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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Fury on July 05, 2011, 05:46:16 PM
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White House Economists: Stimulus Jobs Slowly Going Away
(CNSNews.com) – The jobs created or saved by the federal government’s economic stimulus spending are steadily going away, according to a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). As stimulus spending declines, so too does the support it provided to employment.
The report, released late on Friday, July 1, shows that stimulus spending is now supporting fewer jobs than it did in the previous two quarters – supporting approximately 2.4 million jobs in the first quarter of 2011.
According to the report, because stimulus spending is receding, the jobs estimated to have been supported by that spending are beginning to disappear as well. At the height of its effectiveness – the second and third quarters of 2010 – the CEA estimated that the stimulus was supporting 2.7 and 2.8 million jobs respectively.
When Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus spending into law -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – on Feb. 17, 2009, he said, “Now, what makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, including 60,000-plus here in Colorado. It's that we're putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done -- in critical areas that have
been neglected for too long; work that will bring real and lasting change for generations to come.”
The CEA said the federal spending had caused employment to be higher than what it would normally have been without the stimulus, arguing that the jobs’ figures it presented reflected the number of jobs created or saved by the federal spending.
“In terms of direct impact on employment and GDP, the ARRA was intended to stop the economic slide and to be temporary stimulus to fill part of the substantial hole in aggregate demand left by the crisis,” the report said.
However, the CEA also noted that as stimulus spending declined, so too would its impact on jobs, meaning that the stimulus would support fewer and fewer jobs.
“The Act was designed to have a peak cumulative impact in the second half of 2010,” reads the report. “Because the ARRA was not designed to be permanent, these outlays and tax reductions will decline over time and thus the impact on GDP and employment are phasing down.”
In other words, because stimulus spending was always designed to be temporary, so too were the jobs it supported, meaning there will be fewer and fewer jobs supported by government spending in the future.
In all, the stimulus is supporting 288,000 fewer jobs than it did at its peak, indicating that the program intended to cushion the effects of the recession may be contributing to it instead. According to the report, the economy added only 165,000 jobs in 2011 Q1 and 141,000 in 2010 Q4 – a total of 306,000 new jobs in the past six months.
The CEA admits that job creation is barely positive, saying that, on average, the economy only created 117,000 jobs per month from March 2010 to March 2011 – the end of 2011 Q1. The CEA also admitted that the economy is not growing at a normal post-recession rate.
“Real GDP is below its normal path and, despite recent declines, the unemployment rate remains elevated,” says the report. “Monthly job growth averaged 117,000 for the twelve months ending March 2011, and while more robust growth is needed, this is movement in the right direction.”
All of the jobs estimates produced by the CEA do not reflect actual jobs created by the stimulus. Instead, they reflect the CEA’s estimate of the effect of government spending on the economy generally.
The only figure the government has that comes close to counting the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus is the self-reporting done by stimulus recipients. The CEA rejects these reports because it believes they do not fully account for the secondary effects of stimulus spending on the economy.
In other words, the CEA argues that employer-provided jobs data do no reflect the secondary jobs created or saved by stimulus money with employers who sell to or service stimulus grant recipients.
Still, those figures also show the stimulus supporting fewer jobs. Those figures show that the stimulus peaked in the second quarter of 2010, accounting for 750,045 jobs created – the administration stopped asking employers to count saved jobs in 2009 because it was too difficult to count accurately.
By 2011 Q1, employer-provided data showed that the stimulus was only supporting 560,992 jobs, a difference of 189,053 jobs.
Further, the CEA report shows that employment recovered slower during the latter half of 2010 – when the stimulus was supposed to be at full effect – than it did during 2009, suggesting that while the stimulus may have cushioned the pain of the recession for some, it did not contribute significantly to job growth.
Instead, the stimulus may have only delayed, rather than prevented, layoffs from occurring, especially in state and local government, where recent layoffs have been sharpest. State and local government were among the earliest recipients of stimulus money while stimulus spending on private-sector “investments” has taken longer.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/white-house-economists-stimulus-jobs-slo
Straw Man says that this can be rectified by giving Obama trillions more to waste! ::)
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Who would have predicted this.
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White House Economists: Stimulus Jobs Slowly Going Away
(CNSNews.com) – The jobs created or saved by the federal government’s economic stimulus spending are steadily going away, according to a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). As stimulus spending declines, so too does the support it provided to employment.
The report, released late on Friday, July 1, shows that stimulus spending is now supporting fewer jobs than it did in the previous two quarters – supporting approximately 2.4 million jobs in the first quarter of 2011.
According to the report, because stimulus spending is receding, the jobs estimated to have been supported by that spending are beginning to disappear as well. At the height of its effectiveness – the second and third quarters of 2010 – the CEA estimated that the stimulus was supporting 2.7 and 2.8 million jobs respectively.
When Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus spending into law -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – on Feb. 17, 2009, he said, “Now, what makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, including 60,000-plus here in Colorado. It's that we're putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done -- in critical areas that have
been neglected for too long; work that will bring real and lasting change for generations to come.”
The CEA said the federal spending had caused employment to be higher than what it would normally have been without the stimulus, arguing that the jobs’ figures it presented reflected the number of jobs created or saved by the federal spending.
“In terms of direct impact on employment and GDP, the ARRA was intended to stop the economic slide and to be temporary stimulus to fill part of the substantial hole in aggregate demand left by the crisis,” the report said.
However, the CEA also noted that as stimulus spending declined, so too would its impact on jobs, meaning that the stimulus would support fewer and fewer jobs.
“The Act was designed to have a peak cumulative impact in the second half of 2010,” reads the report. “Because the ARRA was not designed to be permanent, these outlays and tax reductions will decline over time and thus the impact on GDP and employment are phasing down.”
In other words, because stimulus spending was always designed to be temporary, so too were the jobs it supported, meaning there will be fewer and fewer jobs supported by government spending in the future.
In all, the stimulus is supporting 288,000 fewer jobs than it did at its peak, indicating that the program intended to cushion the effects of the recession may be contributing to it instead. According to the report, the economy added only 165,000 jobs in 2011 Q1 and 141,000 in 2010 Q4 – a total of 306,000 new jobs in the past six months.
The CEA admits that job creation is barely positive, saying that, on average, the economy only created 117,000 jobs per month from March 2010 to March 2011 – the end of 2011 Q1. The CEA also admitted that the economy is not growing at a normal post-recession rate.
“Real GDP is below its normal path and, despite recent declines, the unemployment rate remains elevated,” says the report. “Monthly job growth averaged 117,000 for the twelve months ending March 2011, and while more robust growth is needed, this is movement in the right direction.”
All of the jobs estimates produced by the CEA do not reflect actual jobs created by the stimulus. Instead, they reflect the CEA’s estimate of the effect of government spending on the economy generally.
The only figure the government has that comes close to counting the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus is the self-reporting done by stimulus recipients. The CEA rejects these reports because it believes they do not fully account for the secondary effects of stimulus spending on the economy.
In other words, the CEA argues that employer-provided jobs data do no reflect the secondary jobs created or saved by stimulus money with employers who sell to or service stimulus grant recipients.
Still, those figures also show the stimulus supporting fewer jobs. Those figures show that the stimulus peaked in the second quarter of 2010, accounting for 750,045 jobs created – the administration stopped asking employers to count saved jobs in 2009 because it was too difficult to count accurately.
By 2011 Q1, employer-provided data showed that the stimulus was only supporting 560,992 jobs, a difference of 189,053 jobs.
Further, the CEA report shows that employment recovered slower during the latter half of 2010 – when the stimulus was supposed to be at full effect – than it did during 2009, suggesting that while the stimulus may have cushioned the pain of the recession for some, it did not contribute significantly to job growth.
Instead, the stimulus may have only delayed, rather than prevented, layoffs from occurring, especially in state and local government, where recent layoffs have been sharpest. State and local government were among the earliest recipients of stimulus money while stimulus spending on private-sector “investments” has taken longer.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/white-house-economists-stimulus-jobs-slo
Straw Man says that this can be rectified by giving Obama trillions more to waste! ::)
nothing a few more tax cuts can't fix
btw ---- trillions??
it cracks me up how Repubs are suddenly so concerned about deficits and the sovereignty of nations harboring terrorist, etc..
all the shit that didn't give a rats ass about when they were in power and pissing our money away
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it cracks me up how Dems are suddenly so concerned about deficits and the sovereignty of nations harboring terrorist, etc..
all the shit that didn't give a rats ass about when they were in power and pissing our money away
What does your idiotic point have to do with Obama's stimulus? Let's not forget that you're the same asshole who claimed Obama didn't spend enough.
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By tax cuts you're referencing the Paul Ryan Budget Plan, correct?
The plan where rates would be lowered but a large amount of corporate/private loopholes, shelters, etc would be closed? More or less the same tax code reform that was pushed by the bi-partisan Deficit Reduction Committee?
Or are you referencing the further cut to the payroll tax that Obama has rolled out of the crypt, because the first one did such a good as well? You mean that tax cut?
And to be honest, taxes shouldn't be cut anymore unless major reform, and I mean major and meaningful reform is conducted. Cut the subsidies, cut the corporate welfare, broaden the tax base and close the holes and tax shelters. No more Cayman Island accounts, no more "Double Irish Cream", none of it. Major donating constituencies can go fuck themselves.
Further tax cuts or whatnot would be just as big a failure as further stimulus spending.
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By tax cuts you're referencing the Paul Ryan Budget Plan, correct?
The plan where rates would be lowered but a large amount of corporate/private loopholes, shelters, etc would be closed? More or less the same tax code reform that was pushed by the bi-partisan Deficit Reduction Committee?
Or are you referencing the further cut to the payroll tax that Obama has rolled out of the crypt, because the first one did such a good as well? You mean that tax cut?
And to be honest, taxes shouldn't be cut anymore unless major reform, and I mean major and meaningful reform is conducted. Cut the subsidies, cut the corporate welfare, broaden the tax base and close the holes and tax shelters. No more Cayman Island accounts, no more "Double Irish Cream", none of it. Major donating constituencies can go fuck themselves.
Further tax cuts or whatnot would be just as big a failure as further stimulus spending.
not sure if you're talking to me but I was make a facetious reference to the stimulus package that was ~ 35-40% tax cuts
we also have the extension of the Bush Tax cuts that already costs us a trillion and produced no jobs
My real problem is with Repubs who didn't make a peep when they were raising the debt ceiling under Bush and pissing our money away like drunken sailors and now suddenly they are the fiscal hawks who care about our financial well being.
I'm not buying it
Perhaps if they introduced some legislation of their own that was aimed at improving the ecoomy or the jobs situation I might take them seriously
most recently they Repubs just backed out of trade negotions with South Korea which woudl have helped our economy
I have not wanted to believe it but I think the Repubs actually want to harm the economy (and 95% of the population) as a gambit to imrpove their chances in 2012.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/dems-dig-in-gop-trying-to-sabotage-economy-on-purpose/2011/03/03/AGnrHetH_blog.html
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Dem spending has made Bush look like he was in the minors. How fucking sad is that?
Thanks to the pig-headed Dems, spending as a percentage of GDP, which historically averages roughly 18-19% of GDP (and which Bush was within striking distance of), has since ballooned to over 23% of GDP, which is completely unsustainable.
Why is someone from California, a bankrupt state swimming in tens of billions of dollars in debt, lecturing others on spending? You continue to vote for the grifters that have destroyed the world's 8th largest economy and you think you're in a position to lecture others on economic issues?
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Dem spending has made Bush look like he was in the minors. How fucking sad is that?
Thanks to the pig-headed Dems, spending as a percentage of GDP, which historically averages roughly 18-19% of GDP (and which Bush was within striking distance of), has since ballooned to over 23% of GDP, which is completely unsustainable.
Why is someone from California, a bankrupt state swimming in tens of billions of dollars in debt, lecturing others on spending? You continue to vote for the grifters that have destroyed the world's 8th largest economy and you think you're in a position to lecture others on economic issues?
false
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Hey straw - can you tell me how jobs are created?
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Hey straw - can you tell me how jobs are created?
Ask all the Republican Governors and congressmen/woman who talked about how it created/saved jobs in their states
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false
Oh man, you sure showed me. Thanks for proving just how naive and uninformed you are. Shocking for a Bay-area liberal.
Either way, stop derailing this thread. Either discuss the fucking article in the OP or fuck off.
This thread isn't about the little stiffy you pop every time you think about the GOP. It's about the nearly trillion dollar Obama stimulus that created a few useless jobs that are now vanishing. The same stimulus that an asshole like yourself claimed wasn't large enough.
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Ask all the Republican Governors and congressmen/woman who talked about how it created/saved jobs in their states
Like perry?
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Like perry?
no
he just took the Stim money to balance his budget
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Like perry?
Are you talking about Texas, the business-friendly state that has produced 50% of all US jobs in the last two years or California, Straw Man's home state, 8th largest economy in the world and 49th out of 50th in terms of "friendliness" towards businesses, which has lost 1,000 jobs and is looking more like Greece every day?
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Are you talking about Texas, the business-friendly state that has produced 50% of all US jobs in the last two years or California, Straw Man's home state, 8th largest economy in the world and 49th out of 50th in terms of "friendliness" towards businesses, which has lost 1,000 jobs and is looking more like Greece every day?
US is nothing like Greece but if you think we are then I guess we should impose the same austerity measures, includign the tax hikes
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US is nothing like Greece but if you think we are then I guess we should impose the same austerity measures, includign the tax hikes
Where did I reference the US? It appears that reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.
www.hookedonphonics.com
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Only difference is that Greece does not have the magical counterfeiting machine like we do.
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Where did I reference the US? It appears that reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.
www.hookedonphonics.com
is CA not part of the US
have you not bitched about how f'd up the US is hundreds of times?
If you had a clue you'd realize that CA gives more to the Federal government than they get back
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is CA not part of the US
have you not bitched about how f'd up the US is hundreds of times?
If you had a clue you'd realize that CA gives more to the Federal government than they get back
That's great and all but the point you make here doesn't address 33386's main argument.
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That's great and all but the point you make here doesn't address 33386's main argument.
what is 333's main argument?
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Without the ability to print counterfeit dollars via the fed reserve, we would be in far worse shape than greece.
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Without the ability to print counterfeit dollars via the fed reserve, we would be in far worse shape than greece.
that was your main argument ?
didn't we do that during the entire Bush administration too ?
haven't you already admitted multiple times that your "solution" of doing nothing would have made the situation even worse
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In the immediate short term yes, but in the longer term we would have purged the system of the mal investment, bad actors, bad debt, etc and got back to a viable sustainable situation.
Obama only blew the problem into a bigger bubble and looming fiscal crisis to where we will hjave to bail out the tbtf banks once again.
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In the immediate short term yes, but in the longer term we would have purged the system of the mal investment, bad actors, bad debt, etc and got back to a viable sustainable situation.
Obama only blew the problem into a bigger bubble and looming fiscal crisis to where we will hjave to bail out the tbtf banks once again.
or we would have been plunged into a much deeper recession with much worse consequences
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Like what? By every measure we are worse off.
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is CA not part of the US
have you not bitched about how f'd up the US is hundreds of times?
If you had a clue you'd realize that CA gives more to the Federal government than they get back
You're pretty fucking stupid, aren't you? What does California being part of the US have to do with my point? Not much as it has fuck all to do with my argument. Texas is part of the US, too, and it's much different from CA right now, hence why it has created 50% of all jobs while California is bleeding them. This was about individual states, not the US as a whole.
You failed at reading comprehension and are now trying to save face because you can never be wrong. ::)
No one gives a fuck about how much CA gives to the federal government. Your state is tens of billions of dollars in debt and it's only getting worse....despite the fact that you have some of the highest taxes in the country (that includes corporate, income and sales). You continually elect people who have the economic knowledge of a 4-year-old and then you think you're in a position to lecture the rest of the country on economics. You're in no position to talk as you and the cronies you've elected have obliterated the world's 8th largest economy.
CA = the poster boy for failed socialist experiments.
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Like what? By every measure we are worse off.
seriously man
what are the Republican alternatives
have they offered any solutions to any of our problems ?
No they have not and they couldn't give a shit either
They truly only represent the 2% of the most wealthy people (real and corporate) and that's it
Look at the issue of letting the Bush tax cuts on the most wealthy expire, getting rid of tax credit for oil companies or accelerated depreciation on corporate jets, etc...
These things have widespread support among ALL voters but Republican Senators and Congressmen are against them
Repubs represent a tiny minority in the country and have no solutions and even worse, no interest in finding solutions to the problems that affect the majority of the population
Repubs have nothing positive to offer and in fact might be causing and exacerbating the problems
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What a rambling, incoherent mass of text that doesn't say much of anything.
Here's a simple question for you and your Democrat sheeple: Where's the Democrat budget? How many years has it been now since the Democrats even proposed a budget, let alone passed one?
When they do something as simple as that then you can feel free to criticize the Republicans.
Since taking control of congress in 2006 the democrats have shown that the only thing they truly care about is how much money they spend. Nothing else.
This whiny, prepubescent rant isn't surprising coming from you, though. This is the same guy who thinks he knows more than the ratings agencies and who also claims that the Dems can spend their way out of this mess (because the trillions they've already dumped shows how successful that plan is).
My advice: stay out of talks about the economy as you continually embarrass yourself.
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false
TRUE!!
Obama makes Bush look like Ebenezer Scrooge.
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TRUE!!
Obama makes Bush look like Ebenezer Scrooge.
Doesnt matter - the obama cult that is vince, straw, benny, blacken, et al, will never admit to his disastrous tenure in office.
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Straw can kindly show himself out of this thread now.
Thanks for stopping by!
http://www.cnsnews.com/node/72404
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629969453946717.html
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2009/02/obamas-trillions-dwarf-bushs-dangerous-spending
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How Obama Spells Failure? S-T-I-M-U-L-U-S
Townhall.com ^ | July 6, 2011 | Bob Beauprez
Back in February of 2009, the newly inaugurated Barack Obama warned that without passage of his $800 billion stimulus plan, "an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe."
The President was so confident of his Keynesian spending barrage on steroids that he chided those who questioned him for presenting "phony arguments and petty politics."
Only six months later in August 2009, Obama claimed victory. "We've rescued our economy from catastrophe," he announced in a Rose Garden ceremony, even though unemployment stood at 9.4%.
His boasting was at best a bit premature. Two years later the economy is still in a rut. Among other claims that proved to be false, Obama promised his spending binge would prevent unemployment from exceeding 8.0%. It immediately shot beyond his self-imposed threshold to over 10% and stubbornly remains at 9.1% today. Fourteen million Americans remain technically unemployed by the government's statistics. In addition, another 6 million are unaccounted for having given up looking for a job and have left the workforce.
Obama said his plan would "save-or-create" 3.5 million jobs, but new job creation has been the most stubborn of any recession since the Great Depression. Government is about the only place that has increased in employment, which only added to the growth in federal spending. Consumer confidence continues to sag, reaching a seven month low in July. Economists at the Fed have revised downward their already modest projections for 2011 growth to a yawnable 2.7 – 2.9%.
As the recession drags on instead of bold predictions and victory celebrations, the President has changed is tone. All those "shovel ready projects funded by the stimulus that were going to jolt the economy and create jobs "weren't so shovel ready" after all he dismissively joked. This recovery is "going to take time" he now says, and instead of criticism of his failed policies, Americans need to just "be patient."
What he doesn't mention is that while he and his Democrat sycophants implemented his failed plan, the national debt has increased almost $5 trillion – about 50 percent – in just over two years. Government spending as a percent of GDP has increased about 25%. We're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar our government spends. By the end of 2011, the total debt will equal the nation's entire economic output. And, his own budget analysts tell us to expect much more of the same for years to come.
Obama's economic stimulus plan is now almost universally considered a failure. There are volumes of evidence to back up the indictment. One of the best examples is also one of the most simple offered by Jeffrey Anderson in The Weekly Standard.
Anderson reviewed the just released Seventh Quarterly Report on the effects of the Stimulus by Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. These are the three inside guys hand-picked to put the best face possible on the President and his Administration. The report claims that the Stimulus saved-or-created 2.4 million private or public jobs.
In addition to all the legitimate reasons to doubt the White House's calculations and claims of "saving" jobs, Anderson notes that six months ago, the same quarterly update by the Council claimed 2.7 million jobs had been added or created, which would seem to be an admission by the White House that the Stimulus has actually caused the economy to shed nearly 300,000 jobs in the last six months, and that the economy would have been better off without it. That's something many of us have been saying for a long time.
Anderson also did a little simple arithmetic using the Council's own numbers. He divided the $666 billion the Council claims has been spent to date on those 2.4 million jobs for which they claim credit. The answer: each one of those saved-or-created jobs cost the taxpayers $278,000.
"In other words," Anderson concludes, "the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the 'stimulus,' and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead."
With his economic policies having failed, Obama is now campaigning for a second term. The only apparent change he's made to his economic thinking is to expand his class warfare to include the private jet industry. Failure should not be rewarded. The 2012 elections give us hope for a change in the White House.
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Straw can kindly show himself out of this thread now.
Thanks for stopping by!
http://www.cnsnews.com/node/72404
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629969453946717.html
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2009/02/obamas-trillions-dwarf-bushs-dangerous-spending
GET THOSE FACTS OUT OF HERE YOU RACIST!!!!!!!!!
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BBBBOOOOMMMMMMMM
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Obama's Stimulus Waste: $7 million per House on Internet Access
Townhall.com ^ | July 8, 2011 | Bob Beauprez
________________________ ________________________ __________________
In our blog post of July 5, 2011 we cited analysis of the recently release quarterly summary report of Barack Obama's Stimulus that concluded the Administration spent $278,000 per job they claimed to have "saved or created" with the $666 billion the White House has spent thus far of the more than $800 billion authorized by the legislation approved in 2009.
The Administration used the Stimulus as a private slush fund to funnel vast amounts of money to programs and industries favored by the President.
One of his campaign pledges was to expand broadband internet access, particularly to rural areas, and with the Stimulus check book in hand, Obama proceeded to deliver on that promise spending a total of $7.2 billion, with $2.5 billion specifically allocated to "Rural Utilities Service" (RUS).
Jeffry Eisenach and Kevin Caves of Navigant Economics, a financial and economic analysis and consulting firm looked at the results of Obama's rural broadband expansion efforts. The results aren't very pretty.
The Navigant analysts evaluated programs in three areas: Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northern Minnesota that received Stimulus funds to extend broadband access to homes currently lacking service.
According to their report, it cost on average $349,234 per household.
But, it gets worse.
In the Montana region, there were actually a number of providers, including wireless, that already provided service in the area.
Eisenach and Caves found that if 3G wireless was included, only seven households in the entire region could be considered to be without any option for access. Thus, the cost to extend access to those seven homes was about $7 million each.
Like Einstein said of insanity, this was doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
According to the Eisenach and Caves, "Prior investigations have shown that RUS' broadband subsidy programs were not cost effective, and often funded duplicative coverage in areas already served by existing programs."
But, Obama funded it anyway – and sent American taxpayers the bill.
________________________ ___
Dear God this admn is a fucking disaster.
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Skip to comments.
Totals Stimulus Package Cost To Broadband Rural Areas: $349,000/home. $7,000,000/home In Montana!
Huckabee Show on FNC | Huckabee
Posted on July 10, 2011 9:26:20 PM EDT by MindBender26
On FNC, Gov Huckabee just revealed the cost to you and me to bring Broadband internet service to rural areas through Obama's Stimulus package. It was $349,000 per home, and you and I paid it!
In Montana, it was worse. The program made Broadband available to a total of 7 homes that did not have it available before, at a cost to you and me of $49,000,000. That's $7,000,000 per home.
The total cost was $7.2 BILLION... and we... and our kids... and their kids, paid the bill!
And does anyone doubt that Obama is trying to destroy America?
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BEST OF THE WEB TODAY JULY 11, 2011 The First Rule of Liberalism Government failure always justifies more government.
By JAMES TARANTO
www.wsj.com
Remember the "stimulus," or, as it was officially titled, the Recovery Act of 2009? It was President Obama's first major legislative initiative, enacted the month after he took office with only Democratic votes in the House and just three Republicans in the Senate (one of whom was a Democrat by that summer). The price tag was huge, some $800 billion, or 50 times the size (in nominal terms) of the stimulus Bill Clinton proposed at the outset of his presidency. Congress killed the $16 billion Clinton stimulus because it was too expensive.
Unemployment that January was 7.6%, and Obama's economic advisers warned that it could rise as high as 8% without the stimulus. With the stimulus, it rose as high as 10.2% in October 2009. Last month's rate was 9.2%, still 1.2 points higher than the level the stimulus was supposed to prevent us from ever reaching. By contrast, in January 1993 unemployment was 7.3%. Without the Clinton stimulus, it had declined to 6.5% by the end of that year.
Oh well, at least school janitors in Nebraska have "diversity manuals," as the Omaha World-Herald reports:
The Omaha Public Schools used more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars to buy each teacher, administrator and staff member a manual on how to become more culturally sensitive. . . .The authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that "channel wealth and power to white people," that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should "take action for social justice."The book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and "ableism," defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities. . . .The Omaha school board approved buying 8,000 copies of the book--one for every employee, including members of the custodial staff--in April. Your tax dollars at work! Or rather, your tax dollars will be at work for years paying the interest on the money the federal government borrowed from the Chinese to pay Omaha's diversity-manual bill.
Associated Press
'We were largely successful.'
Now, one might reasonably object that this is but an anecdote. The law of averages makes it a certainty that some of the stimulus money found its way to less utterly appalling uses than this one. What it didn't do, however, was accomplish its stated objective: keeping unemployment from rising above 8%.
Here is how Obama, in a press conference this morning, described this failure: "We took very aggressive steps when I first came into office to yank the economy out of a potential Great Depression and stabilize it. And we were largely successful in stabilizing it. But we stabilized it at a level where unemployment is still too high and the economy is not growing fast enough to make up for all the jobs that were lost before I took office and the few months after I took office."
And Yasser Arafat is in stable condition.
One school of thought is that the so-called stimulus failed because it was, as former Enron adviser Paul Krugman puts it, "woefully inadequate." This is the economic analogue of the Kagan Principle, which liberal Supreme Court justices would use to limit freedom of speech: The more stubbornly corrupt the government is, the more justified it is in curtailing fundamental liberties in the name of preventing corruption.
It's a common refrain among those who lust to increase government's size and power: Every failed measure justifies more of the same. Poverty programs make it harder to escape poverty? We need more poverty programs! Racial preferences heighten racial division? We need more racial preferences! And a diversity manual for every janitor in the country! When ObamaCare ends up driving the costs of medicine up and the quality and availability down, you can bet the people who created that monstrosity will claim it failed only because it didn't go far enough.
Let's generalize this into the First Rule of Liberalism: Government failure always justifies more government. As Obama said today, complaining about Republican pressure to cut spending: "I'd rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes--like new programs." Fortunately for the country, the voters don't always agree.
Enronomics
One more funny Krugman bit--this from his blog at the New York Times website:
The truth about our slump--that we know how to fix it, that we could fix it in a year if we had the political will, but that bad ideas and worse politicians are standing in the way--makes people uncomfortable. They want to believe that we have a deep problem, and that's why we're in such a mess.The truth is that the fault lies not in our structure, but in ourselves.We're uncomfortable because we know how to "fix" the slump within a year? That's the problem? Getting that kind of advice, it's a wonder Enron didn't go bankrupt. Oh wait, it did.
Great Moments in Political Analysis
Rather audaciously, President Obama is trying to use the current talks over the debt limit as a way of pushing through another huge tax increase. House Republicans, thus far at least, are holding the line. Writing on the Fox Business website, economist Peter Morici argues that they're making a mistake:
Saturday evening, Speaker [John] Boehner pronounced that a grand deal on deficit--slashing it by $4 trillion dollars over 10 years--was not possible, because the President insists on higher taxes as part of the package. He was giving in to pressure from his right wing, led by Majority Leader Cantor.The hard reality is that Cantor is politically tone deaf, Barack Obama is not, which explains why the former is a Congressman and the latter is a President, and the 2012 elections are not like [sic] to change that.Just as President Obama and Speaker Pelosi mistook their 2008 victory as a mandate for a hard left agenda and got shellacked in 2010, Cantor & Company, with their severe conservative agenda, are taking Republicans down the same well trod path of hubris and defeat.So to sum up those last two paragraphs: Unlike Obama, Cantor is tone-deaf, just like Obama.
Anything I Can Do, You Can Do Better?
"We men just make bad decisions. We can't help it. We're men. Women, on the other hand, do almost everything better."--David Weidner, MarketWatch.com, June 14
"At Thursday's White House meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out in stark terms the awful economic repercussions of allowing the debt ceiling to lapse. Everyone in the room agreed that defaulting on U.S. debt would be disastrous and that something must be done. At that point, Nancy Pelosi asked: Why couldn't the debt ceiling be decoupled from deficit reduction? Her query, after so many weeks of reports and talks centered on deficit reduction tied to a debt ceiling deal, visibly surprised some leaders in the room, several Republican and Democratic sources say. Obama politely informed the House Minority Leader, those same sources say, that that train had left the station weeks ago."--Time.com, July 8
Was the Prof Pickled?
Two years ago liberals were outraged when angry constituents confronted Democratic congressmen at public "town hall" meetings to object to ObamaCare and other liberal policies. Now the left has come up with a way of striking back: by confronting other people's congressmen at nonpublic gatherings.
Susan Crabtree of TalkingPointsMemo.com reports that last week Susan Feinberg, a professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark, N.J., was dining at "the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis" when she spotted Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, at a nearby table.
Feinberg, whose website identifies her as an adviser to the 2004 Kedwards campaign, became "appalled" (TPM's word), "stunned" (her own word) and "outraged" (TPM's again). "She approached the table and asked Ryan 'how he could live with himself' sipping expensive wine while advocating for cuts to programs for seniors and the poor," according to TPM. Feinberg snapped some pictures of the wine bottle at Ryan's table. Then "the manager and a waiter came over and Feinberg decided she had said her piece and it was time to leave."
It turned out Ryan's friend had ordered the wine, which sold for $350, but congressional ethics rules meant Ryan got stuck with the tab, which he helpfully provided TPM. It also turns out Feinberg had been tippling as well:
"It was my birthday, and I'd had half a bottle of great wine with dinner," she wrote in an e-mail to TPM. "I wasn't drunk, but I was certainly emboldened to speak my mind."Was she drunk? "We've all had birthdays like that," notes blogress Ann Althouse. "How much does Prof. Feinberg weigh? I'd like to calculate her level of intoxication." She is not obese, to judge by the photo on her website and the line that says she ran a marathon in 2002--though there is no indication of her height.
Another relevant question is whether she drinks habitually. Here she might have revealed more than she intended. Consider that quote: "It was my birthday, and I'd had half a bottle of great wine with dinner." At the very least, there is a tension between her subsequent protestation that "I wasn't drunk" and her seeming compulsion to justify what she drank.
It seems to us Feinberg doesn't want people to think she is a frequent heavy drinker. And she probably isn't one--in which case she would have a low tolerance for alcohol. That would help explain her wild behavior after half a bottle of wine, a quantity that might not have much effect on a more experienced drinker.
Another Glass of Whine, Please, Garçon
President Obama's views on same-sex marriage are "evolving," which means that he's for it but is waiting to say so publicly until he's sure he won't pay a political price for it. That prompts a defense in the Boston Globe from another evolver, John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking former junior senator who by the way served in Vietnam. From his op-ed we learn that Kerry is still ticked off about not being president:
Pundits ask whether President Obama can afford to "change" his position on gay marriage. It's a phony debate about a real issue.Marriage is deeply personal - our positions are based on unique combinations of reason, belief, and experience, not polling and politics. Everyone is entitled to his own view, in his own time, including the president.Can gay marriage be a political weapon? Surely it once was. In 2004, a flyer produced by Republicans proclaimed that if I were elected president, men would marry each other. It was a political season in which the Senate calendar was hijacked to debate a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, an amendment I opposed. At our national convention in Boston that summer, I said, "Let's never misuse for political purposes . . . the Constitution of the United States. The high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place." In these last seven years we have come closer to that "better place."Poor Kerry. Men are marrying men anyway, yet he never got to be president. Or, to put it another way: They told Glenn Reynolds that if George W. Bush was elected, men would only be able to marry women. And for once they were wrong.
Leading by Example
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Omaha Schools Spend $130,000 in Stimulus Money to Buy 8,000 "Social Justice" Diversity Manuals
The Blaze ^ | July 12th | Jonathon M. Seidl
If I told you that your tax dollars (130,000 of them) went to buying a "diversity" manual that asserts the government and other institutions create advantages that "channel wealth and power to white people" and calls on educators to "take action for social justice," what would you do? And if I told you that such a manual was required staff reading in Omaha, NE schools, what would you say?
Don’t believe me? Read on to learn about "The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change."
The book is a manifesto on cultural awareness. But what it calls for, some might say, is quite counter-cultural. The Omaha World-Herald details some of the work’s jaw-dropping statements.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
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