Deja Vu: In a Carteresque speech Wednesday, the president said we should tax our way out of despondency and dependence on fossil fuels. The American dream isn't slipping away. It's being stolen by big government.
It might as well have been President Carter addressing the audience of students and faculty at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. Instead it was President Obama who spoke of our dependence on fossil fuels and blamed everybody and everything, except for a lack of presidential leadership, for our current situation.
On July 15, 1979, President James Earl Carter gave what has become known as the "malaise" speech. He didn't actually use that term. Instead, he spoke of "a crisis in confidence ... that strikes at the very heart and souls and spirit of our national will."
On Wednesday, Obama spoke of the "feeling of not being in control of your own economic future — that sense that the American dream might slowly be slipping away."
In fact, the American dream is being taxed away by a government already spending our children's inheritance.
Carter spoke of an energy crisis that was "the moral equivalent of war" and of our "intolerable dependence on foreign oil." Obama warned of "our continued dependence on fossil fuels (that) will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet."
But it's our continued dependence on government, expanded under this administration, that will smother the American economy and people.
Obama also blamed "greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street" along with oil "corporations taking dangerous shortcuts to compromise safety." And don't forget those rascally Republicans: "Before I was even inaugurated, the congressional leaders of the other party got together and made a calculation that if I failed, they'd win."
Captain Queeg is still searching for the missing strawberries.
Sorry, but there's no one to blame for the president's failed policies but the president — from the trillion-dollar stimulus that created no jobs to the nationalization of health care that will lead to ballooning deficits, doctor shortages and rationing. It is the president who is failing, and the voters will remember in November.
As bad as things are, they'll get worse under policies Obama announced in the speech. He noted that the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill and that a similar plan sponsored by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry is stalled in the Senate.
"I want you to know the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months," he said. "The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century." If the votes will be found as they were for the health care overhaul, this could get expensive.
He said the transition from fossil fuels is possible "if capital comes off the sidelines." That's a tough sell when his favorite energy sources don't work when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.
"And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution." In other words, a carbon tax.
As the Heritage Foundation notes, subsidizing experimental energy sources doesn't become more attractive because oil pollutes our waters. In Louisiana alone, Heritage reckons, Waxman-Markey would result in the loss of 15,000 jobs, higher gas prices and rocketing consumer electric rates. Whom will Obama blame that on?
What Obama offers is a skyrocketing misery index, unsustainable debt and oppressive, job-killing taxation.
If the students at Mellon were anxious, they had reason to be. We have labeled Jimmy Carter our worst ex-president. He may soon have a rival for that title.
Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection.
I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership. ...
I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership. ...
do NOT count on it...
even if he wanted to, which I doubt, his 'friends', bankrollers and puppeteers need mr. Uganda Andropov in place to cover up a few more tricks, appoint a few more bastards and hand out a few more contracts.
For those who just care about negroes chasing a ball, Andropov was a supreme soviet president whom many supposed had died in office quite some time before the news broke out. Chernenko (a KGB executive) was appointed next, then Gorbachev.
Insiders claim Andropov was dead when he wrote letters to world leaders; sovietologists argued the military and party nomenklatura put that little interval to veeery good use.
A new analysis of the U.S. economy shows that since 2007, the private sector has lost 10.5 million jobs while the public sector has added 720,000 jobs, creating a "death spiral" for the nation's economy.
The study comes from The Free Enterprise Nation, a nonpartisan national membership/advocacy organization for individuals and businesses that make up the private sector.
The analysis was done using statistics about employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The recession of the last two years exacerbated the larger problem that already was in place, it revealed.
"Over the 10-year period between March 2000 and March 2010, the private sector lost over three million jobs, while the public sector gained nearly two million jobs," the analysis concludes.
Among the changes were California's loss of 665,800 jobs in the private sector. But government in the Golden State added 163,800 jobs.
Also, Michigan lost 791,700 private-sector jobs, a "staggering" 20 percent. Government bureaucracies, however, kept all but 7 percent of their positions.
Jim MacDougald, president and CEO of The Free Enterprise Nation, recently appeared on the Fox News Channel to talk about a new campaign called "I own you."
Further:
North Carolina showed a 10-year loss of 138,200 private-sector jobs, or 4 percent of its private-sector workforce, while adding 127,100 government jobs, a 20 percent increase.
Colorado's population increased by 17 percent in the past decade while losing 3 percent of its private-sector jobs. Government employment increased by more than 17 percent during the same time frame.
Tennessee lost 157,300 private-sector jobs while adding 13,900 in government agencies.
While Texas added 616,000 private-sector jobs, it also added 295,200 government jobs, almost one bureaucratic position for every two positions in private enterprise.
Florida also added private-sector jobs overall – 39,600. But it also added 127,100 government positions.
Massachusetts lost 168,700 private-sector jobs but still found the need to add 7,500 government jobs.
Wisconsin lost 149,400 private-sector jobs; added 22,300 to government payrolls.
"The consequence of this employment shift is that a smaller number of private-sector employers and workers are saddled with the tax burden of financially supporting a growing government workforce," said MacDougald.
"Since public-sector workers are paid more on average in compensation and benefits than private-sector workers, it is financially unsustainable for the government to continue to grow while the private-sector workforce shrinks," he said.
He explained to WND that while the problem is massive, there is the potential for a solution.
"There are 89,000 taxpayer-supported entities that make up the 'public sector,' and no one is in charge of their collective efforts. About one-half of the 22 million public-sector workers are in public education. (And only about one-half of the people employed in public education are teachers!)" he said.
"It is possible that the federal government thinks it can solve the unemployment problem by hiring more people, but, if so, it would be another indication of just how far removed from reality the federal government's economic policies are," he said.
"Our population grew by 25 million from 2000 to 2010. We needed to create at least 20 million new jobs. Instead, we lost 3 million in the private sector. The 'shortfall' of 23 million jobs could not possibly be made up by government hiring, as they would have to double in size in order to do so," he said.
The real problem is not necessarily with the number of government jobs but the cost of their "huge pensions, early retirement and health-insurance benefits."
"That is where the real 'cost of government' is," he continued. "As numbers of workers in the private sector decrease, and public-sector hiring increases, it places an impossible burden on those individuals and businesses left who actually pay taxes.
"Unfortunately, the current approach is to charge more taxes to those who actually pay federal income taxes (one-half of tax filers), and businesses. Businesses (employers) have no choice but to reduce overhead, which means fewer domestic workers. A death spiral," he warned.
The solution would be a hard pill to swallow for many, he warned.
Among the moves that would help would be to terminate all government pension plans, "vesting everyone 100 percent in benefits accrued to date." Pensions could be replaced with a type of 401(k) retirement plan that is funded by employer contributions.
Then there would be need for a hard look at what government actually does.
"Do we NEED government to do that for us? If not, stop doing it," he said.
Next would be to ignore – or better yet banish – public-sector unions.
A "zero-based" staffing and budget plan would require officials to review what work is required and how many workers are needed to do it.
"Public policy-makers must ask: How many people do we NEED to do what we are hired to do? Do we really NEED one administrative/management employee for every teacher? Once those questions have been asked and answered, we must rebuild each public-sector entity from scratch," he said.
"We have to 'reinvent' the public sector, based on a fundamental requirement that it serves the taxpayer, not the other way around. It is a huge job to do, and it will take years. There is no silver bullet. But it can be done," he said.
WND columnist Dan Mangru also has criticized the government's "fuzzy math".
And longtime top-rated radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock said more and more federal spending just depresses the economy.
"Three professors at the Harvard Business School, in a study titled 'Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?' have concluded, based on 40 years of data, that federal government spending does not stimulate local business spending. In fact, the opposite occurred. The more federal spending, the less corporate spending," he reported.
"And the same results show up whether the state is large or small, whether the firms are large or small over a period of 40 years. In fact, the study shows the results 'most pronounced in geographically concentrated firms and within the industries that are the target of the spending.' In plain speech, federal 'bacon' is toxic to economic growth in the private sector," he wrote.
In his recent trip to Racine, Wisconsin, President Obama claimed that his stimulus policies worked and “saved jobs.” He also said that his policies staved off another Great Depression. But lets take a look at some of the graft, waste and pointless, useless, wild-eyed spending that was in his so-called stimulus.
$5 million to create a geothermal energy system for a shopping mall in Tennessee. The mall is over half empty of tenants and has had falling shopper attendance for years *
$1.57 million to Penn State University study fossils in Argentina *
$100,000 to a puppet theater in Minnesota *
$2 million to build a replica railroad tourist trap in Carson City, Nev. *
A boat cruise company in Chicago got almost $1 million to “combat terrorism” *
$500,000 went to Ariz. State Univ. to study ant genetics *
Another $450,000 went to Univ. of Arizona to study ants *
Almost $400,000 went to Univ. of New York to pay students to drink beer and smoke marijuana for a study there *
$219,000 to the Nat’l Institute of Health to study if young people “hook-up” after getting drunk *
$210,000 to the Univ. of Hawaii to study bees *
$700,000 to crab fishermen in Oregon to pay for lost crab pots *
$5,000 a person tax rebate if you buy a new electric golf cart (Wall Street Journal)
Up to $1 million went to prisoners in $250 stimulus checks (FoxNews)
$54 mil to a New York Indian tribe to run its casino (New York Post)
$1 billion for a power plant in Mattoon, Illinois that is based on speculative science and may not even work **
$15 million to back-road bridges that get little traffic in Wisconsin **
$800,000 for a practically unused airport in Pennsylvania **
$3.4 million for an animal walk way under a road in Florida **
$1.15 million to install a guard rail for a lake that doesn’t even exist in Oklahoma **
$10 million to renovate a rail station that has stood unused for a decade **
$578,000 to battle homelessness in Union, New York even though the town says they have no homeless people there **
$233,000 to the Univ. of Calif. to study why Africans vote… in Africa ***
$2 million to build a new fire house in a Nevada town that has no firemen ***
North Carolina schools got $4.4 million for literacy and math coaches… to teach their teachers! ***
$54 million for a railroad project in Napa Valley went to a minority-owned company that then hired a local construction company for half the price, pocketing the rest ***
A California company was given $15 million in stimulus money to monitor water quality in a stream it was under indictment for polluting previously***
Well, obviously this is just a tiny list of the graft, waste, and useless spending in Obama’s so-called stimulus bill but it serves to illustrate the fact that stimulating the economy was far from the minds of those congressmen that voted for the bill. It was more about paying off constituents than stimulating the economy.
As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, "Obama, there you go again."
The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.
Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This "community organizer" knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.
It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Meanwhile, he has kept the union workers of GM and Chrysler employed (with taxpayer money). He has made sure that most government employee union members got their annual raises for sleeping on the job (with taxpayer money). He made sure that his voters got handouts mislabeled as "tax cuts" even though they never paid taxes (with taxpayer money). And he made sure that major campaign contributors collected billions off government stimulus (with taxpayer money).
As far as the taxpayers -- the people who actually take risks with our own money to create small businesses and jobs and pay most of the taxes -- we require protection under the Endangered Species Act.
You won't find proof of the damage Obama is doing on Wall Street, but rather on Main Street. My friends are all part of the economic engine of America: Small business. Small business creates 75 percent of new jobs (and a majority of all jobs). I called one friend who was a wealthy restaurant owner. He says business is off by 60 percent. He's drowning in debt. He won't last much longer. His wealth is gone.
I called another friend in the business of home improvement. He says business is off 90 percent from two years ago. My contractor just filed personal bankruptcy. She won't be building any more homes. The hair salon where I've had my hair cut for years closed earlier this year. Bankrupt. But here's the clincher -- ESPN Zone just closed all their restaurants across the country. If they can't make it selling cheap food and overpriced beer with 100 big screens blaring every sporting event on the planet to a sports-crazed society, we are all in deep, deep trouble.
I've polled all my friends who own small businesses -- many of them in the Internet and high-tech fields. They all agree that in this new Obama world of high business taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and workers compensation taxes, the key to success is to avoid employees. The only way to survive as a business owner today is by keeping the payroll very low and by hiring only independent contractors or part-time employees provided by temp agencies.
The days of jobs in the private sector with big salaries, full benefits, and pensions are over. We've all seen where those kinds of jobs get you as a business owner -- in Bankruptcy Court or surviving on government welfare like GM and Chrysler. Or in the case of government itself -- completely insolvent, but surviving by ripping off taxpayers and fraudulently running printing presses at the Fed all day and night to print money by the trillions.
Unfortunately, small businesses don't have the power to impose taxes or print money. So unlike government, we'll just have to cut employees and run lean and mean.
It has now become clear that, outside of the burgeoning field of Census takers, there will be no major increase in new jobs for years to come. Outside government, Obama has created a wasteland of economic ruin and depression that looks much like the landscape of Mel Gibson's first movie "Mad Max." Without a printing press in Obama's world, you're just plain out of luck.
The days of believing the Obama propaganda about a jobs recovery are over. The trillion-dollar corporate handouts (neatly named "stimulus") may have kept big business in the money for the past 18 months, and artificially propped up the stock market, but small business is the real canary in the coal mine.
My small business-owning friends aren't creating one job. Not one. They are shedding jobs. They are learning to do more with fewer employees. They are creating high-tech businesses that don't need employees. And many business owners are making plans to leave the country. In a high-tech world where businesses can be run from anywhere, Obama has a problem. His one-trick pony -- raise taxes, raise taxes, raising taxes -- is chasing away the business owners he desperately needs to pay his bills.
So who is going to pay Obama's taxes? Not his voters. They want government to pay them. Who is going to create Obama's jobs? Not his voters -- they've never created a job in their lives.
So what is Obama going to do? Maybe he can get Pamela Anderson on the line.
Wayne Allyn Root, a former vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, writes from Henderson. His column appears every other week.
Let me first always remind readers that polls are a snapshot in time. Two years from now, President Obama could be sitting on top of the world politically. But for now, he has lost all but 38 percent approval from the critical "independent" American voters. They're the ones that gave him the presidency. He appears headstrong in his determination to show the nation what a disastrous presidency looks like.
Pundits often point to the presidency of Jimmy Carter as the modern example of a failed leader. It is no secret that I have, despite my former years as an active Republican, always viewed the Carter administration with a kinder overall assessment than have most of my friends. That's partly because, like Carter, I'm a Georgian. I grew up knowing many Carter friends and associates. I also know many behind-the-scenes stories that shape my view of him.
I no longer feel the need to defend Carter, largely because of the direction the Obama presidency has taken. Let's compare the two administrations.
First, national health care. It was Carter's intra-party nemesis at the time -- the rabidly liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, now deceased, who pushed Carter over and over to create a universal health care program. Carter demurred. He suggested that instead it should be brought about incrementally. He figured an immediate, all-out push for it might bust the national treasury. Imagine that!
Now consider Iran. Because of Carter's unwillingness to simply cave in to every demand of the Iranian militants who overthrew the Shah's government, Iranian extremists stormed our embassy in Tehran and took hostages. This calamity was likely the single issue that sealed Carter's doom when he ran for re-election. Few know that Carter's own chief of staff, the late Hamilton Jordan, took a tremendous physical risk when he operated in disguises in trying to negotiate the hostages' freedom. And when it became clear that Carter's longsuffering negotiations were failing, he at least tried a daring, if poorly executed, rescue of the hostages.
Fast-forward to today. The United States government and some in media seem obsessed with appeasing anybody and anything Islamic. Only the latest example is the decree from NASA that its "foremost" mission is to recognize and appreciate the contributions of Muslims to science.
More, we seem unable to properly respond to crises, or even to recognize them as such, when they happen. That's the case in the Gulf of Mexico. Massive amounts of oil continue to gush at a rate far greater than was first admitted. We've all read and heard about oil-skimmers and other ships unavailable for clean-up duty because of government red tape and concessions to American labor unions. State governments' requests for early help defending their coastlines were all but ignored.
Jimmy Carter's response to a tragedy like this might have been a blunder. Who knows? Yet I have little doubt that by now he would have tried something -- anything -- daring and bold to help save the coastlines of what, after all, is his own native region of the country.
Look, I'm not trying to boost Carter into the "top 10 presidents list." I do want to point out that Carter spent much of his time fighting with Democratic congressional leadership that was more liberal than his own administration was.
Plus, the Carter administration didn't view every real or perceived crisis as a political "opportunity." Quite the contrary: The Carter administration learned that crises can lead to political demise. Where did that demise eventually come from? Independent voters. They had committed to Carter because they were weary of Watergate and President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. They wanted change they could believe in.
President Obama had better rethink his governing philosophy of implementing liberal policies at every opportunity. He desperately needs to convince Americans that he will tackle a crisis and run the government with moderation.
The so-called "Georgia Mafia" of the Carter years may have earned a bad name in the history books, but Obama's "Chicago Mafia" is making Carter's crowd look like a band of consummate professionals.
Thirty-eight percent approval from independents. Who could have guessed it?
