Quickie: That stimulus plan sure is working…

Or not. Take a look at how much each job is costing us taxpayers.

And the government wants to control healthcare huh?

Quickie: 10.2

It sure would be nice if some of the stimulus effects we were promised would kick in one of these days.

Quickie: What? Stimulus Job Results Have Been Exaggerated? No, I don’t Believe That!

Yep, it’s true.

I know all of you are floored right now.

Quickie: Another Enemy for the Obama Administration to Target

That’s right, all of the economic problems comes from high executive pay, not the frivolous hundreds of billions wasted by the administration on stimulus bills and bailout packages or the trade war started against the Chinese or the administration’s willingness to raise taxes.

I can’t wait until the executive pay drops and all of our problems are over!

The Great Climate Change Boondoggle: Part Two.

Yesterday, I only brushed on the growing skepticism that the Environmental Left is experiencing regarding global warming and man’s supposed impact on it in Part One of The Great Climate Change Boondoggle. I would have loved to present more information; however, the post would have run thousands of words long, rather than the hundreds that it did. If you are interested in finding more information regarding scientists and political leaders that refuse to drink the global warming Kool-Aid, check out the following articles:

“No climate debate? Yes there is.” by Jeff Jacoby.

“A Closer Look at Climate Change.” by Mark W. Hendrickson.

“Planet Gore” on nationalreview.com.

Before I continue, let me just say that I am not against protecting the environment. In fact, far from it. I do believe in prohibiting corporations, governments and individuals from needlessly harming the environment through sensible restrictions and laws.

I do not, however, condone radically changing our way of life or seriously undermining our economic prowess based on shoddy scientific evidence… and that is precisely what is being proposed in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is steamrolling through Congress as we speak.

The main section of this 1,500-page behemoth of a bill is the so-called “Cap-and-Trade” plan. In a nutshell, Cap-and-Trade works like this (from americanprogressive.org):

Each company has a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas that it can emit. The company must have an “emissions permit” for each ton of carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere. These permits set an enforceable limit, or cap, on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that the company is allowed to emit.

It will be relatively cheaper or easier for some companies to reduce their emissions below their required limit than others. These more efficient companies, who emit less than their allowance, can sell their extra permits to companies that are not able to make reductions as easily.

Firms that exceed the carbon cap can also purchase extra permits from the federal government.

Now, the Center for American Progress is a liberal think tank, so I am not surprised that they are toeing the party line in this description. For the most part, they objectively lay out the program in a truthful manner, except they leave out one important word.

That word?

Tax.

“Emission permits” is a politically correct version of “tax” and a word they and the democrats pushing this bill desperately want to avoid when discussing it.

How much tax is the average family going to have to incur as a result of this plan? Well, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, about $1,600 per household, per year, just on extra energy (utilities and gas) costs. So much for not raising taxes on 95% of American, right President Obama? (Do keep in mind that these projections are notoriously low).

A Heritage Foundation analysis finds that Waxman-Markey would, by 2035, raise electricity rates 90%, gasoline prices 74% and residential natural gas prices 55%.

Now, that’s just the direct impact on an average household right now. When you look at the impact this bill would have on the entire economy, this picture becomes more and more frightening.

The Obama administration has estimated the revenue value of these rights, if purchased from the government by private industry, will be as high as $1.8 trillion over 10 years. That’s $1.8 trillion out of the productive private sector and into the inefficient public sector.

Plus, this placement of an artificial cap on carbon emissions is bad enough; but what’s even worse is that the cap lowers every year. That means that year after year, the restrictions placed upon businesses becomes harder and harder to meet, making future economic growth smaller and smaller.

This slower growth will also mean that more and more Americans will lose their jobs, as companies need to find ways to come up with the $1.8 trillion in taxes that has just been dropped in their lap for the next decade. Don’t buy into the “Green Jobs” charade that the Obama Administration is selling right now either. Various researchers are discovering that we most likely would lose more jobs than we would gain and that many of these green jobs would be extremely non-productive and subsidized by the government...another tax.

This bill would also put more emphasis on energy sources that are renewable, but incredibly unreliable like wind and solar power meaning more and more roving blackouts that the good citizens of California currently experience.

By the way, the reductions in carbon emissions made possibly from this bill will essentially mean nothing if China and India don’t pass similar measures.

Guess what, neither of them have any plans to do so.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

“Stimulus” Bill update.

Remember back in February when the “Stimulus” Bill was about to be voted on and logical, principled arguments like, “how can anyone vote on it, as no one has had time to read it” were shrugged off due to the “emergency” situation we were in?

Remember the hysterical cries to push the bill through because every day that passed by without it meant thousands upon thousands of jobs were lost?

Remember the promises of quickly getting this money into the economy and therefore creating hundreds of thousands of jobs?

Remember how vital President Obama thought it was to pass the bill that he waited three full days to sign it (two of which were spent with Michelle on a Valentine’s Day getaway, less than a month into his term)?

So how’s that “stimulus” plan working out?

Well, let’s see…

1. Despite the absolutely ridiculous claims by the White House of 150,000 jobs being saved as a result of the “stimulus” plan (a claim that is totally unsubstantiated), the unemployment rate has gone from 7.6% to 9.4%...not good. What about those 600,000 jobs you keep promising Mr. President, where are they?

2. Only 6% of the “emergency” funds have been spent, showing that this “emergency” was nothing but a farce.

3. The Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board estimates $55 billion of the $787 billion will be lost to waste, fraud and abuse. This prompted Vice President Biden to opine, "We know some of this money is going to be wasted. There are going to be mistakes made. Some people are being scammed already." Lovely.

I know it’s early and I know that the president’s supporters will say, “How can you pass judgment on this plan this already?”, but the writing is on the wall, the “stimulus” plan hasn’t worked.

Yes, it is early; however, we are supposed to be reaping the rewards from this plan by now. It has been over four months since it’s been passed, when is it going to start working? I would love to know the date when it is ok to panic over the $1.1 trillion wasted on this “stimulus” plan (Don’t forget the $348 billion to finance this behemoth).

You see, this is why I rallied so hard about the bailout bill back in September. Besides wasting $750 billion on the initial financial bailout, it made us, the American public, desensitized to these astronomical dollar figures. Now, when we hear something will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, we don’t bat an eye. The outrage is gone. And now, what are we left with? Well, in this case a “stimulus” plan that has done anything but.

But don’t worry everyone, I’m sure President Obama has a well-thought out plan for all…Ha, ha, ha, ha!!! Oh man, I thought I could say that with a straight face.

Yeah, it’s not going to work, as you can’t spend your way out of an economic crisis.

But hey, all those million dollar guardrails and turtle highways are going to make great photo ops, won’t they? They will enable all of the politicians that supported this “stimulus” package to say, “See, look at what we did…you know, besides cripple the economy with unsustainable debt.”

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

I am outraged over the AIG bonus situation!

Can you believe what happened with the AIG bonuses!?!?!?

I am sorry, but I find this situation absolutely unacceptable!

A bunch of greedy people, taking money that they did not earn for no other reason other than they could!

Oh… did you think I was talking about the people at AIG?

Wrong!!!

I am talking about Nancy Pelosi and her flock of like-minded conformists in Congress.

Over the past couple of weeks, everyone from members of Congress, the Treasury Department up through the White House have expressed their “shock”, “disgust” and “outrage” over the bonuses AIG executives recently received.

My question is, why are they outraged?

They are the ones that agreed to, and approved, these bonuses…then later tried to lie about their involvement. In fact, they only became “outraged” over this after the bonus plan was leaked to the media. What a great example of how bankrupt in ideology these people are.

Take Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. He claimed he only found out about the bonuses on March 10 of this year, yet he was discussing the bonuses with Congressman Joe Crowley on March 3. Even if he got the dates mixed up, these bonuses have been agreed upon for months.

Chris Dodd, one of the earliest and most outspoken critics of AIG’s bonuses, claimed for days that he was unaware that the bonuses were included in the plan. Then he did an about face and admitted that, not only did he know the bonuses were part of the negotiated deal with AIG, but it was him who inserted the language approving the bonuses into the document!!!

Whether you agree with the bonuses or not is another debate. What cannot be debated is that the government reneged on the deal, plain and simple.

Since Congress has been caught red-handed, their only recourse is to tax the hell out of these bonuses…90% as the Pelosi plan outlines.

This is hardly justice…in fact it is highly unconstitutional.

Taxation is deemed Constitutional because, in theory, what one pays into the government takes back in services provided by the government (i.e. protection from the military, Medicaid, etc.).

That is not happening here.

These people are not receiving any additional services from the government after they have been taxed through the nose. They are arbitrarily being singled out and for what? There is certainly no policy reason behind it.

It is being done to quash popular outrage…not over the actions of the people of AIG, but rather the actions of Congress.

So that means that the government can arbitrarily hammer people with high taxation any time there is popular outrage over some deed or issue. That is a pretty frightening reality.

There is a bigger problem that this latest spectacle exposes about what is really going on in the economy as well.

We are constantly hearing that the Fed is pumping billions and billions of dollars into the economy to unfreeze credit and get people lending again.

Well, if anyone had not noticed, liquidity is not the problem. There is more than enough money in the markets to revitalize the economy, it is just that a number of large financial institutions are merely sitting on it right now.

Why is that?

Well, they are scarred to death that if they come to any agreement to lend money or purchase assets, the government is going to come in, renege on the deals and impose unknown fees, regulation and punishment. After all, if it can happen to AIG, it can happen to anyone. This fear is paralyzing the markets as the Treasury Department and the Obama White House have become loose cannons when dealing with the economy.

I am also outraged at the depiction and the treatment of the workers at AIG for taking these “bonuses”. I put “bonuses” in “” because they are not really a bonus like most people understand them to be. They are standard parts of most financial executive’s compensation plans. A number of these “greedy” executives, agreed to work for an annual salary of $1, with the understanding that they would receive these bonuses.

As AIG chief Ed Liddy explained on the Hill last week, the people receiving retention bonuses were not the same people who launched AIG's unhedged housing bets that brought the company down.

Those people are gone.

Yet, you have people like Congressman Barney Frank and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo treating these AIG executives as if they were criminals. As Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal pointed out, Cuomo even went so far as to threaten those that do not pay the money back (money they are contractually entitled to) that he would publish their names.

It is this thuggish, bullying attitude that will continue to incapacitate the market and make scapegoats out of innocent people.

So, in closing, if you are outraged over these bonuses, please be sure to direct your anger properly towards the members of Congress, not the AIG employees. They are the ones that are truly responsible for these bonuses.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

What ever happened to that “line by line” elimination of earmarks?

If you haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, you may have missed the fact that President Obama just signed a Congressional spending bill that had some earmarks in it and they will cost us taxpayers a little bit of money.

Oh yeah, by “some”, I mean 8,816 of them and by “little bit of money”, I mean $7.6 billion.

But Mr. President, I thought we you getting rid of all of those earmarks! After all, didn’t you say the following:

"We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress' seniority, rather than the merit of the project."

“Our earmark system, some call it pork-barrel spending, in Washington, is fraught with abuse. It badly needs reform.”

Oh yes, that’s right, that was candidate Obama speaking, not President Obama. There seems to be a growing gap between those two, doesn’t there?

Now I could sit here and list out the top offenders and the most absurd projects, but that’s already been done to death. I would rather explore the reasons behind the signing of this bill as I find that to be far more interesting... and troubling.

First, I have a question…why is he signing this bill in the first place?

Here’s a quote from President Obama about the bill just after he signed it:

"Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability.”

Have you ever heard a president sign a bill and within minutes start criticizing it? I mean if the bill is such a bad thing, why is did he sign it?

Well in my estimation, the answer to those questions can be one three choices.

Reason #1. He’s a liar.

I know that’s a rather plain way of putting it, but I think it’s appropriate in this case. He signed the bill because he lied to us. He lied throughout the campaign, he lied after he was elected and he’s lying to us now.

Reason #2. He’s lazy.

Here’s another quote from President Obama regarding this bill:

"I am signing an imperfect... bill."

Wait a minute, if it’s imperfect, why don’t you fix it?

It’s because he’s lazy.

We all know how much he loves his weekend getaways with Michelle and with his kids having Spring Break, Lord knows the business of our country has to take a back seat.

By the way, didn’t a large number of Governor Palin’s detractors say that a mother of five couldn’t be Vice President because her family would take away from the business of the country?

Reason #3. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are running the show.

While I think I was getting warm with the first three, I have a feeling I’m getting red-hot now.

Obama’s inexperience has been well documented and this is just the latest example of it, as he clearly could not control the party he supposedly leads.

If he could control them, I really think he would not be forced to sign this embarrassing bill filled with the very earmarks that he’s been heavily criticizing for the past nine months.

Truth be told, I really think this latest capitulation is due in part to a combination of all three options.

But who knows, maybe this is just a temporary course of action during “unprecedented times”.

Hopefully he’s telling the truth and this will be the end of business as usual as we all know it in Washington.

Hopefully, he will find some semblance of financial responsibility.

Hopefully, he will usher in the change that he promised, but so far, has failed to produce.

I can remain hopeful…just not optimistic.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John