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The Dishonest Unemployment Report.

by Flyovercountry ( 169 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Economy, Elections 2012, Media, Politics at January 10th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

On Friday, the government released its ridiculous version of propaganda which it called the unemployment report. People fell for it this year, just like the one they fell for last year in the first week of January. We’ve seen this movie before, it is called the temp hiring of the Christmas Selling Season. the unemployment rate also fell due to workers who quit looking for work, because there are no jobs around. The real unemployment level remains unchanged at 16.7%. But we shouldn’t fault the Executive Branch, they’ve been telling us whoppers for two years now, and to a large extent, those whoppers have been bought. While preparing to write today’s post, I came upon this column written by Larry Elder. Mr. Elder does an excellent job in listing some of the more ridiculous whoppers told by the Obama Administration during the previous 2 years. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Ninety-five percent of “working families” received a tax cut.
No. The bill gave tax cuts to those who pay taxes — and gave money, “tax credits,” to those who pay little or nothing in taxes. We used to call this welfare.

We are going to hear that a lot during the 2012 Presidential Campaign. Note now, it actually means that we have officially placed about 50% of American Families on Welfare against their own better judgement.

3. ObamaCare will “bend the cost curve down.”
The alleged “savings” occur only by assuming politically unlikely and unpopular cuts in Medicare. Then there are sub-lies, including: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.” Obama later admitted, “I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.”

We still are hearing this from a sycophantic media, and it is being used by them as a political weapon to claim that the new Congress is actually inflating the budget deficit by attempting to repeal the Obamacare fiasco. This thing was scored as a budget saver by the CBO due to pure unadulterated chicanery on the part of the Democrats, and President Obama. Furthermore, the CBO even qualified their scoring of the bill to let Americans know that the chicanery was used.

6. Stimulus “saved or created” 3.5 million jobs.
The administration had predicted that 90% of the “saved or created” jobs would be private-sector. Reason columnist Veronique de Rugy writes: “Four out of five jobs created were created in the public sector. (Two years into the stimulus) 682,370 jobs were reported created, not 3 million, and over 510,000 of these were in the public sector.”

It is difficult to look at the newly formed statistic of, “Saved or Created Jobs,” without giggling. How on Earth can anyone with any working grey matter take this seriously? How is a saved job measured? Apparently, it was so tough that the definition of a saved job continues to change still in order to suit the political needs of the President. This particular whopper may be the crowned prince of asinine governmental statistics. The bottom line is that Americans are smart enough to know if they are working or not. This one won’t fly.

9. Bush-era “deregulation” caused the Gulf oil spill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Bush placed “the employees of Big Oil in charge of regulating their own industry.” The oil extraction business remains heavily regulated. Obama’s administration, not Bush’s, approved the Deepwater Horizon project.

President Bush is the source for everything which needs blame to be placed in the Universe. I once quipped that Bush was to blame for the sky being blue and the sea green. Wow, how prophecy comes true from a joke. Faulty operation of a defective oil rig caused the disaster. It should be noted here as well, the impact of the disaster was no where near as dire as the media predicted it would be. Three weeks after the well was capped, the oil could not be found. This was thanks to B.P. and Bobby Jindal ignoring the best efforts of the Obama Administration to make things purposefully worse. When news of the oil’s disappearance reached the White House, President Obama actually threw a temper tantrum, it seems that a cleaned up disaster is not the help for mid-term elections that a giant slick would have been.

In any case, I have faith that the American People are smarter than this. Come November of 2012, at least 51% of us will utilize our adult memories and fire this incompetent disaster. May our next choice do a better job, America can ill afford 4 more years of this kind of leadership.

Tags: Politics
Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, Elections 2012, Media, Politics | 169 Comments »

A Good Start!

by Flyovercountry ( 114 Comments › )
Filed under Breaking News, Elections 2010, Politics, Republican Party at January 7th, 2011 - 6:30 pm

For those of you like me, who were wondering about whether or not the newly elected GOP majority in the House got it this time around, yesterday was a good start. For the liberals who read this blog, don’t get your panties in a bunch, I am not speaking of the reading of the Constitution. Although I like the idea, and I find it somewhat sad that this was necessary. Here is why you should get your panties in a bunch. I was talking about this.

Dozens of Republicans used the opening day of the new Congress on Wednesday to introduce legislation that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sponsored the bill. The measure’s 46 co-sponsors are all Republicans except for Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.).

Co-sponsors include Oversight and Government Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Absent from the list at the moment: Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who is weighing his approach to stifling greenhouse-gas rules he alleges will burden the economy.
The bill would amend the Clean Air Act to declare that greenhouse gases are not subject to the law, according to a brief description in the Congressional Record.

While GOP leadership’s specific legislative approach to attacking EPA remains to be seen, the quick introduction signals that blocking climate rules is plainly on the agenda for the new GOP majority.

For my fellow conservatives, it looks as though John Boehner, even though he comes from the more liberal McCain, Dole, Bush wing of the party is allowing Issa, Cantor, et al to run loose. Keep in mind, just 2 years ago, GOP members of the House signed on to support the failed Cap and Trade legislation. While we are all weary of having our hearts broken, this time it feels different. Even though I am not willing to allow Boehner off the hook completely, his first day as Speaker was a decent beginning. I do wish to say to Mr. Boehner though, do not compromise, capitulate, work together, find common ground with, or participate in any of the other political cliches which means not adhering to the core principles which put you in your current role as Speaker of the House. We want more of this, we want a lot more. Give us more of this, and you will be rewarded with long careers. Give us more of this, and you will get help in the Senate and White House. Don’t pay any attention to the inside the beltway media, they make their living by lying to you.

Tags: Politics
Posted in Breaking News, Elections 2010, Politics, Republican Party | 114 Comments »

Finding Out What’s in it! Part IV

by Flyovercountry ( 214 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Healthcare, Politics, Progressives, Socialism at January 5th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

Section 6001 of the Health Care Law known as Obamacare allows bureaucrats to stop the construction of physician owned hospitals. At issue is the catch 22 quality built within the law. Approval for new and expanding physician hospitals to bill the government for patients receiving care under Medicare needed to be granted prior to December 31, 2010. As these approvals are only allowed to be granted to facilities which are already open, any physicians hospital under construction as of that date have effectively been shut down. The bureaucrats in charge of this process have already announced that waivers or exceptions to this rule will not be granted. What we see here is the beginning of bureaucratic rationing of health care. We have removed 45 hospitals from the system. If the number of people demanding health care remains constant, this will either result in higher prices, or an artificial shortage, (law of supply and demand taught in every basic high school economics class.) The claim by the political left of course is that this new law will cover health care costs for, (and I realize that the numbers vary,) some 30 million new folks who may or may not be in this country legally. So now, the curve is really blown for that whole supply and demand thing. I have seen the argument posited that the reason for this is that physicians hospitals only treat the, “rich,” who can afford to pay higher prices. If that were the case, why would the entrepreneurs building these hospitals stop construction without the Medicare approval. Medicare is not known for its lucrative payment schedule. As a matter of fact, it pays only a percentage of the actual bill presented, and then it is known also for being notoriously slow in paying its bills. Section 6001 is flat out an assault on Doctors, and an assault on the American people. Flexibility and choice have been the cornerstone of our society since the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.

This piece of the law is also an assault on the Free Enterprise System. American Businesses are being shut down as result of bureaucratic interpretation of a Law which has been declared unconstitutional by 2 Federal Judges. So, in one fell swoop, Obama and his Administration have managed to prove once again that they are not only socialists, but also that they are waging a war against the Capitalist economic system and the American people. We need to make sure that this man is only a One Term President, America’s survival depends on it.

Investor’s Business Daily has more on this here. Before I end this post, I have one more point. I have always included Nancy Pelosi’s youtube 5 second hit as a part of my Obamacare posts. It, up until now has been meant as a tongue in cheek dig at the former, (man am I glad to be calling her the former,) Speaker of the House. I am forced to ask however, why is it even a question that our lawmakers would do us the courtesy of reading a bill before they voted on it? What was the hurry in passing this legislation if it is not scheduled to go into full effect for another 3 years? We should demand a level of professionalism of our national leaders at least equal to the standards we hold our children up to when doing their homework. That they passed this piece of crap without allowing the American People to see it in full shows pure arrogance and breaks totally from the complete transparency they promised while campaigning. That they passed this piece of crap without reading it themselves shows laziness and ineptitude that is hard to fathom.

*Nominations still open for The Blogmocracy Awards 2010*

Tags: Democrats, Politics
Posted in Democratic Party, Healthcare, Politics, Progressives, Socialism | 214 Comments »

Keynesian Economic Theory, The Beast That Won’t Die.

by Flyovercountry ( 181 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, Economy, Progressives, Socialism at January 4th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

Sunday night of this week, I had the opportunity to sit down and have a political discussion with three college students. My interest in the topic of conversation was piqued when I overheard one of them positing the theory that we could balance our budget by gutting military spending. His contention was that we would be able to perform what ever social welfare programs we needed here with the savings from a bloated and unnecessary standing armed forces. It seems that last semester, he took a course in macro-economics at Case Western University. I illustrated the University for this reason. Case Western is typically listed near the top of most lists. It is usually in the same league as the Ivies. The academic requirements are very stringent, and the reputation of the University as a top notch place for children to get educated is solid. That being said, I was somewhat surprised that a student who had just finished a course in macro would be parroting the often discredited theory of Keynesian Economic Dogma. How is it possible, that we are still teaching this model to our students a full 80 years after it has been proven to be disastrously wrong? Do his parents realize that they are shelling out 50 grand a year to teach their child crap? More importantly to me, why won’t the Keynesian theory die? The Keynesian’s are like zombies from the classic George Romero movies, the, “Living Dead,” films. Mindless creatures moving slowly which can’t be killed but just move about the business of slowly consuming every sentient person in town.

Here is my theory. The Keynesian school of thought is wildly popular with politicians. This provides a terrific sounding collection of big words which justifies irresponsible behavior. Politicians love spending other people’s money. They love providing pork projects to those who got them elected. They love spreading favors around to get re-elected. They love having a group of psychophants around to pour adulation upon them. What they don’t love is the accountability that comes along with irresponsible spending. They don’t love their constituency noticing that reckless spending has horrendous economic results.

Enter Lord John Maynard Keynes. His theory says, go ahead and spend money you don’t have, it’ll be good for the economy. It doesn’t even matter what you spend it on, the stimulative effect will be the same no matter what. Even though it has never worked, we can trot it out and get the voters on board because it all sounds very cool. People like to be told, here is your share of a new, albeit a nonexistent pie, and you will get it for free. The problem of course is that it is not free. The deficit in this country is crippling, and the solution is to stop spending wildly asinine amounts of money on crap we don’t need or want. Unfortunately though, our political leaders are addicted to power and the fruits of our labor. So like an alcoholic who is told that a glass of wine every day is good for his/her heart, Politicians will try to convince us that the way out of debt is to spend even more money we don’t have. Make no mistake about it though, Keynesian Economic Policy is nothing more than our old friend, the Broken Window Fallacy, rearing it’s ugly head once again.