Is The Stimulus Really Working?

President Obama took to the campaign trail, um, I mean the road today to speak (with his teleprompter of course) to a group of 25 police recruits who's jobs were "saved" by the stimulus.

"For those who doubt the success of the recovery plan, I ask them to talk to the teachers who are still able to teach our children" as a result of it," Obama said, also citing nurses, firefighters and police officers as among those helped by the plan.

"I ask them to come to Ohio to meet the 25 men and women who will soon be protecting the streets of Columbus because we passed this plan," he said. "I look at their badges today and know we did the right thing."

The police recruits will take their jobs thanks to a $1.25-million cash infusion from the recently passed stimulus package, a slice allotted after Mayor Michael Coleman personally pleaded his city's case to the White House.

Of course, if you read the whole article, you notice this little nasty bit of fine print.

The money Obama delivered will cover the officers' salaries for one calendar year, but police officials aren't sure where the funding will come from for next year's pay. They've halted all recruit training for the time being.

So by his own words, President Obama has said his stimulus package will save or create up to 4 million jobs. So, by my calculation, that's only 3,999,975 more jobs to go. Better get cracking Mr. President.

Dukes of Moral Hazzard

A reader comment from the Wall Street Journal in response to the Op-Ed "Dukes of Moral Hazzard."

I made a mistake. I got a mortgage that didn't overextend me and probably bought the right piece of property so it's not going upside down. As a reward I get to pay for TARP I, TARP II, the stimulus plan, mortgage nationalizations, bank nationalizations, and the AIG nationalization. What all else Obama will think up to punish me?

I couldn't have said it better myself.

President Obama is rewarding bad behavior while he engages in reckless spending and a doubling of the fiscal year debt in only 4 weeks on the job. I don't think that's the hope and change people were expecting.

Abject Failure

So how is President Obama's new style of "We'll Lend a Hand if You'll Unclench Your Fist" foreign policy going towards Iran?

Iran now holds enough uranium for a nuclear bomb.

Gee, wasn't Iran supposed to love us now that George W. Bush is out of office?

I'm still waiting to feel the love.

It's clear to me that this guy, our current President, just doesn't get it. You can't apologize to Iran. President Clinton already tried it and they laughed in his face.

And the problem with Iran gaining a nuclear bomb isn't that it will set off an arms race in the Middle East, which is what Obama thinks is the worst case scenario (which basically proves he just doesn't get it). No, the problem with Iran gaining a nuclear bomb is that Iran will now have a nuclear bomb! This is a country whose leaders have said that Israel is a stinking corpse and needs to be wiped off the map.

Do these sound like people you can negotiate with? Good Lord man, wake up!

USS Cole Families Press Obama for Answers

So I guess President Obama thought he could close Guantanamo Bay prison and everyone would cheer.

Well, the families of the sailors killed on the USS Cole aren't cheering.

They are demanding that Obama create a 9/11 style commission to investigate the bombing and they want assurances that those responsible will be punished. They are currently being held in Guantanamo.

According to the article, President Obama told them that he was willing to consider a 9/11 style commission to investigate the bombing. Of course, that would mean that this commission would be reviewing policies of the Clinton Administration.

Want to bet that there is no commission ever formed?

My Question for President Obama

Your party, the Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress.

If you think this stimulus bill is, to borrow a phrase, all that and a bag of chips, why not just pass the thing along a party line vote?

What purpose is served by going on television and whining about Republican opposition?

You'll get all the credit when the economy recovers and be able to blame the Republicans for standing in your way and it could lead to a bigger congressional majority in 2010.

Or do you not think this bill will work and you're really doing what you do best - give speeches in campaign mode? While you're in campaign mode, you might want to check Nancy Pelosi's approval numbers. They were lower that President Bush's. That's pretty hard to do.

My advice to you? Scrap the bill and start over.

My Immediate Stimulus

My big problem with the stimulus bill is that it's filled with more pork that a package of Farmer John bacon. Rather than detail all of it here, I'll let some people who've actually gone through it do it for me.

There are a lot of things in the bill that people can make an argument for funding. However, this is supposed to be an economic stimulus bill, not an appropriations bill. This bill's cost is up to $900 billion. Shouldn't we be asking how are we going to pay for all this? And with Congressional Budget forecasting that some of this money won't be spent until 2010 and 2011, how is that going to help the economy in the short term?

My proposal is simple.

1) Extend unemployment benefits for the next year. This will immediately help people who have been laid off.

2) Suspend the payroll tax for the next six months. This will immediately put money back in the hands of working people and their employers.

3) Cut every tax bracket by 5% and make it retroactive to last year. This will give everybody bigger rebate checks.

4) Cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. Make that permanent. Encourage more businesses to do business in America by bringing our corporate tax rate more in line with (and in some places lower than) the rest of the world.

Once those things are done, then we can look at spending government money on infrastructure building - like updating the national power grid, which really should be done. Currently, there is $4.5 billion alloted in the bill to update the grid. The problem is that a 2004 study estimated that is would take at least $165 billion to actually do it right. Who's paying attention to these figures?

Let's take those four steps I outlined above to provide immediate relief. Then Congress and the President can sit down and actually write a good bill rather than rush something through and get it wrong.

Hope and Fear?

At his inaugural address, FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, as he rallied Americans to rise out of the doldrums of the Great Depression. (Never mind that FDR's policies might have made the Great Depression last longer than necessary. That's a post for another date.) The point is that he was an eternal optimist and projected that to the American people.

Well, I guess Barack Obama is no FDR. In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, President Obama says that if Congress doesn't immediately pass his stimulus bill that "Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

Way to sell hope and change President Obama. Didn't you campaign by saying that President Bush's politics of fear was wrecking our country?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Rush Limbaugh vs. The Stimulus

Since President Obama has declared that Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republicans, Rush has decided to play along and offer his own version of a stimulus proposal in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today.

It's definitely worth reading.

Campbell Brown Pleasantly Surprised Me

Well, since I called Campbell Brown out for doing something wrong, I want to give her credit for doing something right. President Obama signed a law saying that if you were a lobbyist, you cannot work in his administration in the area you once lobbied for and you can't lobby his administration if you leave your job. Except then he applied for a waiver form his own law because his nominee to be Deputy Defense Secretary used to work for Raytheon, a really big defense contractor. I scoffed that this was politics as usual and I don't have a problem with lobbyists per se, as I think that everyone has a right to petition the government to be heard, but for the new "hope and change" president, this seemed like a really cynical move of "well, the rules apply unless I need them to be broken."

Campbell Brown takes issue with President Obama.

It's not as strongly worded as I would have done it, but at least some person in the MSM noticed and registered disappointment.

What I Hope For

Well, now that President Obama has officially taken the oath of office at the coronation, I mean, inauguration, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish him well. He has a lot of challenges ahead of him: Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia (can't forget them), out of control entitlement programs, the economy, and last but not least - tax and spend Democrats controlling Congress.

I will support him on issues where we have common ground and oppose, but not obstruct, him on issues where we disagree. I hope that he doesn't think that more government is the solution to all of our problems. I hope that he realizes that higher taxes are not the way to revive a sluggish economy. I hope he doesn't starting spending our tax dollars on a boondoggle stimulus bill. And I hope he realizes that the power of the individual is what makes America great, not the power of the government.

Yes, it's a lot of hoping but a man can dream, can't he?

Biden Speaks!

This past weekend, Vice President Elect Joe Biden gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos in which he said the economy was in danger of "absolutely tanking" and that a big bold stimulus package of another $600 or $700 billion is needed. "There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That's the only short run."

The media's assessment of Biden's remarks? Yawn.

Back in September, on day one of what would become the financial crisis, John McCain gave a speech in which he said the "fundamentals of the US economy are strong." The media excoriated him for saying that. Yet, what he was saying was correct. The fundamentals of our economy - free market capitalism - are strong. The media further piled on that deregulation is what got us into this mess. No, actually regulation, in the form of the Community Reinvestment Act, helped get us into this mess. If it were not for deregulation, Bank of America could not have bought Countrywide, JP Morgan could not have bought Chase, and Wells Fargo could not have bought Wachovia. If those banks had failed, imagine what the financial situation would look like today? In free market capitalism, certain businesses fail. It's the law of averages but it is also necessary for the market to function. There are risks to free market capitalism and failure is one of them. There is also a spectacular upside to it as well. The banks that survive will emerge stronger from this situation and be smarter than before.

Now back to Joe Biden. Consumer confidence is at an all time low and VP Elect Biden thinks it's a good idea to go on national TV and say that the economy is in danger of "absolutely tanking." What not just tell people to buy soup, ammo, and batteries for the bomb shelter in the backyard? There is a reason Joe Biden could never be president and this weekend was a prime example. He's not presidential material. People make fun of President Bush because of his accent and malapropisms but Joe Biden is far worse as he doesn't think before he speaks. But because he speaks the "King's English" and is a Democrat, he gets a pass from the media.

One thing Barack Obama does extremely well is looking or sounding presidential. During the financial crisis, as John McCain was coming up with a new plan every day, Obama remained fairly silent and appeared collected. Now, he may not have had any answers to the unfolding crisis and he may simply be following Mark Twain's advice better to remain silent and be thought a fool rather than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

That is clearly a lesson Joe Biden has not learned. For everyone's sanity, I think Obama needs to put the muzzle back on Joe.

I Agree With Barack Obama!?

While I disagree with Barack Obama on just about every issue (taxes, Iraq war, health care, etc) and I did not vote for him (I went Libertarian this year), I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and taking him at his word to let him earn my faith in him as a leader. And he has now provided me with one issue where we do agree.

We both favor a playoff system for college football.

"If you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear decisive winner," told "60 Minutes." "We should be creating a playoff system."

Now that's hope and change that I can believe in!

Which side of the bucket are you swimming in?

Does it even matter?

This has been a long, painful campaign season, and a lot of horse shit has been shoveled over these long months, interspersed with brief pearl-like moments of lucidity. I think the smartest thing anyone has said in this entire campaign was one single paragraph from Fred Thompson's Republican Convention speech...

Fred said "Now, our opponents tell us not to worry about their tax increases. They tell you they're not going to tax your family. No, they're just going to tax "businesses." So, unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline -- or unless you get a paycheck from a business, don't worry, it's not going to affect you! They say they're not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the other side of the bucket!"

Which is about as lucid, and devastating an analysis of the Democratic approach towards economics as any sentence ever uttered in the annals of American political history.

Remember James Carville's famous quote from the 1992 campaign... "It's the economy, stupid"? I'm going to change it a little bit for the 2008 Democrats... my version is "The economy is a circle, stupid!"

Because what you do in this or that part of the economy affects every other part of our interdependent economy, not just in the United States but around the world. Listen to an Obama speech, any speech, just go to google and type in "Obama stump speech" and listen to the first one that pops up. You'll hear claim after claim and promise after promise that suggests that Obama, completely contrary to all historical evidence, believes that he can take action targeting specific parts of the economy without having any affect on any other part.

It just doesn't work that way.

And I'll give you an example using something dumb that a Republican did in this arena. Back in 2004 GW Bush was having some troubles in the rust belt. Specifically, Steel companies were facing stiff competition from abroad... foreign steelmakers were selling their goods in the U.S. at a discount in an effort to grab market share away from American companies. This severely threatened the profit margins of American steel manufacturers, as well as, perhaps more importantly, the salary levels of its union members. So ole George decided he would try to buy himself some votes by ordering price protection measures against foreign steel. Essentially what he did was artificially restrict the sale of foreign steel by insulating American steel manufacturers from competitive pricing. American steel manufacturers did not have to worry about shrinking profit margins, and American steel workers didn't have to worry about salary cuts.

What's not to love?

Well what Bush neglected to tell us was how keeping American steel prices artificially high would affect the rest of us. And it did... in ways to numerous to count.

But here's a few.

For one, everything made of steel remained artificially more expensive... so if market forces were trying to force car prices down, the fact that steel prices were pegged by our government at a certain, above-market level, kept them higher than they would otherwise be in a free market. So what's that mean? Maybe that fewer people bought cars because they were more expensive than they should have been... and if fewer people bought cars, then orders fell off at the manufacturers and auto workers had fewer shifts to fill and made less money, salesmen made less in commissions, and owners of car lots wound up carrying debt on their stocks of new cars longer than they had expected. In short, everyone besides the steels workers lost money. So in order to help one small sliver of the economy, Bush wound up hurting an even larger segment because he forgot (or ignored for convenience) the fact that all sectors of the economy are interdependent.

Or put more simply... The economy is a circle, stupid!

So when Obama tells you he's only going to raise taxes on rich people and rich corporations... ask youself if there's a chance that those tax increases might affect you, as a functioning member on an interdependent economy, in ways that perhaps even Obama himself doesn't mean for them too.

Even if you think corporations are inherently evil, indeed, especially if you believe that, then surely you don't think that those same corporations are going to sit still while the government tears into their profitability, do you? Do you think they're going to look at a 5 or 10% reduction in their profit margin and say "ah well, I guess we'll just have to eat it?"

Of course not. They're going to recover that loss by cutting costs.

Now maybe you'll get lucky and all it will mean is that your firm reduces its advertising budget... which of course, while it may not be a problem for you, might really suck for folks who make a living selling ad space on radio, TV, or print. But on the other hand, maybe they'll decide that you can get by with a slightly smaller benefits package next year.

Or maybe they'll decide they can do without you entirely.

Something to think about as your voting booth stylus hovers over "The Redistributor" next Tuesday.

Thoughts on the HBO miniseries JOHN ADAMS

I was watching episode 2 of the HBO miniseries JOHN ADAMS last night and a couple of things occurred to me. One, there was just as much bickering in Congress then as there is now, so it's good to know that it's been consistent through the ages. Two, the men who crafted the Declaration of Independence were very careful and deliberate with their choice of words. Three, it is clear that the founding fathers wanted a government that was limited in scope and that would let individuals make decisions for themselves. As subjects of King George, they had no say over what the government could and could not do to them. Sure, we're all familiar with the cry of "no taxation without representation" (and if you're not, then go look it up) but it was more than just that issue.

Lastly, I would like to point out something that Laura Linney said at the Emmy Awards this year after she won the Emmy for Best Actress in a miniseries for her role in JOHN ADAMS. She said "Our founding fathers were community organizers, and they were remarkable men." I agree with half of that quote. Yes, they were remarkable men. But they were not community organizers, Ms. Linney. They were revolutionaries. That is a big difference. Community organizers are not considered enemies of the state and threatened with hanging if they do not succeed in their endeavors. If the American Revolution had failed, those men would have been hanged.

If Barack Obama, a former community organizer (and who Ms. Linney was undoubtedly referring to when she made her statement), failed at getting a apartment complex renovated or a gazebo built, he simply moved on to other things. There was no threat of death hanging over him.

Let's show our founding fathers the respect they deserve and not trivialize their accomplishments by comparing them to a first term junior Senator. When Barack Obama authors a document as great as the U.S. Constitution, then maybe I'll add him to Mount Rushmore. Until then, he's a former community organizer who has yet to author any impressive legislation during his term in the Senate.