Archive for the ‘Stimulus’ Category

VIDEO – JOHN STOSSEL – TOP 10 POLITICIANS’ PROMISES GONE WRONG

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

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HURICANE SANDY RELIEF BILL IS FILLED WITH SPECIAL INTEREST PORK

Monday, January 28th, 2013

 

WASHINGTON TIMES

HENSARLING: Government to use

Sandy ‘relief’ as cover for … more

spending

Billions earmarked in non-storm-related expenses

By Rep. Jeb Hensarling

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

  • EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  The Sandy relief bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate — the same Senate that has refused to pass a budget in the last three years — includes $150 million for fisheries as far away as Alaska, $8 million to purchase cars for the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, $58.8 million to replant trees that were damaged on private land, $135 million to improve weather forecasting, and $10.78 billion largely for future construction improvements to public transportation not even related to Hurricane Sandy. In fact, 64 percent of the so-called “emergency” funding in this bill will not be spent until 2015 or later.
There is no doubt that Hurricane Sandy rendered unspeakable damage to lives and property on our East Coast. It truly represents one of the great natural disasters of recent history. For millions of our fellow citizens, the devastation has been unfathomable. We are a compassionate nation, and that is why this week the House of Representatives is taking up its second Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

Sadly, Hurricane Sandy isn’t the only disaster we face as a nation. The tragic reality is that our nation is broke. We have amassed more debt in the last four years than was accumulated from President George Washington through President Bill Clinton. Our spending trajectory is unsustainable by any account. Our swelling $16.4 trillion debt threatens our national security, our economic well-being and our children’s very future. If we don’t quit spending money we don’t have, it is they who will become the next victims — think Greece. It is past time to re-examine the proper role of the federal government in providing disaster relief and how that relief is financed. (more…)

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DEEPER IN DEBT TO GREEN ENERGY

Monday, November 5th, 2012

 

News & Observerwww.NewsObserver.com
 Oct 17,2012

Deeper in debt to green energy

By Charles Lane – The Washington Post -Charles Lane is a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board

Al Gore is about 50 times richer than he was when he left the vice presidency in 2001. According to an Oct. 11 report in The Washington Post, Gore accumulated a Romneyesque $100 million partly through investing in alternative energy firms subsidized by the Obama administration.

Two days after that story ran, Mitt Romney proclaimed at a rally in Ohio’s Appalachian coal country: “We have a lot of coal; we are going to use it. We are going to keep those jobs.” Thousands cheered.

The juxtaposition speaks volumes about the Democratic Party, and about modern liberalism generally. As the Democrats become more committed to, and defined by, a green agenda, and as they become dependent on money from high-tech venture capitalists and their lobbyists, it becomes harder to describe them as a party for the little guy – or liberalism as a philosophy of distributive justice.

Gore’s sanctimony doesn’t help. The erstwhile Tennessee populist bristles at any suggestion that his climate crusade is about money. And, no doubt, he cared about the planet before he got rich. Still, his investments, including in such flops as Fisker, the maker of $100,000 plug-in hybrid cars, create a patent conflict of interest. This hurts his credibility – if not about climate change per se, then certainly about the particular solutions he advocates.

But that’s not the worst contradiction in the Democrats’ doing-well-by-being-green ethos. Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy – the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means. (more…)

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PEGGY NOONAN – HOW FAR OBAMA HAS FALLEN

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

 

The Wall Street Journal

  •  November 1, 2012

Noonan: How Far Obama Has

Fallen

From historic figure to beleaguered incumbent in less than four years.

  • By PEGGY NOONAN

So where are we? A softly catastrophic storm left us, in the Northeast, shocked at the depth and breadth of its power to destroy. Everyone who could be was hunkered down Monday waiting it out, and at first we hoped it might not be as bad as we’d been warned, because we’d all seen higher wind and harder rain. But the waters rose and wouldn’t stop, breaching dunes, overwhelming barriers, filling the tunnels and subways like a bathtub, as somebody said on TV. It was—is—a true crisis. So far, our political leaders have done pretty well. But the hard part will be from here on in—getting things up and operating again without the original adrenaline rush.

New York’s mayor, Mike Bloomberg, was sterling—a solid, unruffled giver of information whose news conferences were blessedly free of theatrics save for his gifted sign-language interpreter, who wowed a city and left the young evacuees in my apartment furiously signing “Where’s the coffee?” and “I think the baby needs to be changed.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was his usual compelling self, similarly informative. This is a man who knows a levee from a berm. He is one tough red-state player on a blue-state field. If Mitt Romney loses, will Mr. Christie garner Republican criticism for his hearty embrace of president Obama just days before the election? Yes, he will. Will it hurt him in Jersey? Not a bit. Will it help Jersey? Yes. They are cold and wet and running out of food in the house. Keep your friends close and your president closer.

The “I” of the storm was New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo. He was equally competent and effortful but took the mildly hectoring tone of a kind of leftism that is now old. It involves phrases like “As I’ve long said.” I think this is the worst and I was appalled and when I was at HUD I handled storms and I learned a great deal and I saw we were prepared and I am relieved and I will work hard and I need you to know global warming is what I told you it was.

The winning politicians of the future will not be all about I. People don’t like it. They don’t want to have to wade past the ego to the info.

***

Which gets us to Tuesday. No one knows what will happen. Maybe that means it will be close, and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe a surprise is in store. But the fact that Barack Obama is fighting for his political life is still one of the great political stories of the modern era.

Look at where he started, placing his hand on the Bible Abe Lincoln was sworn in on in 1861. It was Jan. 20, 2009. The new president was 47 and in the kind of position politicians can only dream of—a historic figure walking in, the first African-American president, broadly backed by the American people. He won by 9.5 million votes. Two days after his inauguration, Gallup had him at 68% approval, only 12% disapproval. He had a Democratic Senate, and for a time a cloture-proof 60 members. He had a Democratic House (256-178) with a colorful, energetic speaker. The mainstream media were excited about him, supportive of him.

His political foes were demoralized, their party fractured.

image

AFP/Getty Images

He faced big problems—an economic crash,two wars—but those crises gave him broad latitude. All of his stars were perfectly aligned. He could do anything.

And then it all changed. At a certain point he lost the room. (more…)

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BOOK REVIEW: SHADOWBOSSES BY MALLORY AND ELIZABETH FACTOR

Friday, October 5th, 2012

 

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Shadowbosses’

Reviewed by Grover G. Norquist – Special to The Washington Times

 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

SHADOWBOSSES: GOVERNMENT UNIONS CONTROL AMERICA AND ROB TAXPAYERS BLIND
By Mallory Factor with Elizabeth Factor
Center Street, $24.99, 336 pages
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  Why can President Obama impose expensive regulations on coal miners and steel workers? Because those industries he is damaging are small potatoes compared to the public-sector unions that now fund his campaigns. He doesn’t care about unemployed coal miners. They are not paying customers. Most miners now are non-union.

Mallory and Elizabeth Factor have written an important and powerful new book, “Shadowbosses,” that explains the symbiotic relationship between the modern Democratic Party and today’s labor unions. One is not possible without the other. Democratic politicians pass laws that give union leaders power over workers, and union leaders use that power to take “dues” money from workers to give to Democratic politicians.

Last year, in 2011, 16.3 million workers who belong to unions (in every sense) had $14 billion taken from them in union dues. Much of that money flowed into political campaigns as cash and to pay “volunteers.” Labor unions are the skeleton and muscle of the modern Democratic Party.

Before the federal government passed the Wagner Act in 1935 forcing workers to join unions as a condition of employment, only 8 percent of Americans chose to join unions voluntarily. Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt’s legislation giving unions power over workers, once a union was in place, it did not need to ask workers to join. They paid dues or did not work.

Before the creation of government-empowered unions, the Democratic Party was the party of the discredited Confederacy, and from 1860 to 1932, of 15 presidents only two were Democrats: Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson only won because Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Progressive, splitting the Republican vote.

When Herbert Hoover imposed massive tariffs, hiked the new income tax to 75 percent and spent like Barack Obama, he deepened a recession, and Franklin Roosevelt was able to win the 1932 election. FDR continued Hoover’s policies of higher taxes, “stimulus” spending and government regulations. He might have lost the next elections. But FDR created a new extension of government — labor unions with powers over workers to extract union dues. With government relatively small, those unions were in factories and there was a limit to how high wages and work rules could go without bankrupting businesses. Union power was constrained by its interest in the health of the overall economy.

Over time, unions killed off much of the auto, steel, mining and manufacturing industries in the United States. They went on the prowl, looking for new sources of dues money — and they found it in government workers: police, fire, teachers and generic bureaucrats. (more…)

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VIDEO – HOW THE ECONOMY WORKS UNDER OBAMA

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

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CAN OBAMA LEARN FROM THE SUCCESSFUL ECONOMIES OF SWEDEN AND CANADA?

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

May 14, 2012

By Warren Beatty

Will Obama learn from Sweden?  Will he learn from Canada?  Or will he cling to the European socialist economic model that is currently failing?

Sweden

Anders Borg, Sweden’s finance minister, reduced Sweden’s deficit and created economic growth.  There is one thing that Borg did: “Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, Borg reduced the size of government and cut taxes.  His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut.”

Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that Forbes magazine selected Canada as the No. 1 country in the world in which to do businessForbes stated, “Credit a reformed tax structure.”  On New Year’s Day, 2012, Canada’s corporate tax rate — both federal and provincial rates combined — fell to 25%, giving Canada the lowest rate in the Group of Seven countries and a more competitive economy on a global basis.  In annual steps, Canada lowered the federal rate from 22% to 15%, while the provinces now have a common rate of 10%.  The gradual lowering of the corporate tax rate appears to have resulted in little loss in corporate tax revenue.

Between 1992 and 1996, Canada’s central government departments saw their budgets cut by an average of 20%.  Aware that efficiency savings and pay freezes alone would be insufficient, the prime minister Jean Chrétien (Canadian PM from November 1993 until December 2003) ordered that all non-essential national government spending be cut.  Under a system called Program Review, a committee of senior civil servants demanded that all departments nominate spending programs that a lean national government should not be funding.

Canada, in April 2012, added far more jobs than expected and marked the biggest two-month employment gain in more than 30 years.  With a Canadian population one-ninth the size of that of the United States, it would be as if the U.S. economy had added about 1.3 million jobs in two months.  Economists say the Canadian unemployment rate would be 6.4% if reported in the way the U.S. calculates its rate.  The Canadian economy has recovered all the output and jobs, including full-time positions, that it lost in the 2008-09 recession.

Now let’s look at what has not/is not working in what is increasingly becoming socialist Europe — namely, the European Union (EU); its (mostly rejected) austerity program; and France, Greece, and Spain.

European Union and austerity

In place of austerity, there is a growing belief that there may be some magical, pain-free way out of this economic crisis, but this is an illusion.  Resolving the eurozone crisis depends upon the continuing willingness of Germany to bail out irresponsible economies.  But why should Germans continue to write checks for people who are not prepared to accept the consequences of their own fiscal irresponsibility? (more…)

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OBAMA’S CUTS TO THE MILITARY, BUT NO CUTS TO ENTITLEMENTS

Sunday, April 1st, 2012

OUR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES SHOULD BE MAKING THE VOTERS VERY MUCH AWARE OF OBAMA’S    HUGE CUTS TO THE MILITARY WHILE NOT CUTTING ENTITLEMENT SPENDING.

Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)

A Path to Security

Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly

April 2, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 28EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  To be sure, these are only first steps toward undoing the damage of the Obama years. In 2009, President Obama’s first year in office—and while ramming an $800 billion “stimulus” bill through Congress—the White House directed $330 billion in defense cuts. The next year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates went looking for “efficiencies” to reinvest in priority programs; thank you, said the president, I’ll take another $100 billion from your budget. And under the 2011 BCA, Obama harvested $487 billion from the Pentagon, charging it with the full bill for cuts needed from all “security” accounts, as the law described them. So Barack Obama has racked up about $920 billion in defense cuts to date.

Rep. Paul Ryan calls his budget plan the “Path to Prosperity,” but it could be termed as well a “Path to Security.” In reclaiming more than $200 billion of the nearly $500 billion in military cuts made in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA), the House Budget Committee chairman takes national security more seriously than does our commander in chief.

To be sure, these are only first steps toward undoing the damage of the Obama years. In 2009, President Obama’s first year in office—and while ramming an $800 billion “stimulus” bill through Congress—the White House directed $330 billion in defense cuts. The next year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates went looking for “efficiencies” to reinvest in priority programs; thank you, said the president, I’ll take another $100 billion from your budget. And under the 2011 BCA, Obama harvested $487 billion from the Pentagon, charging it with the full bill for cuts needed from all “security” accounts, as the law described them. So Barack Obama has racked up about $920 billion in defense cuts to date.

But the president wants more. Because the congressional “supercommittee” could not agree to the larger savings mandated in the budget control law, the president’s 2013 budget does nothing to keep the sequestration guillotine from coming down on October 1, chopping an automatic $55 billion per year out of defense budgets, allocated across each and every program. That would push the administration’s defense-cut total past $1.4 trillion. Though he commands troops involved in an ongoing war, Obama won’t lift a finger to avoid what his defense secretary has described as a catastrophe, unless taxes are raised. The net effect, as Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, is that the United States will no longer be a global power. (more…)

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KARL ROVE – ‘THE ROAD WE’VE TRAVELED’ WITH OBAMA

Saturday, March 31st, 2012
The Wall Street Journal

  • March 21, 2012,
  • ‘The Road We’ve Traveled’ With Obama

Three dismal years are spun into 17 minutes of fact-challenged campaign film.

By KARL ROVE

This month, Barack Obama’s re-election campaign released a 17-minute film, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” that previews the Democratic general election narrative. Directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, the film explores Mr. Obama’s most important decisions.

Viewers are told Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession “as deep as anything . . . since the Great Depression.” He accomplished this in part, so the film says, by bailing out the auto companies—deciding not to just “give the car companies” or “the UAW the money” but to force them to “work together” and “modernize the automobile industry.” The president, we’re told, also confronted “one of the most worrisome problems facing America . . . the cost of health care.”

Abroad, Mr. Obama ended the Iraq war and, in the “ultimate test of leadership,” Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch. The film heralds Mr. Obama as a leader committed to “tough decisions” and as someone who “would not dwell in blame” in the Oval Office.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the last statement: Mr. Obama has spent three years wallowing in blame. His culprits have ranged from his predecessor, to tsunamis and earthquakes, to ATMs, to Fox News, to yours truly. If you Google “Obama, Blame, Bush” and “Obama, Inherited,” you’ll get tens of millions of hits. (more…)

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JIM DEMINT – A ROTTEN HIGHWAY BILL

Thursday, February 16th, 2012
The Wall Street Journal

  • FEBRUARY 15, 2012

Ready for Another Rotten Highway Bill?

We can dramatically cut the federal gas tax. States could adjust their gas taxes and make their own construction and repair decisions without costly union regulations.

By JIM DEMINT Mr. DeMint is a Republican senator from South Carolina

The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that our national debt could nearly double over the next 10 years—to an astounding $29.4 trillion from $15 trillion today—so you might think Washington would be looking to stop the fiscal train wreck. You’d be wrong.

Despite all the hyperventilating about a tea party takeover in Congress, the sad truth is that in 2011 Congress increased spending from the year before, raised the debt limit by $2 trillion, and funded ObamaCare.

The highway bill is the latest example of Washington’s bipartisan addiction to big spending. Every six years, Congress passes a spending bill that divvies up the revenues from the federal gas tax and other highway user fees. The money goes into an account called the Highway Trust Fund, and for decades Congress has promised not to spend more on roads and bridges than is available in the trust fund.

But the trust fund has run dry thanks to reckless spending and wasteful earmarks, so Congress bailed out the highway program—to the total tune of about $35 billion—in 2008, 2009 and 2010. (more…)

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