And the Beat(ing) Goes on Part 22: More Failure from Obama and This Congress

Obama and the Congress recently threw together a so called "debt deal" to hopefully stop the lowing of the credit rating of the US.  IT FAILED since S&P lowered the rating from AAA to AA+ much to the chagrin of the White House who immediately claimed that the S&P's numbers were flawed. But then when has this administration ever taken the blame for anything.  This administration immediately called for MORE SPENDING and MORE TAXES, just exactly what the S&P said got the US to the situation it is in today.  Unfortunately those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.  The Cap Cut and Balance Bill that was before the Senate and which Harry Reid said was DOA would have curtailed the reduction in the credit rating but of course the Dems blame the Right for the problem and say that it is all because of the tax cuts under Bush, you know , the same ones that Obama has continued, not once but twice in his two years in office.
The situation worsened after the phony Debt Limit Bill was passed because everyone in the world other than the Leftist of this administration saw it for what it was (is). It does nothing to reduce debt or deficit as the S&P committee has pointed out.

US unemployment is now 9.1 per cent, down from 9.2 in June. One might point out that part of the decrease could be due to the "Back to School" hiring that occurs seasonally. Previous years employment number will give credence to that speculation.  With numbers of long-term unemployed multiplying,(even a few on the Left are saying that the real number of unemployed is actually 18% and I call that number conservative) those on the left and a few writers of The New York Times(as well as a few Dem Congressmen) say that public works projects and direct employment programs are the fastest way of getting the long-term unemployed back into jobs. Many are calling for a new  STUMBULUS Deal to mirror the FAILED first STUMBULUS Deal

But is this really the answer? Or might tax relief in fact do better? Obama himself gave a half-hearted support for a "tax relief" plan for those who hire returning Veterans. Of course this was more campaign rhetoric than much of anything else if one gave note to the audience in attendance to this speech. I noted a lot of Veteran Organization Hats, a few military uniforms and some young people who may or may not have been veterans. On the other hand, there are many who argue that uncertainty for business around taxation and regulation with the Obama administration has forced investment to wait and see and this seems to be the widely accepted opinion of those on Wall Street, small business folks and investors world wide. In these times of failed government stimulus and crys for MORE,  there's still uncertainty that things have not bottomed, leaving investors waiting.

In December of 2010 I posted these comments from the Australian which are just as pertinent today as they were then and worth repeating. Bloomberg columnist and widely read analyst Amity Shlaes published The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression in 2007, risking derision for taking on America's economic sacred cow, Shlaes has argued the New Deal was a tragic mistake in social engineering. (Today I compare it to Obama and the Lefts social engineering)

She argued that presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt should have allowed the market to recover rather than spend billions on government schemes.  I and others have also argued that both Bush with his original TARP and Obama with his continuation of the same  and the STUMBULUS fiasco should have done the same. In the following paragraphs one could very well exchange OBAMA for FDR and the message would be the same so keep that in mind as you read.

FDR's New Deal was the prime offender. Throughout the 1930s, the US stayed deep in economic depression. By 1937 it had developed a depression within a depression.

The New Deal is foreign territory to most Australians. Its experimentation, largesse of government spending, indifference to global partners or agreements and the, at times, autocratic stance by the president in decisions about finance is unimaginable in any successful Australian leader.

For Roosevelt, there seemed few limits. Such was the power and financial might of the US, allies such as France and Britain bent before him
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But prices continued to stagnate. Shlaes writes that what FDR was doing was like "pouring glasses of water into the ocean in the hope of raising the sea level". Buyers also determine prices. Even as the US government was offering low interest loans to farmers at the rate of $US1m a day, it was also paying farmers not to farm.(One could compare this to Obama's failed plan for housing rather than farmers) As gold hit a new high, Roosevelt put the US back on the gold standard.(So  far Obama has not considered this even though gold is at an all time high. The Leftist believe for the most part that gold is evil since it limits their spending habits to what is on hand and can not be printed as can paper money.)
The depression remained, with unemployment at 23 per cent.

Roosevelt began massive projects under the Tennessee Valley Authority, constructing dams for hydro-electricity. Power to the people, literally, in a nation where private companies owned the utilities. Farmers and locals were resettled at great cost and much protest, and private utilities companies pursued until they could be bought up by the federal government. (Of course Obama's "Shovel Ready Jobs" , which was to be the great answer to FDR's plan was a failure so rather than a TVA we now have a government controlled Auto industry, seized by Obama and subsidized by the taxpayer, We might also add the Banking industry to that seizure as well)

The New Deal in the US during the 30s was America's flirtation with a command economy. It failed, and was saved only by the industrial expansion of war in the early 40s.(So far Obama's failed STUMBULUS plan has had no such savior)
What became known as Keynesian economics is seen as the theory behind the New Deal. However, as the US unemployment figures remained stuck in the teens by 1937, Keynes wrote to Roosevelt saying he should abandon his war against private utilities companies: "It is a mistake to think businessmen are more immoral than politicians." (Obama and the LEFT could also take a lesson from Mr. Keynes since they believe that business leaders, business and anything not controld by the government is evil)

The New Deal forced income taxes on high earners to 79 per cent, introduced death duties and lowered tax-rate thresholds. It even delivered an undistributed profit tax as capital retreated in the face of unfair competition from government monopolies and over-regulated markets. ( Does this not sound just exactly what the Left and Obama wish to do and are doing via regulations not passed by Congress but by proxy via such agencies as the EPA?)

By 1937, taxing the "middleman" had become an FDR sport while new laws to tighten rules around monetary policy forced banks to keep more cash and cut back on loans. Business became expensive. Wages were forced up - in the first six months of 1936 by 11 per cent. August 1937 witnessed the greatest drop in industrial production ever recorded. (How similar to what is happening under the OBAMA NO PLAN other than tax the rich and regulate everything. Wages are now higher than they have been in history contratry to what the LEFT wouold have you believe. The AVERAGE HOURLY wage now stands at over $23.00 an hour and industrial output  is at it's slowest in years.  I heard recently Obama blame the decline and failure of industry to grow on the earthquakes in Japan but of course he never has admitted that 9-11 had any effect on the economy under Bush. It still remains all Bush's fault.

In the meantime Obama continues to have no plan, the Left in Congress has no plan other than blame the "tea party" and call for more spending and more taxes.  Perhaps each of those in Congress ,the White House and the Leftist who continue to drink the koolaide shold read this article as well as the conclusion which follows.)

In stark contrast, Australia and Britain took a very different path. The British government continued debt reduction. Keynes's biographer Robert Skidelsky, in Interests and Obsessions, writes: "What is striking in retrospect is the shallowness of the British depression and the need for recovery from it in the absence of any deliberate fiscal stimulus. British unemployment, 2.9 million at its peak in 1932, was half Germany's and a sixth of America's at the same date."


In Australia, more damaged by heavy debt by the mid-20s, the story was also far better than in the US. By the time the Scullin government fell in 1931, opposition leader Joe Lyons had mounted a rallying cry that only he and the United Australia Party could be trusted to deliver "sound money". In government from 1932, Lyons fought the depression with modest relief works and government economies to bring budgets back into the black.
From 1934, figures showed that Australia had turned the depression around.

Unemployment had gone from 29 per cent in 1931 to 16 per cent by 1935.
Australians' belief in labour market flexibility and sound money should never be ignored and their distrust of utopias and social engineering has a lot going for it.

May I be so bold as to call your attention to the last sentence and even repeat it for those who perhaps fail to read well or do not tend to "go back" to read anything of importance. I will take license and change a few words in the closing sentence:
'AMERICANS belief in labor market flexibility and sound money should never be ignored and their distrust of utopias and social engineering has a lot going for it.

And the Beat(ing) Goes on Part 21: We the People are still losing.

Just what did "Bonehead" Boehner get out of the so call deal for the American People?

The answer is dang little to nothing but it (hopefully for him ) made him look good and he can cry and sling snot and say, "I did all that I could do".  But then Bonehead has always been good at crying and slinging snot so folks will feel sorry for him and think "poor guy".  I've been writing about Bonehead since he was up for Speak of the House and I said he would be a failure. My words have rang true. May they ring in the ears of  voters in November of 2012. 


What did Boehner get in return for this?
He did not insist that the April CR include language prohibiting funding for implementing of Obamacare, or defunding Planned Parenthood (the nation's largest abortion provider) Yep I wrote about this back on March 15. 2011   Here is a brief excert. (You can read the entire story using the date link above.)

Congress has three weeks to put together a plan to fund the government for the next six months and so far all they have done is the usual name calling , posturing and finger pointing.  Obama scolded Congress and said" We can't keep on running the government based on two week extensions."  Speaker Bonehead (HAR-Ohio) pointed out that "we're trying to clean up last year's mess".  Of course he is  somewhat correct on that point since the Democrats didn't bother to even submit a budget for fear that the blood shed of November would be worse than expected. The Republicans were wrong for not forcing the issue and jumping up and down on the issue but then some were too busy "running for position". Bonehead's name comes to mind since that all he could do during much of last term.

So it seems that some important issues are now on the back burner and We The People are in for another BEATING. Defunding of Planned Parenhood and Obamanocare are all set aside despite promises from GOP leadership to scuttle both immediately but seems it will wait until a more convenient time. Of course the primary antagonist of the "good ole boys" in the GOP, Rep Michele Bachmann (R-MN) doesn't like it one bit and has taken on the "ole boy's" establishment and firing both barrels saying "You don't win if you don't fight". and how right she is.  It appears that the "establishment GOP is taking on Obama's tactic of retreat and bowing as well as stuttering while taking NO ACTION , and the Beat(ing) goes on.
Bachmann and Steven King (R-Iowa) called for the GOP to stand by their pledge. "If we do not stand our ground on the CR (continuing resolutions)... and use it to stop the $105.5 billion... Obamacare will be implemented on our watch, and ...we will find it difficult--if not impossible--to regain the strategic advantage."

 
or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which subsidizes liberal media). Nor did he extract any commitment from the president to reform entitlement programs -- including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- that are the primary forces driving the nation toward bankruptcy.
In the recent debt-limit negotiations, Boehner could have said to Obama: We will increase the debt limit just enough to cover the fiscal 2011 spending we agreed to in April's CR. But for fiscal 2012 we will not agree to business as usual on government spending and debt. The Republican-controlled House will pass a series of appropriations for fiscal 2012 that significantly reform government spending and reduce government. We will be happy to debate them with you in September.
Instead, Boehner agreed to increase the debt limit by $2.4 trillion -- the largest debt limit increase in history.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who supported Boehner's deal, predicts the $2.4 trillion increase will last 18 months -- enough to get past next November's elections. Now do this math: $2.4 trillion over 18 months equals $133.33 billion in new debt per month or $1.596 trillion in a year.
A speaker who cuts a debt-limit deal like that is not planning to fight over the 2012 appropriations bills. He is planning to cut another deal.

And folks , in the mean time, The Beat(ing) goes on. The Left talking heads are blaming the problems that increased spending will create on the Right already and claiming that the  Right held nation and Obama hostage inorder to get all the things they wanted. Well, it would appear that the Right got little to nothing , thanks to "Bonehead" . And as for "hostage holding", it would seem that Harry Reid was the chief hostage holder by refusing to allow the vote on any bill sent over by the Right or by declaring it DOA, while twisting the arms of those Dems who would vote for a rational bill.

Not much left to say, except we are in deep doo with a bunch of immature, name calling idiots running this country. 

And the Beat(ing) Goes On Part 20 (American People screwed again and didn't even get kissed.

Just listened to the "taxem in chief" talk about the NODEBTLIMIT BILL just passed by the Senate.  The idiot is bound and determined to finish destroying the economy before he leaves office , and he is leaving office in 2012 as he well knows.  He continually speaks of RAISING TAXES  on the so called rich and corporations, you know the folks who already pay the bulk of the taxes in this country.

Here is an excerpt of the CBO’s charts that show the percentage share of various categories of taxes paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% of income earners:

Share of Taxes (%)	Top 10%	Top 5%	Top 1%
All Federal Taxes	55%	44%	28%
Individual Taxes	72%	61%	39%
Social Insurance Taxes	25%	14%	4%
Corporate Inc Taxes	80%	73%	57%
Excise Taxes	21%	13%	5%

Taxes on US Corporations was 27.7 percent, compared with a non-U.S. average of 19.5 percent. Companies based in Japan, Morocco, Italy, Indonesia and Germany,  faced higher tax rates.(And we see how well their economies run as well as their super high taxes on individuals)

Never the less the cry from Obama and the Leftist through out this entire week of BS called debate has been , "We must have a balanced approach with the rich and big corporations paying their share".  Of course statistics show that when taxes on individuals and corporations are raised, revenues for the Government fall. However Leftist try to twist this to show the opposite through their smoke and mirror, convoluted accounting system.
Individuals( the so called rich) stop investing and corporations move out of the country.  It would seem that the Leftist would learn from the past under Clinton what higher taxes do for the economy and business.  Some people never learn.

Obama calls for tax reform but yet refuses to even consider the Flat Tax. Actually it shoudl suit his socialist leanings since everyone pays the same rate of taxes, rich and poor alike.  Unfortunately the Left hates the idea since they Plantation would soon disappear because there would be no group paying ZERO INCOME TAXES as there are under the current system. The federal income tax is the government's largest source of revenue but yet nearly 50% of the people paid nothing so that leaves the other 50% paying for all the services that the non-payers enjoy. Yes they still pay some taxes but not income tax which is what the Flat Tax is all about.It's not uncommon for people to think that their Social Security taxes, their 401(k) contributions, their share of employer health premiums, all of that stuff in their mind gets lumped into income taxes, The Left uses this argument in their attempt to refute the idea that 50% pay no income tax.  They twist the words and claim the Right says 50% pay no taxes, which of course is not what is being said. The Left takes it totally out of context but then what else is new. The Flat Tax would work but don't hold your breath for it to come about. It would also reduce the number of useless IRS employees by over 70%, which of course the savings from that waste of money could be used toward debt reduction. Remember how adding just a bit on the end of your house payment can reduce the amount of time it takes to pay it off and the amount of interest paid?  Ah, but don't tell the Leftist that!

Just heard the "taxer in chief"  cozening up to the AFL-CIO, union thugista's saying,
"Taxes need to be raised on the rich"  He ticked off that wing of his socialist party and is now trying to smooth things over. He will play "hell" in getting taxes passed during his administration. Of course he will do things that will make taxes on items higher and of course hurt the lower class and middle class but then try to blame it on the Right for not wanting to raise taxes on the RICH.  (I get so tired of that phrase I could puke.)

Beware of his "super committee" for they will be the machinery that Obama uses to try to raise taxes on the ones who already pay the majority of taxes. Clinton found out it didn't work in his last term so why does Obama think the results will be any different for him?

The Clinton years provide lessons on the effects of tax increases and decreases. The American left attributes the successful economy of the Clinton years to the former and ignores the impact of the latter in order to justify their appetite for the increases they would have us believe will provide additional tax revenues today.

The effects of increasing taxes on Treasury receipts can be seen in the Clinton and Democrat-controlled congressional tax increase of 1993, one of the largest in history. Despite a more robust job market following a recession, the 1993 tax increase didn't accomplish what Democrats expected. The tax increases added very little to treasury receipts despite their magnitude. Reports from the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Internal Revenue Service all agree.

The balanced budgets of the Clinton years didn't occur until after a Republican Congress passed and the president reluctantly signed a  1997 tax bill that lowered the capital gains rate from 28% to 20%, added a child tax credit, and established higher limits on tax exclusion for IRAs and estates. Oh, but don't dare tell a Leftist that! 

All of America's current deficits are the result of spending by both parties above the baseline, including spending on the costs of war, homeland security, and natural disasterDespite those circumstances, at the rates of economic growth through 2007 and with simple spending restraint, the Bush-era 2001 and 2003 tax rate reductions should have yielded a surplus by 2009 with no increase in taxes.Now on top of . The Stumbulus and OBAMANOCARE cost the Left want to increase taxes even more and SPEND MORE! and as we gave seen federal expenditures have been setting records and are increasing drastically.

A typical Congress has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. This Congress is no exception, except that its members are spending at exceptional rates and have no will to stop.

Millions of Americans fell off the tax rolls following the 2001 rate reductions on income. Today, the top 1% of earners pays more taxes than the bottom 95%. Who really believes that taxing this top group even more is going to pay everyone's tab for the ambitious and irresponsible spending objectives of the Democrats in Washington? Yea, Obama you claim to have given 95% of the folks a tax break but ooops looks like it actually occurred long before your time.

During all this hub-bub about debt limit and the world coming to an end was pure contrivance on Obama's part.  He hoped for more than he could get and it backfired on him but yet the failure continues to talk as if HE made it all happen.  Nothing like a narcissist jackass braying to make your day.  We also found out who the RINO's were (many were already known such as McCain and the ding-bat from Alaska ,  Lisa Murkowski, who might as well just switch to the Socialist Democrat Party given her rants against the conservatives in the House.
The House needs new leadership for "Bonehead " proved himself to be inadequate in getting the job done. McConnell needs to be replaced in the Senate as well for his time is over. He would make a deal with the devil if it meant getting re-elected on the idea that "I did the best I could."  Listen for "Bonehead" to sling snot and try to use the same excuse his failure.

Well it's over for now but the LSM will beat it to death because it's an easy story with a never ending line of braying jackasses who want to defend their Messiah and call for more Taxes on the Rich.  It would GAG a maggot on a garbage truck!

I'm finished with this and won't be revisiting the "debt crisis" again until next time in 2013!

Let me know what you think.