a household: Your family's annual revenue probably has not enjoyed a 40-year-plus consecutive increase. For some years, you were paid less. Perhaps you lost a job, took a pay cut, or switched jobs. Maybe your spouse was laid off, or left work to have a child. You bought a house one year, another 20 years later, spent a ton of money on your children's college education, lost on a bad investment.
I doubt your family's yearly revenue has been a steady upward climb since 1965. Life doesn't work that way, obviously.
And yet, imagine if each successive year, without fail, you spent considerably more money than the previous, including money that isn't yours. You added debt each year, creating massive debts for your family and children. You paid taxes with a credit card.
How long would this go on before you ended up with a credit downgrade or in jail? Get the picture?
So do Obama and the Democrats. And yet, their version of economic facts is not this one; reality doesn't fit their ideological/political purposes. And to imagine the likes of Warren Buffett, who come along and merrily aid and abet their objectives, telling the public that our fiscal crisis is due not to spending but a lack of sufficient taxes. Warren Buffet is the perfect dupe for Democrats.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, the slogan for Bill Clinton and Democrats was, "It's the economy, stupid." For Republicans in 2012, it should be, "It's spending, stupid."
RightField
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Spending, not entitlements, created huge deficit
by Byron York
....There's no doubt federal spending has exploded in recent years. In fiscal 2007, the last year before things went haywire, the government took in $2.568 trillion in revenues and spent $2.728 trillion, for a deficit of $160 billion. In 2011, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the government will take in $2.230 trillion and spend $3.629 trillion, for a deficit of $1.399 trillion.
That's an increase of $901 billion in spending and a decrease of $338 billion in revenue in a very short time. Put them together, and that's how you go from a $160 billion deficit to a $1.399 trillion deficit.
by Byron York
....There's no doubt federal spending has exploded in recent years. In fiscal 2007, the last year before things went haywire, the government took in $2.568 trillion in revenues and spent $2.728 trillion, for a deficit of $160 billion. In 2011, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the government will take in $2.230 trillion and spend $3.629 trillion, for a deficit of $1.399 trillion.
That's an increase of $901 billion in spending and a decrease of $338 billion in revenue in a very short time. Put them together, and that's how you go from a $160 billion deficit to a $1.399 trillion deficit.
mercury14
Pragmatic Metaphysician
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RightField
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Yes, he means that it was other spending that caused the biggest jump in overall spending. You have to think about what you read.
mercury14
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Aren't you kind of including the one-time stimulus in that calculation though? And pretending that the stimulus was just spending with no benefit at all? Basically your fake ass article counts the stimulus money as being put into a box and sent into space.
And be consistent. Tax breaks aren't spending. It's letting people keep money they earned, right? So hack off 1/3 of the cost of the stimulus. (Or start calling the Bush tax cuts spending items, either way)
RightField
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No, the "stimulus" just spent money. Some of it was deceptively called "tax breaks" but was really just democratic-doublespeak for just more spending (called "tax credits").
The results speak for themselves, not much good came out of it. A little, but not much. It was better than burning the cash for heat in the winter, but just a little better.
mercury14
Pragmatic Metaphysician
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Oh, I get it. Democrats just spent money on "letting people keep their income instead of paying it in taxes". Yeah that's a perfectly logical way to put it.
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Frisco_Slug_Esq
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RightField
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Here's a good summary of Obama's economic policies and their results so far:
Answering Jonathan Alter’s Challenge
Peter Wehner 08.26.2011 - 12:41 PM
Commentary.
“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column.
Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.
In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.”
Consider the mission accepted.
In one sense, the answer to the Alter challenge is obvious: Obama has failed by his own standards. It’s the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It’s Obama who joked there weren’t as many “shovel-ready” jobs as he thought.
It’s Obama who promised to cut the deficit in half. It’s Obama who said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down rather than up. It’s Obama who promised us recovery and prosperity, hope and change. What we’ve gotten instead is the opposite.
What makes Alter’s challenge particularly delicious is during the Bush years he spoke out about the importance of a “reality-based” presidency (as opposed to a “faith-based” one). “They [Republicans] could end up winning in November by distorting the argument,” Alter said in 2006. “But on credibility and the facts, they’ve lost.”
With Alter’s devotion to credibility and facts in mind, let’s take an empirical, reality-based look at economic life in America during the Age of Obama:
* Under Obama’s stewardship, we have lost 2.2 million jobs (and 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone). He is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era.
* The unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent v. 7.8 percent the month Obama took office.
* July marked the 30th consecutive month in which the unemployment rate was above the 8 percent level, the highest since the Great Depression.
* Since May 2009 — roughly 14 weeks into the Obama administration — the unemployment rate has been above 10 percent during three months, above 9 percent during 22 months, and above 8 percent during two months.
* Chronic unemployment is worse than during the Great Depression.
* The youth employment rate is at the lowest level since records were first kept in 1948.
* The share of the eligible population holding a job has declined to the lowest level since the early 1980s.
* The housing crisis is worse than in the Great Depression. (Home values are worth roughly one-third less than they were five years ago.)
* The rate of economic growth under Obama has been only slightly higher than the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression. From the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, we experienced five consecutive quarters of slowing growth. America’s GDP for the second quarter of this year was a sickly 1.0 percent; in the first quarter, it was 0.4 percent.
* Fiscal year 2011 will mark the third straight year with deficits in excess of $1 trillion. Prior to the Obama presidency, we had never experienced a deficit in excess of $1 trillion.
* During the Obama presidency, America has increased its debt by $4 trillion.
That is to say, Obama has achieved in two-and-a-half years what it took George W. Bush two full terms in office to achieve — and Obama, when he was running for president, slammed Bush’s record as being “unpatriotic.”
* America saw its credit rating downgraded for the first time in history under the Obama presidency.
* Consumer confidence has plunged to the lowest level since the Carter presidency.
* The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
* A record number of Americans now rely on the federal government’s food stamps program. More than 44.5 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, a 12 percent increase from one year ago.
There is more that can be said, but you get the point.
What makes this record doubly horrifying is rapid growth is the norm after particularly deep recessions — but under Obama, our recovery has been historically weak. President Obama (and Alter) can blame his predecessor, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, events in Europe, ATM machines and even athlete’s foot for his predicament. It doesn’t really matter, as even Obama conceded during the early months of his presidency, when he declared, “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable.”
Indeed. Obama “owns” the economy, as both his senior aide David Plouffe and the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have said.
“If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can’t pull together to solve problems,” Alter told Keith Olbermann during the Bush administration.
I agree. And it is on the common ground of facts that we can declare–in a calm, specific, reasonable, rational and empirical manner–Obama to be an utter failure.
Answering Jonathan Alter’s Challenge
Peter Wehner 08.26.2011 - 12:41 PM
Commentary.
“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column.
Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.
In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.”
Consider the mission accepted.
In one sense, the answer to the Alter challenge is obvious: Obama has failed by his own standards. It’s the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It’s Obama who joked there weren’t as many “shovel-ready” jobs as he thought.
It’s Obama who promised to cut the deficit in half. It’s Obama who said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down rather than up. It’s Obama who promised us recovery and prosperity, hope and change. What we’ve gotten instead is the opposite.
What makes Alter’s challenge particularly delicious is during the Bush years he spoke out about the importance of a “reality-based” presidency (as opposed to a “faith-based” one). “They [Republicans] could end up winning in November by distorting the argument,” Alter said in 2006. “But on credibility and the facts, they’ve lost.”
With Alter’s devotion to credibility and facts in mind, let’s take an empirical, reality-based look at economic life in America during the Age of Obama:
* Under Obama’s stewardship, we have lost 2.2 million jobs (and 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone). He is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era.
* The unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent v. 7.8 percent the month Obama took office.
* July marked the 30th consecutive month in which the unemployment rate was above the 8 percent level, the highest since the Great Depression.
* Since May 2009 — roughly 14 weeks into the Obama administration — the unemployment rate has been above 10 percent during three months, above 9 percent during 22 months, and above 8 percent during two months.
* Chronic unemployment is worse than during the Great Depression.
* The youth employment rate is at the lowest level since records were first kept in 1948.
* The share of the eligible population holding a job has declined to the lowest level since the early 1980s.
* The housing crisis is worse than in the Great Depression. (Home values are worth roughly one-third less than they were five years ago.)
* The rate of economic growth under Obama has been only slightly higher than the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression. From the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, we experienced five consecutive quarters of slowing growth. America’s GDP for the second quarter of this year was a sickly 1.0 percent; in the first quarter, it was 0.4 percent.
* Fiscal year 2011 will mark the third straight year with deficits in excess of $1 trillion. Prior to the Obama presidency, we had never experienced a deficit in excess of $1 trillion.
* During the Obama presidency, America has increased its debt by $4 trillion.
That is to say, Obama has achieved in two-and-a-half years what it took George W. Bush two full terms in office to achieve — and Obama, when he was running for president, slammed Bush’s record as being “unpatriotic.”
* America saw its credit rating downgraded for the first time in history under the Obama presidency.
* Consumer confidence has plunged to the lowest level since the Carter presidency.
* The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
* A record number of Americans now rely on the federal government’s food stamps program. More than 44.5 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, a 12 percent increase from one year ago.
There is more that can be said, but you get the point.
What makes this record doubly horrifying is rapid growth is the norm after particularly deep recessions — but under Obama, our recovery has been historically weak. President Obama (and Alter) can blame his predecessor, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, events in Europe, ATM machines and even athlete’s foot for his predicament. It doesn’t really matter, as even Obama conceded during the early months of his presidency, when he declared, “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable.”
Indeed. Obama “owns” the economy, as both his senior aide David Plouffe and the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have said.
“If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can’t pull together to solve problems,” Alter told Keith Olbermann during the Bush administration.
I agree. And it is on the common ground of facts that we can declare–in a calm, specific, reasonable, rational and empirical manner–Obama to be an utter failure.
mercury14
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RightField
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4,301 Views as of this morning...so the answer to your question is "Yes, people read it".
Traveling Back to the Future on Intercity Buses
By Michael Barone
Not long ago, I wrote about how the private sector outraces and laps government. While governments dither and dispute, the private sector discovers.
The example I mentioned then was energy. For years, governments, national and local, have been promoting wind and solar power, to little practical effect. Curiously, the biggest wind power producer is Rick Perry's Texas. But wind power isn't reliable, and both wind and solar cause serious damage to the environment.
In the meantime, the oil and gas industries -- the favorite target of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats -- have developed new techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that have vastly expanded recoverable American energy supplies.
Now across my laptop comes news of another area in which private sector actors have overtaken government. Again an older technology has been improved and adapted to fill a need, while government dithers.
The old technology in this case is buses.
While the Obama administration has been desperately seeking to spend $53 billion on so-called high-speed rail lines, private businessmen have developed Chinatown and Megabus lines that provide inter-city service that has attracted legions of price-conscious travelers.
Chinatown bus service started in 1998 to provide a cheap way for Asian immigrants to get from New York to Boston. You lined up at the curb, paid your $20 fare to the driver and settled into a comfortable bus for four hours or so.
Now there's service to multiple destinations (including gambling casinos) from New York and on the West Coast, too. And competitors have arisen. Megabus routes exist between Maine and Memphis and Minneapolis, notably including many college towns.
The buses have bathrooms, AC power outlets and free wi-fi. They're not as fast as the much more expensive Acela train, but they tend to run on schedule.
Bus travel used to be decidedly downscale, with a clientele that scared off middle-class travelers. That's because, back in the days of heavily regulated transportation, bus lines followed the passenger railroad model, with stations in central cities, routes with multiple stops, fares propped up by monopolies and operators with no economic incentive to provide comfortable or pleasant service.
Chinatown and Megabus operators ditched this model for one that works for travelers for whom money is scarce and time plentiful. Who needs a station? Intercity buses can occupy curb space briefly just as city buses do. Who needs multiple stops? You can make money on people who want to go from one specific location to another.
Needless to say, the cost to the taxpaying public is minimal. City streets and interstate highways already exist, and maintenance gets financing from gas taxes. And the system has enormous flexibility. If fewer passengers want to line up in Chinatown and more on the Upper West Side, the bus can change stops.
Private bus operators have effectively taken a 100-year-old technology, the bus, and adapted it seamlessly to the 21st century.
Compare high-speed rail. It is tethered to enormous stations that must be built or refurbished and limited to particular routes that, once the rails are laid down, cannot be changed except at prohibitive expense.
And it is enormously costly. In just two years, the estimated cost of the Obama administration's pet project, California high-speed rail, in the "flatter than Kansas" Central Valley has risen from $7.1 billion to $13.9 billion. Oxford economist Bent Flyvbjerg has found that high-speed rail projects always end up costing more, usually far more, than estimates.
In addition, operating costs almost always end up higher than fares. And fares always turn out to be expensive, comparable to airfare if you book a popular flight the day before your trip.
So high-speed rail is a form of transportation on which government subsidizes business travelers. You don't see backpackers anymore on the Acela or Amtrak trains from Washington to New York. They're taking the Chinatown bus or one of its competitors.
Finally, most of the high-speed rail lines the Obama administration is touting are a whole lot slower than France's TGV or Japan's bullet train. You can beat the proposed Minneapolis-Duluth line by going just slightly over the speed limit on I-35. The proposed line from the college town of Iowa City to Chicago would take longer than the currently operating bus service.
So the private sector provides cheap intercity transportation while government struggles to waste $53 billion. Please remind me which is the wave of the future.
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RightField
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Obama’s Boeing Union Headache
Republicans are savaging the administration for opposing a non-union Dreamliner plant in South Carolina.
by Jill Lawrence (/contributors/jill-lawrence.html) | August 31, 2011 11:54 PM EDT
It’s easy to imagine the 30-second TV ad: “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a union (/cheats/2011/05/21/unions-cut-donations-to-democrats.html) member near Seattle because the Obama (/articles/2011/08/26/obama-as-hardheaded-liberal-heir-to-truman-roosevelt-in-libya.html) administration wants to kill jobs and capitalism and tell corporations where to expand.”
Readers of a certain age may recognize the echo of an incendiary and strategically successful 1990 campaign ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIyewCdXMzk) for Sen. Jesse Helms. Back then, the job had to go to “a minority because of a racial quota.” The 2012 version, rooted in a complaint the National Labor Relations Board has lodged against Boeing over a new plant in South Carolina, resonates just as deeply. Forget its bureaucratic origins: This is a tale of regional tensions, existential labor struggles, and millions of stressed-out Americans with shrinking incomes or no jobs at all.
To recap: Boeing has just built and opened a non-union 787 Dreamliner (/cheats/2011/08/07/boeing-rolls-out-787-dreamliner.html) assembly plant in North Charleston. The expansion into the right-to-work state came after executives warned that strikes by the company’s unionized workforce in Everett, Wash., had set back production and affected their deliberations on where to locate the new plant. The International Association of Machinists, which is trying to protect jobs in the Puget Sound area, calls that illegal retaliation; Boeing says hogwash. Absent a settlement, the federal complaint could take years to resolve.
Several Democrats told me voters don’t and won’t care about a technical case at an obscure agency. But Republicans are working hard to make voters care—perhaps one reason President Obama, unable to intervene directly in the workings of an independent agency, has urged Boeing and the union to “come to a sensible agreement.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Democrats failed to anticipate or even recognize a political threat and respond in a timely, effective way. Al Gore never defended himself head-on against character attacks. John Kerry didn’t rush to define himself as a presidential candidate, leaving time and space for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to do it for him. Obama and his party did not make a sustained, effective public case for the 2010 health-care reform law (/cheats/2011/06/29/u-s-appeals-court-upholds-health-care-law.html) . Now we have the NLRB complaint against Boeing, and Republicans so far have the field to themselves.
Chaplain Rob Dewey of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy leads government officials and company workers in a prayer to bless Boeing Co.'s $750 million assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C. on Friday, June 10, 2011., Bruce Smith / AP Photo
Every GOP presidential candidate has weighed in, most using rhetoric along the lines of my imaginary ad. The No. 1 item on the House GOP’s fall agenda (http://majorityleader.gov/blog/2011/08/memo-on-upcoming-jobs-agenda.html) is South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott’s “Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act.” Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has subpoenaed NLRB documents to investigate a case he says could set a “job-killing precedent.” South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (/articles/2010/06/09/nikki-haley-poised-to-join-bobby-jindal-as-indian-americans-running-deep-south-states.html) , a rising GOP star, raises the issue every chance she gets, with everyone from Obama to Michele Bachmann.
“When you pick a fight like this in a state like South Carolina, you’re just asking for a holy war,” says Greenville-based GOP consultant Chip Felkel. “Somebody with some political acumen should have realized this is not going to look good, and it’s in a presidential primary state that’s going to get lots of national attention.”
The man who apparently “picked the fight” is Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel and a self-described low-profile “career bureaucrat” at the NLRB from 1972 to 2010, when Obama nominated him to be general counsel. He says politics were irrelevant—he investigated, found facts he believes point to retaliation, and tried for months to get the two sides to settle, as happens in more than 90 percent of NLRB cases. It didn’t work, so he filed the complaint. Now, he told me, sounding bemused, “We’re in sound bites in an election campaign.”
In the complaint he issued in April, Solomon cited repeated statements by company executives that past and future strikes were “overriding factors” in deciding to move a second Dreamliner production line to a non-union facility. He said there is reasonable cause to believe these statements violated federal labor law because they were coercive, retaliatory, and meant to chill future strike activity. “We certainly believe that the facts will show that the motivation was one of retaliation,” Solomon told me.
Boeing spokesman Tim Neale says there’s nothing illegal about executives talking openly about economic harm from strikes or factoring that harm into investment decisions. “I don’t know how you prove retaliation,” he told me. “We haven’t taken anything away from anybody.” But that, the union contends, is only a matter of time. Union leaders say Boeing plans to eliminate (http://iam751.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/boeing-to-cut-1800-jobs-once-s-c-plant-is-running/) 1,800 Puget Sound jobs once the North Charleston facility is fully operational.
As central as the Boeing case is to Republican politicians, it is peripheral for Democrats. One Democratic strategist told me he had not focused on the situation. Another said the case is “just not that interesting to most people.” Mike Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO, says there’s no evidence it has “high salience” with voters. “It’s really just the Republicans using the jobs crisis in a kind of shameless way to do favors for their corporate supporters,” he says. “Instead of creating jobs or providing real relief for the unemployed, they’re saying the problem is that our corporate friends are being treated as if they should follow the law. This is a bank shot.”
Maybe so, but consider the economic environment. In particular, consider South Carolina. Its 10.9 percent jobless rate in July was tied with Michigan for third place, trailing only Nevada and California. A tech consortium’s 2009 call for training to work at the new North Charleston plant drew 10,000 applications. Another one this summer drew 5,500. More than 450 people have completed phase one of the training since 2010; nearly half of them were unemployed when they applied. Boeing has spent upward of $750 million on the South Carolina plant, created 9,000 construction jobs to build it, added 1,000 jobs in the past year, and plans to add many more.
When you pick a fight like this in a state like South Carolina you’re just asking for a holy war.
So who deserves the plant? South Carolina, with its awful unemployment rate? Washington, with its slightly less bad 9.3 percent rate? South Carolina, where Boeing workers earn about two-thirds the pay of their West Coast counterparts? Washington, which has showered Boeing with incentives over the years? Should Boeing have to transfer work back to the Puget Sound area to maintain jobs there? Should South Carolina workers have to lose their jobs for that to happen?
The machinists may yet win this case on the merits. Solomon says the NLRB has a 90 percent success rate in court, where it could be headed. And Democrats may yet come up with some response to the Republican onslaught, perhaps stressing fairness, the rule of law, or the loyalty companies used to have to the communities that nurtured them. But even in victory, Obama and his party could pay a political price. That’s especially true if they continue to ignore the big picture: the power of the Republican argument, the symbolism of the South Carolina case and, so far, their own failure to offer a strong, unified counterweight to the GOP narrative on jobs.
Republicans are savaging the administration for opposing a non-union Dreamliner plant in South Carolina.
by Jill Lawrence (/contributors/jill-lawrence.html) | August 31, 2011 11:54 PM EDT
It’s easy to imagine the 30-second TV ad: “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a union (/cheats/2011/05/21/unions-cut-donations-to-democrats.html) member near Seattle because the Obama (/articles/2011/08/26/obama-as-hardheaded-liberal-heir-to-truman-roosevelt-in-libya.html) administration wants to kill jobs and capitalism and tell corporations where to expand.”
Readers of a certain age may recognize the echo of an incendiary and strategically successful 1990 campaign ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIyewCdXMzk) for Sen. Jesse Helms. Back then, the job had to go to “a minority because of a racial quota.” The 2012 version, rooted in a complaint the National Labor Relations Board has lodged against Boeing over a new plant in South Carolina, resonates just as deeply. Forget its bureaucratic origins: This is a tale of regional tensions, existential labor struggles, and millions of stressed-out Americans with shrinking incomes or no jobs at all.
To recap: Boeing has just built and opened a non-union 787 Dreamliner (/cheats/2011/08/07/boeing-rolls-out-787-dreamliner.html) assembly plant in North Charleston. The expansion into the right-to-work state came after executives warned that strikes by the company’s unionized workforce in Everett, Wash., had set back production and affected their deliberations on where to locate the new plant. The International Association of Machinists, which is trying to protect jobs in the Puget Sound area, calls that illegal retaliation; Boeing says hogwash. Absent a settlement, the federal complaint could take years to resolve.
Several Democrats told me voters don’t and won’t care about a technical case at an obscure agency. But Republicans are working hard to make voters care—perhaps one reason President Obama, unable to intervene directly in the workings of an independent agency, has urged Boeing and the union to “come to a sensible agreement.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Democrats failed to anticipate or even recognize a political threat and respond in a timely, effective way. Al Gore never defended himself head-on against character attacks. John Kerry didn’t rush to define himself as a presidential candidate, leaving time and space for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to do it for him. Obama and his party did not make a sustained, effective public case for the 2010 health-care reform law (/cheats/2011/06/29/u-s-appeals-court-upholds-health-care-law.html) . Now we have the NLRB complaint against Boeing, and Republicans so far have the field to themselves.
Chaplain Rob Dewey of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy leads government officials and company workers in a prayer to bless Boeing Co.'s $750 million assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C. on Friday, June 10, 2011., Bruce Smith / AP Photo
Every GOP presidential candidate has weighed in, most using rhetoric along the lines of my imaginary ad. The No. 1 item on the House GOP’s fall agenda (http://majorityleader.gov/blog/2011/08/memo-on-upcoming-jobs-agenda.html) is South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott’s “Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act.” Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has subpoenaed NLRB documents to investigate a case he says could set a “job-killing precedent.” South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (/articles/2010/06/09/nikki-haley-poised-to-join-bobby-jindal-as-indian-americans-running-deep-south-states.html) , a rising GOP star, raises the issue every chance she gets, with everyone from Obama to Michele Bachmann.
“When you pick a fight like this in a state like South Carolina, you’re just asking for a holy war,” says Greenville-based GOP consultant Chip Felkel. “Somebody with some political acumen should have realized this is not going to look good, and it’s in a presidential primary state that’s going to get lots of national attention.”
The man who apparently “picked the fight” is Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel and a self-described low-profile “career bureaucrat” at the NLRB from 1972 to 2010, when Obama nominated him to be general counsel. He says politics were irrelevant—he investigated, found facts he believes point to retaliation, and tried for months to get the two sides to settle, as happens in more than 90 percent of NLRB cases. It didn’t work, so he filed the complaint. Now, he told me, sounding bemused, “We’re in sound bites in an election campaign.”
In the complaint he issued in April, Solomon cited repeated statements by company executives that past and future strikes were “overriding factors” in deciding to move a second Dreamliner production line to a non-union facility. He said there is reasonable cause to believe these statements violated federal labor law because they were coercive, retaliatory, and meant to chill future strike activity. “We certainly believe that the facts will show that the motivation was one of retaliation,” Solomon told me.
Boeing spokesman Tim Neale says there’s nothing illegal about executives talking openly about economic harm from strikes or factoring that harm into investment decisions. “I don’t know how you prove retaliation,” he told me. “We haven’t taken anything away from anybody.” But that, the union contends, is only a matter of time. Union leaders say Boeing plans to eliminate (http://iam751.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/boeing-to-cut-1800-jobs-once-s-c-plant-is-running/) 1,800 Puget Sound jobs once the North Charleston facility is fully operational.
As central as the Boeing case is to Republican politicians, it is peripheral for Democrats. One Democratic strategist told me he had not focused on the situation. Another said the case is “just not that interesting to most people.” Mike Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO, says there’s no evidence it has “high salience” with voters. “It’s really just the Republicans using the jobs crisis in a kind of shameless way to do favors for their corporate supporters,” he says. “Instead of creating jobs or providing real relief for the unemployed, they’re saying the problem is that our corporate friends are being treated as if they should follow the law. This is a bank shot.”
Maybe so, but consider the economic environment. In particular, consider South Carolina. Its 10.9 percent jobless rate in July was tied with Michigan for third place, trailing only Nevada and California. A tech consortium’s 2009 call for training to work at the new North Charleston plant drew 10,000 applications. Another one this summer drew 5,500. More than 450 people have completed phase one of the training since 2010; nearly half of them were unemployed when they applied. Boeing has spent upward of $750 million on the South Carolina plant, created 9,000 construction jobs to build it, added 1,000 jobs in the past year, and plans to add many more.
When you pick a fight like this in a state like South Carolina you’re just asking for a holy war.
So who deserves the plant? South Carolina, with its awful unemployment rate? Washington, with its slightly less bad 9.3 percent rate? South Carolina, where Boeing workers earn about two-thirds the pay of their West Coast counterparts? Washington, which has showered Boeing with incentives over the years? Should Boeing have to transfer work back to the Puget Sound area to maintain jobs there? Should South Carolina workers have to lose their jobs for that to happen?
The machinists may yet win this case on the merits. Solomon says the NLRB has a 90 percent success rate in court, where it could be headed. And Democrats may yet come up with some response to the Republican onslaught, perhaps stressing fairness, the rule of law, or the loyalty companies used to have to the communities that nurtured them. But even in victory, Obama and his party could pay a political price. That’s especially true if they continue to ignore the big picture: the power of the Republican argument, the symbolism of the South Carolina case and, so far, their own failure to offer a strong, unified counterweight to the GOP narrative on jobs.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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I read them.
I'm a reader.
I'm reading the cereal box during breakfast.
When did reading become a bad thing? When the libs lost control of the press?
I'm a reader.
I'm reading the cereal box during breakfast.
When did reading become a bad thing? When the libs lost control of the press?
RightField
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To a lib in a bubble, all dissenting opinions must be supressed.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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There can be only one...
NeverEndingMe
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democrats are anti business
democrats leadership/regulations shift jobs over seas
people like you, only know about business/leadership from what you read
why are you such a coward, hiding, unable to live in the real world?
RightField
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Republicans believe in the individual, the Constitution and limited Government. They want relatively unfettered markets and an unobtrusive regulatory environment. They believe in equal opportunity (good schools for all) but not equal outcomes (job and school preferences - why should the scurrilous but wealthy Jesse Jackson's kids get preferences in college admissions?) Republicans believe in low taxes and a stable regulatory environment because that helps the economy grow and a growing economy lifts fortunes and living standards across the entire nation. There's no room nor reason for scapegoating given that philosophy.
What do Democrats believe in? I haven't figured it out, have you? What is their governing philosophy?
The democrats keep trying to tinker with laws, rules and regulations for income redistribution, more equality of outcome and social engineering purposes. Every time they try these things, unintended consequences follow. They believed that poor people "weren't getting their fair share" so they changed lending rules at the banks (down payment, ratios, etc) so more people who couldn't qualify before could qualify for home loans...creating the bubble and the ensuing burst brought the entire economy to it's knees. They cause these big problems every time they get elected and then need to find scapegoats to obfuscate the inevitable failure of their programs and policies.
While the goal of "lifting all boats" is admirable and I think both parties are following that goal, the Democrats do it by fiddling with laws and tinkering with social engineering and the Republicans do it by implementing laws and tax rates that facilitate freedom, stability and economic growth with the philosophy that a great growth in the national economy will help everyone. The Republicans want everyone to have the freedom to work hard and succeed. The Democrats want to regulate everyone down to mediocrity or worse in the spirit of "being fair", an approach tried and failed in places like Cuba, Russia and a few other notable locations.
The Republican approach, followed by Reagan, Bush and Clinton (forced into it by a Republican Congress he had to deal with) brought us economic growth. The democrat approach, followed by Carter and Obama who both had democrat congresses to support them, has lead to economic hardship, miasma and growing unemployment.
Make your choice.
The democrat failures (like now) demand scapegoats and the dems have no shortage of things to blame (the Tsunami? Really?).
The republican approach doesn't need scapegoats because it's based on individuality and freedom....success or failure is determined by thousands if not millions of people making their own choices....in contrast to the dems who keep looking for a superhuman President who can make "smart" choices for us.
What do Democrats believe in? I haven't figured it out, have you? What is their governing philosophy?
The democrats keep trying to tinker with laws, rules and regulations for income redistribution, more equality of outcome and social engineering purposes. Every time they try these things, unintended consequences follow. They believed that poor people "weren't getting their fair share" so they changed lending rules at the banks (down payment, ratios, etc) so more people who couldn't qualify before could qualify for home loans...creating the bubble and the ensuing burst brought the entire economy to it's knees. They cause these big problems every time they get elected and then need to find scapegoats to obfuscate the inevitable failure of their programs and policies.
While the goal of "lifting all boats" is admirable and I think both parties are following that goal, the Democrats do it by fiddling with laws and tinkering with social engineering and the Republicans do it by implementing laws and tax rates that facilitate freedom, stability and economic growth with the philosophy that a great growth in the national economy will help everyone. The Republicans want everyone to have the freedom to work hard and succeed. The Democrats want to regulate everyone down to mediocrity or worse in the spirit of "being fair", an approach tried and failed in places like Cuba, Russia and a few other notable locations.
The Republican approach, followed by Reagan, Bush and Clinton (forced into it by a Republican Congress he had to deal with) brought us economic growth. The democrat approach, followed by Carter and Obama who both had democrat congresses to support them, has lead to economic hardship, miasma and growing unemployment.
Make your choice.
The democrat failures (like now) demand scapegoats and the dems have no shortage of things to blame (the Tsunami? Really?).
The republican approach doesn't need scapegoats because it's based on individuality and freedom....success or failure is determined by thousands if not millions of people making their own choices....in contrast to the dems who keep looking for a superhuman President who can make "smart" choices for us.
Last edited:
RightField
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The Democrats are looking for a superhuman to make all the big decisions in wielding a government that they've imbued with almost omnipotent power. This person has to have a towering intellect to be able to rightly ascribe things as they ought to be in the eyes of a liberal collectivist. It is this reason that rank and file Democrats are always carping on the need for a "supergenious" to be their annoited candidate and they are always dissappointed because there's no such person alive who can be expert and wise in all the areas that Dems demand of them, no one can run an enterprise as big as the USA and make all the meddling decisions in the way that the democrats want.
The Republicans have a philosophy that says that decisions and power ought to be in the hands of the citizens and that the government should stay out of the way unless in specific circumstances enumerated in the Constitution. Republicans don't need a towering intellect to be leader, they just need someone with the wisdom to recognize the Republican philosophy and interfere only when absolutely necessary. Really, how "brilliant" do you have to be when your marching orders are "stay out of the way and follow the Contititution's advice and leave the people their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness."
Don't get me wrong, there are high standards for a Republlican candidate. Wisdom borne of practical experience and proven leadership capabilities are essential. The democrats look for those things too, but their priority is on a lawyer (almost all dems politicians are lawyers) who has the proper education. Note that lawyers don't often have practical experience outside the law and if they have leadership or executive experience, it came from a governorship in a large state....Obama had neither.
It drives the left nuts when people like Governor Perry, with his degree from Texas A&M is held out as a possible candidate. They say he's not smart. Republicans smile and draw confidence from the fact that he's shown himself to be a capable leader with a proven track record of solid results and has shown the wisdom to know when to step in and when to stay out of the way. The dems cry with derision at the thought of "Cowboy" politics, but a "Cowboy" is measured and sure and wouldn't ever engage in something as insulting to our citizens as Obama's world apology tour.
The Republicans have a philosophy that says that decisions and power ought to be in the hands of the citizens and that the government should stay out of the way unless in specific circumstances enumerated in the Constitution. Republicans don't need a towering intellect to be leader, they just need someone with the wisdom to recognize the Republican philosophy and interfere only when absolutely necessary. Really, how "brilliant" do you have to be when your marching orders are "stay out of the way and follow the Contititution's advice and leave the people their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness."
Don't get me wrong, there are high standards for a Republlican candidate. Wisdom borne of practical experience and proven leadership capabilities are essential. The democrats look for those things too, but their priority is on a lawyer (almost all dems politicians are lawyers) who has the proper education. Note that lawyers don't often have practical experience outside the law and if they have leadership or executive experience, it came from a governorship in a large state....Obama had neither.
It drives the left nuts when people like Governor Perry, with his degree from Texas A&M is held out as a possible candidate. They say he's not smart. Republicans smile and draw confidence from the fact that he's shown himself to be a capable leader with a proven track record of solid results and has shown the wisdom to know when to step in and when to stay out of the way. The dems cry with derision at the thought of "Cowboy" politics, but a "Cowboy" is measured and sure and wouldn't ever engage in something as insulting to our citizens as Obama's world apology tour.
RightField
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The antics of "Wiley E. Obama, Supergenious" have lead us into the deep mists of the "Obamadepression". It's time to escape. I'm sure that one of the Republican candidates will emerge with the clarity of thought to get us back from this ugly Obamamess. (We actually have a good plan already...it's just a matter of who gets the nomination).
