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Obama Lied; The Economy Died
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| The17sss |
A lovely Op-Ed from Tony Blankley in yesterday's Washington Times.
| quote: | I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the last eight years.
Thus, I have chosen as my lead, the proposition: Obama lied; the economy died. Obviously, I am borrowing this from the Democratic Party theme of 2003-08: "Bush lied, people died." There are, of course, two differences between the two slogans.
Most importantly, I chose to separate the two clauses with a semicolon rather than a comma because the rule of grammar is that a semicolon rather than a comma) should be used between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction. In the age of Barack Obama, there is little more important than maintaining the integrity of our language - against the onslaught of Orwellian language abuse that is already a babbling brook, and will soon be a cataract of verbal deception.
The other difference is that George W. Bush didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was merely mistaken. Whereas President Obama told a whopper last week when he claimed he was not for bigger government. As he said Tuesday night: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President's Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government - I don't."
This he asserted though the budget he proposed the next day asks for federal spending as 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), higher by at least 6 percent than any time since World War II. Moreover, after 10 years, Mr. Obama's proposed spending as a percentage of GDP would still be 22.6 percent, nearly 2 percentage points higher than any year during the Bush administration, despite the full costs of the terrorist attacks of Sept, 11, 2001, the Iraq and Afghan wars and the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Consider also his assertion in his not-quite-State of the Union address that: "My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we're starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."
But, lamentably, a few days later, The Washington Post reported: "A senior administration official acknowledged yesterday that the budget does not contain $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. Instead, the figure represents Obama's total efforts at deficit reduction, including tax hikes [of more than $1 trillion] on families making over $250,000 a year. It also includes hundreds of billions of dollars 'saved' by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq."
Only a big government man would think of calling a trillion-dollar tax increase a spending cut or "saving." Technically, of course, it is true. A trillion-dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed. And, from the perspective of the federal government, a trillion dollars taxed is a trillion dollars saved from the greed of the taxpayers who produced the wealth - and might well want to spend or invest it in non governmental activities.
But the foregoing are merely pettifogging numbers compared to Mr. Obama's bigger ideas about energy and health care.
Our president shares a fascinating idea about energy with most of what used to be known as the "small is beautiful" crowd. It is a curious phenomenon that one needs a very big government to enforce the beauty of small.
As Mr. Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, said last year: The price of electricity in America is "anomalously low." You see how much smarter that Nobel prize winner is than you. You probably thought you were already spending enough on electricity and fuel.
And sure enough, Mr. Obama explained last week that in order to make alternative energy sources wind, solar - perhaps eventually human muscle power? - economically competitive, he intends to raise the price of carbon-based energy until it is so expensive that even solar power will be such-a-deal.
This level of destructive irrationality cannot be accomplished in the private sector. It will take a very big government indeed to bring such inanities into being. (disclosure: being rational, I give professional advice to carbon-based energy producers.)
If President Obama were to try to misrepresent his positions for the next four years, there would be nothing he could say that would approach the inaccuracy of his claim last week that he is not for big government. It is the essence of the man and his presidency. He doesn't like America the way it has been since its founding - and it will take an abusively big government to realize his dreams of converting America into something quite different.
If you don't know that, you don't yet know Barack Obama. |
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| Alex |
| So you really hate Obama, huh. Don't lose it man. At this rate by the end of his presidency you'll either have jumped off a building or been arrested by the Secret Service. |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | | Only a big government man would think of calling a trillion-dollar tax increase a spending cut or "saving." Technically, of course, it is true. A trillion-dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed. And, from the perspective of the federal government, a trillion dollars taxed is a trillion dollars saved from the greed of the taxpayers who produced the wealth - and might well want to spend or invest it in non governmental activities. |
Think about this really hard.
Think about it.
It doesn't make any ing sense. :stongue: :stongue:
It's nice to see you enjoy articles written by completely illogical out of touch morons. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
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:wtf:
God, the Washington Times has really jumped the shark again.
It's now somehow wrong to point out that the United States enjoys lower costs for carbon-based energy sources than Europe, just because conservatives who pay electric bills don't have experience with costs anywhere else?
And human muscle power? :wtf:
What are you trying to point out with this god-awful op-ed? That Democrats are out of touch with the people because they deal in facts and not simply slander? |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
Think about this really hard.
Think about it.
It doesn't make any ing sense. :stongue: :stongue:
It's nice to see you enjoy articles written by completely illogical out of touch morons. |
What don't you get about it? I rather enjoyed the article, even if it was a bit tongue-in-cheek in parts. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
:wtf:
God, the Washington Times has really jumped the shark again.
It's now somehow wrong to point out that the United States enjoys lower costs for carbon-based energy sources than Europe, just because conservatives who pay electric bills don't have experience with costs anywhere else? |
Who gives a where the U.S. compares to Europe? Is that the best rationalization we have for raising costs (which will undoubtedly be passed through to consumers) during one of the worst economic environments in the last century?
| quote: | | What are you trying to point out with this god-awful op-ed? That Democrats are out of touch with the people because they deal in facts and not simply slander? |
I might point out that politicians are horrible economists. They are nothing more than binge spenders who think that hair-of-the-dog is actually a cure for a hangover. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Who gives a where the U.S. compares to Europe? Is that the best rationalization we have for raising costs (which will undoubtedly be passed through to consumers) during one of the worst economic environments in the last century?
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I don't think it was ever used as a rationalization - certainly not in the context of this article, which dropped that whole paragraph in for what seemed like the sole purpose of casting our new Energy Secretary as out of touch. Of course the consumer thinks prices are high - when don't they? |
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| jerZ07002 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Who gives a where the U.S. compares to Europe? Is that the best rationalization we have for raising costs (which will undoubtedly be passed through to consumers) during one of the worst economic environments in the last century?
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how about raising the cost of petroleum products will result in a significant reduction in the transfer of wealth out of the US (the US imports on averages about 12 million barrels of petroleum per day, which at the current price per barrel comes to about 200 billion of US dollars leaving the country)? Once those dollars leave the country it helps develop Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc...
The increased cost of energy will result in US jobs and a re-circulation of our own wealth within our own country. People seem to overlook this little fact. While an individual may pay more for energy under obama's plan, that increased expense is also likely to become income of another american at some point. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
Once those dollars leave the country it helps develop Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc...
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There's actually a good deal of political economy research that shows the effect of resource rents on underdevelopment, so it's really a lose-lose situation. All one has to do is think on the situation in the Nigerian delta to see that the "resource curse" is a very real issue in most places that have significant oil deposits.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/m...ln_essay.1.html
| quote: | Take a look at Nigeria, which has the misfortune of possessing more than 35 billion barrels of oil, much of it around the Niger Delta. When I visited last year, traveling through stunted mangrove swamps near Port Harcourt, there was a near-absence of birds, and oil was everywhere - not only dripping from rusty platforms atop the delta waters, but in the water itself, in the air, which smelled of petroleum, and in the gas flares that are a scalding feature of the injured landscape. Because of a host of political and economic ills triggered by the drilling, the Niger Delta is alive not with marine life but with violence - bands of tribal warriors wage an off-and-on war against one another and army troops.
Ecuador is another victim. After oil was discovered in its Oriente region in 1967, Texaco and a state-owned oil company operated an extraction program that, a quarter century later, had reduced parts of the Amazon to a deforested miasma of pollution and poverty. Chevron, which purchased Texaco, now faces a billion-dollar lawsuit accusing it of poisoning the land. Ecuador had a negligible foreign debt before oil was found but now owes $16 billion and, the greatest insult of all, more than 70 percent of the population now lives in poverty.
The harms suffered by these countries (and many others) are symptoms of what is known as the resource curse. Though it seems counterintuitive - countries with a lot of oil are lucky and rich, right? - a succession of studies, the most notable of which was conducted by the economists Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner, show that countries dependent on natural-resource exports experience lower growth rates than countries that have nonresource economies, and they suffer greater amounts of repression and conflict too. The reasons are complex - and there are exceptions to these dismal rules - but in general, a reliance on oil discourages investment in other industries, makes governments less responsive to the desires of citizens and fosters corruption by officials seeking and receiving funds that are not their due. An oil state is, almost by definition, a dysfunctional state.
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To a large extent, even Saudi is a highly dysfunctional regime.
In any case, this just goes to show that America's reliance on carbon-based fuel is a lose-lose situation for both consumer and supplier. |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
What don't you get about it? I rather enjoyed the article, even if it was a bit tongue-in-cheek in parts. |
| quote: | | Only a big government man would think of calling a trillion-dollar tax increase a spending cut or "saving." Technically, of course, it is true. A trillion-dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed. And, from the perspective of the federal government, a trillion dollars taxed is a trillion dollars saved from the greed of the taxpayers who produced the wealth - and might well want to spend or invest it in non governmental activities. |
It's not what I don't get, it's what you guys seem to not get.
Read the paragraph.
A trillion dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed.
That is the biggest load of ing bull I've ever heard. There's no possible way to come to that conclusion logically. If you make 2 million dollars a year and your taxes increase by 4%, are you gonna skip buying a new BMW and put more money in the bank instead? :stongue: If you make that much money you're not going to intentionally stop spending it just because of a relatively minor increase in your taxes. You might put less in the bank, but I don't see why someone in that position would stop spending money on things they want and or need just because of a small percent increase in their taxes.
Do you guys want to keep pretending that tax cuts for the wealthy spur the economy like no other? Were you all frozen in carbonite the last 8 years while we were doing just that? |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
It's not what I don't get, it's what you guys seem to not get.
Read the paragraph.
A trillion dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed.
That is the biggest load of ing bull I've ever heard. There's no possible way to come to that conclusion logically. If you make 2 million dollars a year and your taxes increase by 4%, are you gonna skip buying a new BMW and put more money in the bank instead? :stongue: If you make that much money you're not going to intentionally stop spending it just because of a relatively minor increase in your taxes. You might put less in the bank, but I don't see why someone in that position would stop spending money on things they want and or need just because of a small percent increase in their taxes.
Do you guys want to keep pretending that tax cuts for the wealthy spur the economy like no other? Were you all frozen in carbonite the last 8 years while we were doing just that? |
It may be a broad brush, but it's a simple comment. Perhaps it depends on each person's marginal propensity to consume, however in the arena of aggregate demand the author is simply saying $1T more for the government is $1T less in the "consumers'" pocket. Why is it such a stretch to believe that consumers won't spend what they no longer have? Especially now that we are all so keenly aware of the debt/leverage problem that got us here. , Clovis, with that backdrop it's not even a stretch to say that pulling $1T away from consumers will cause them to contract their spending by even more than $1T since savings rates are on the rise (and thankfully so!). With less of a DPI cushion, a consumer might be even more inclined to save whatever else he/she can.
Quit watching Star Wars and get with the program. For an interesting look at taxes/spending/economic growth, I posted an interesting analysis by Paul Kasriel in another thread--it's a great read, you should check it out.
Here's the link
Look at what huge tax increases did in the 1930s--particularly when they were increased at a much higher rate among the "rich." |
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| Capitalizt |
Even if they don't spend the money and chose to save or invest it instead, it would still do a hell of alot more good for the country than if the government gets it's greedy claws on it. Money is never doing "nothing" unless it is being truly useless by sitting under a mattress. Fortunately most rich people don't put their money under a mattress. They tend to put it into banks which then lend money to entrepreneurs and consumers..or they invest it in other productive enterprises which create jobs and wealth.
Contrary to what the left believes, money left in the hands of the people who earned it is never "lost" or "wasted". It is always working to improve the economy in one way or another..and each dollar is likely to do much more good in their hands than under the direction of a disconnected bureaucrat in Washington. |
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