Free Form

Utterly Unsuitable
The president didn’t utter the word “stimulus” Thursday night — apparently it’s unsuitable for polite company — but according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the first Obama stimulus saved or created up to 3.6 million jobs and may have shaved two percentage points off the unemployment rate. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 9/13/2011)


The Democrat election year answer to the moribund economy is already clear:  it could be much worse!  Obviously, that is just about all they can say, but it is not going to get much traction with voters.  On the CBO, one thing that the Dems taught us during the Obamacare debate is that it can be gamed.  It goes like this -- Dems: assume our bill will generate $100 billion in savings.  Question to the CBO:  how much in savings will our bill generate?  CBO answer: $100 billion.  Dems: see, our bill will save $100 billion!


Imprecisely
Precisely because they believe in both government and the marketplace, Democrats are always more ready to compromise. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 9/11/2011)


A recent example of the Democrat Party's reflexive urge to compromise is Obamacare wherein they rammed through a bill that would nationalize healthcare on a party-line vote. Or is that being too harsh?

Been So Long

Building a Mystery
President Barack Obama is seeking to build public support for his $447 billion jobs plan before formally sending the bill to Congress Monday. The president will promote the jobs plan, which focuses on tax cuts and new spending, during an event in the Rose Garden Monday morning. He will send the bill to Congress later in the day.  Obama will be joined in the Rose Garden by teachers, police officers and firefighters, all of whom the White House says would benefit from the bill's passage.  (NYT, 9/12/2011)


A.K.A. the Jobs Bill to Reward My Union Supporters Who Will Contribute to My Re-election Campaign.


He's Like a Rainbow
Green guru Al Gore is seeing red -- and might just talk himself blue.  The former vice president and outspoken climate-change defender plans a 24-hour worldwide presentation called "24 Hours of Reality" to combat the country's growing disbelief in his contention that man's actions have dramatically shaped the planet's climate and caused a rash of extreme weather.  (Foxnews.com, 9/12/2011)


RedStateVT warned everyone that this was coming and no one did anything about it.  The former Vice President has come unhinged and now this is the result.  Meanwhile from the same article .....


Public perception of climate change has steadily fallen since the "Climategate" scandal in late 2009. A Rasmussen Reports public opinion poll from August noted that 57 percent of adults believe there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming, up five points from late 2009.


The same study showed that 69 percent of those polled believe it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs. 


Cram-u-lus
First, instead of passing a targeted antirecession package, Congressional Democrats crammed the stimulus bill with spending on everything from Head Start and Pell Grants to high-speed rail and renewable-energy projects. The hope was that the legislation would do more than just kickstart a recovery: It would lay a new foundation for the economy, with an electric car in every garage and a Solyndra solar panel on every roof. The result, predictably, was a bill that looked less like a temporary exercise in crisis management and more like the Democratic Party’s permanent wish list. (Ross Douthat, NYT, 9/11/2011)


Great column from Douthat on Stimulus 1, even as Obama tries to stick us with Stimulus 2.  

Take It To The Bridge

Droning On
Autonomous UAS and human warriors all make mistakes. Missions fail. Innocents get hurt or die. When a person screws up, he's tried and punished if guilty. Justice is served. You can't, however, take a robot to court.  So who would be at fault following an errant drone strike? (AOLNews.com, 9/9/2011)


The expanded use of drone attacks is one of the bright spots of Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East.  So, of course, his friends on the Left are concerned that if accidents happen in the fog of war, there will be no one to second guess and prosecute.


Demons
Best line from Ann Coulter's Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America...


"...liberals are hidebound reactionaries when it comes to recent innovations such as government pensions: It's the thousand-years-old building blocks of civilization they want to shatter.  The definition of "family" and "human life" are up for grabs, but the retirement age for Social Security is written in stone tablets."

Overboard

Organized labor and business leaders are on board, Mr. Obama said. “We just need Congress to get on board,” he said, prompting cheers of “Four more years!” from an audience filled with members of unions for autoworkers, public employees, service industry workers and teachers. (NYT, 9/6/2011)


Previewing President Obama's speech on Thursday:


--I inherited the bad economy. (Not my fault)
--The stimulus was working until it ended and the Republicans would not approve more. (Not my fault)
--Infrastructure spending. (Jobs for my union supporters)
--Avoid teacher layoffs. (Jobs for my union supporters)


Meanwhile...


President Obama will this week be addressing a joint session of Congress that doesn't really want to hear from him about a jobs plan that he doesn't really have. (WSJ, 9/6/2011)

Whipsaw

Blessed Union
As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they were free from labor regulations. (E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, 9/4/2011)


See below....


At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees. (NYT, 9/5/2011)


No word from E.J.


Demanding
O.K., I know what the usual suspects will say — namely, that fears of regulation and higher taxes are holding businesses back. But this is just a right-wing fantasy. Multiple surveys have shown that lack of demand — a lack that is being exacerbated by government cutbacks — is the overwhelming problem businesses face, with regulation and taxes barely even in the picture. (Paul Krugman, NYT, 9/5/2011)


By our count this is Krugman's 328th column advocating more government (deficit) spending, including the old liberal chestnut - more spending on "infrastructure."  What is it with Republicans?  How could they not want to repair our nation's roads and bridges?  The fact is, the roads and bridges get repaired when they need to be repaired.  Throwing gobs of money at it - as was done with Stimulus 1 - leads inevitably to the waste that we saw. Of course, Krugman and the Left will never be honest and call what they are proposing what it really is - a gift to unions.  


As far as taxes and regulations, here is our suggestion.  Let's try cutting both for business and see what happens.  Prediction?  Hiring picks up and business booms.

Stop the Hands of Time

Higher and Higher
Nonpartisan analysts and the Congressional Budget Office have credited the first stimulus package with helping to end the recession and keep unemployment from growing even higher than it did. They say the winding down of the federal government’s help this year has contributed to the economy’s stall. (NYT, 9/3/2011)


They did? Did we miss a memo?  RedStateVT is currently reading Ann Coulter's latest book - Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America.  One of Coulter's most powerful tools is pointing out how liberals rewrite history to tell the story that they want to tell about themselves.  We now see this above in the story of the Great Recession - Obama had the thing under control until the mean Republicans refused to go along....  


Severity
The president rejected a proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that would have significantly reduced emissions of smog-causing chemicals, saying that it would impose too severe a burden on industry and local governments at a time of economic distress......  The impact would have been felt heavily in a band of Midwest and Great Plains states that are not themselves major sources of ozone pollution and that will be critical 2012 electoral battlegrounds. (NYT, 9/3/2011)


Kid yourself not.  Should Obama get re-elected this regulation is back.  Just as we have predicted that Obama's 'evolving view' of gay marriage will become fully evolved at that same instant.


Depreciated
Citicapital, the financier of Burlington Telecom to whom the city owes more than $33.5 million, filed suit Friday in federal court seeking repossession of all equipment and millions of dollars in repayment and damages.


“BT continues to use Citibank’s equipment and vehicles unlawfully and without its permission and continues to depreciate the value of Citibank’s assets in order to generate revenue for itself,” the financial giant’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.


The city-owned utility provides television, Internet and phone services to some 4,000 residents and has been in arrears for much of its existence. Burlington Telecom also violated its state license by spending cash from general city accounts to keep the utility afloat. The provider has been unable to make payments to Citicapital, and the bank responded Friday by suing the city in federal court in Burlington.  (Burlington Free Press, 9/3/2011)

How exactly is Progressive Central down in Burlington going to get out of this one we wonder?  Our guess is that  it will be a combination of a friendly judge and liberal vilification of the mean old bankers.

Code of Living

Bubble Bath
The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation. (NYT, 9/2/2011)


Meanwhile, Barney Frank - who put political pressure on Fannie and Freddie to buy up more loans - walks the Earth a free man.


Irksome
But the dynamic, which Democrats largely blame Republicans for, has irked many of them, especially on the Hill. “I think it is unprecedented of a leader in the Senate of either party to say the most important goal he has is to make the current president a one-term,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. “That is about respect, that is about priorities and it is just wrong.” (NYT, 9/2/2011)


Barbara Boxer weighs in.  Boxer who, of course, is well known for her civility towards President Bush.  Just kidding!


To The Races
There is the persistent and deeply uncomfortable question of race. Many African-Americans, including black lawmakers, and even white Democrats, have complained that some of the disrespect for Mr. Obama stems from distaste among some whites at the idea of seeing a black man in the Oval Office. (NYT, 9/2/2011)


An African-American can never run for president.  Wrong.  An African-American can never get his party's nomination for president.  Wrong.  An African-American can never be elected president.  Wrong. The Left will just never move beyond the issue of race, no matter what the facts have been.  And so they have to cling to increasingly absurd arguments like an African-American president is not 'respected' by his political opponents.