Category Archives: Econ

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Econ, Flashback!, Health Law, Lies, Obama, True Talking Points

CBO: OOPS Our $940 Billion Number Was Wrong – ObamaCare to cost $1.76 trillion over 10 yrs – UPDATED!

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Remember when Obama and the Democrats went on and on saying that ObamaCare would only cost $900 Billion so that it would be revenue neutral (not ad to the deficit)?

It wasn’t just this writer back in his college days who said that this number was a pipe dream. Many conservatives who ran the numbers said it would cost over $2 trillion as I reported in my college days (1, 2, 3, 4).

But it gets worse, the CBO is still underestimating the cost. Why? ObamaCare doesn’t start to spend huge money until the last phase of it’s implementation in 2014, but the new taxes are already starting to be phased in and really ramp up in 2013 just after the election. So ObamaCare is taking in money for over a year before the large expenses start incurring. If we take that into account and start the ten years in 2014, which is much more honest, the expense according to my estimates will be close to $2.3 trillion over ten years. Feel free to mark me on this readers, as I am certain others will verify this in time, as my earliest predictions about ObamaCare have been spot on so there is no reason to believe my estimate will prove to be any different (the Examiner piece below mentions the nine year issue as well).

Remember the adverse selection “death” spiral we spoke of in posts below? The longer ObamaCare goes on the more the costs will rise exponentially as that is exactly what it is designed to do. If Democrats manage to prevent an ObamaCare repeal, they know darn well they will have to replace it with a total government take over soon or the system will blow up in a short time.

Washington Examiner:

President Obama’s national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.

Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO’s standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama’s pledge that the legislation would cost “around $900 billion over 10 years.” When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.

Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law’s core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That’s because we now have estimates for Obamacare’s first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn’t overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then. Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we’re likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.

UPDATE – ObamaCare to force increases in state Medicaid programs:

Again, this is something I wrote about and you can find on my old college blog in the four links above. One of the ways that  the costs of ObamaCare was hidden is that some of it’s implementation is through unfunded mandates to state medicaid programs.

Washington Examiner:

CBO boosts its Obamacare Medicaid cost estimate

The CBO now projects that from 2012 through 2021 the federal government will spend $168 billion more on Medicaid than it expected last year, $97 billion less on subsidies for people to purchase insurance on government-run exchanges and $20 billion less on tax credits to small employers.  That works out to a $51 billion increase in the gross cost of expanding coverage from what the CBO estimated a year ago. However, the CBO also expects the federal government to collect more revenue from penalties on individuals and employers, as well as other taxes. These revenue increases will more than offset the spending increases, according to the CBO, so it now expects the cost of Obamacare during those years to be $48 billion lower.

It’s also worth noting that we were told time and again during the health care debate that the law didn’t represent a government takeover of health care. But by 2022, according to the CBO, 3 million fewer people will have health insurance through their employer, while 17 million Americans will be added to Medicaid and 22 million will be getting coverage through government-run exchanges.

Check out the full CBO report here.

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Flashback!, Lies, Obama, True Talking Points

Obama Cabinet Secretary: ‘The Private Market is in a Death Spiral’; ObamaCare Is Designed To End Private Insurers

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Editor’s Note – It is unfortunate that I have to gloat about such bad news, but this very writer was among the first in the country to observe and write that ObamaCare creates what is called an “Adverse Selection Spiral” (also known as an economic death spiral); meaning that the short term incentives, regulations and tax structure in the ObamaCare is designed to make the long term risk management economically unsustainable due to the long term increases in costs forced into the system.

This very writer said that ObamaCare is designed to break private insurance and make people “cry out for a public option”. Ironically some months later former Democrats Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the exact same thing.

Flashback 2009-2010: Real Clear Politics Confirms IUSB Vision Analysis: Latest Health Care Bill Designed to Wreck Private Insurance & Make People Cry Out for a Public Option:

As we at IUSB Vision have stated again and again and again…. Real Clear Politics….

Speaker Pelosi used IUSB Vision Editor Chuck Norton’s exact words that ObamaCare will “make them cry out for a public option” on C-Span [Notice how all of the Democrats cackle maniacally when she says it]:

Read on HERE.

So much for the Obama promise of keeping your old health insurance and that it will be cheaper.

CNS News:

Sec. HHS Kathleen Sebelius
Sec. HHS Kathleen Sebelius

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that the days of private health insurance are coming to an end in the United States.

“The private market is in a death spiral,” Sebelius said, contending this would be the case whether or not President Barack Obama’s health care law had been enacted.

At the Ways and Means hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Sebelius about the administration’s assurances that people who liked their current health insurance plan would be able to keep it under the new law.

“How about when the president said you can keep your health care coverage, if you like it?” Roskam said. “And yet, the reality is, according to Bloomberg (News) at least, 9 percent fewer businesses are offering medical coverage than in 2010. There the rhetoric didn’t meet the reality, did it?”

Sebelius did not contest the numbers. 

[Here comes the spin – Political Arena Editor] “Well again, congressman, what you’re seeing, it wouldn’t have mattered if we had passed the Affordable Care Act or not,” she said. “The private market is in a death spiral.”

 

It would have happened anyways is the new spin. Nice try.

Investors Business Daily:

ObamaCare Is Designed To End Private Insurers

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says that private health insurance providers are in a “death spiral.” Of course they are. Isn’t that the way the authors of ObamaCare planned it?

Testifying last Wednesday in front of the House Ways and Means Committee, Sebelius was asked by Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., if the administration was being honest when President Obama promised that those who liked their health plans could keep them.

Said Sebelius: “The private market is in a death spiral.”

Sebelius tried to temper her comment by claiming the private insurance market would collapse even if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act had not been passed. But the truth is, the market cannot survive under the growing weight of government, and Obama-Care was to be the final heavy load that will crush it.

Don’t believe it? Look at the provisions of ObamaCare and consider them in context with the Democrats’ constant public demonization of insurers.

Start with the mandates. By now, most of the country knows that ObamaCare requires health insurers to pay for contraception and other birth-control measures. But that’s not the law’s only mandate. Among the many diktats of the Democrats’ health care overhaul is the requirement that insurers must spend at least 80 cents on medical claims for every $1 they take in from premiums in the individual and small group markets, and 85 cents from premiums in the large group market.

Insurers’ first response was to cut broker commissions. But what gets trimmed next? At what point will the industry no longer be able to pay competent people in companies because of the medical-loss ratio mandate, or to make the profits needed to stay in business?

Maybe the industry could simply increase premiums to avoid problems created by the medical-loss ratio. But the central planners thought of that, too. Under ObamaCare, the secretary of Health and Human Services has the power to decline premium increases of 10% or more in the individual and small group markets. Only those considered “reasonable” by bureaucrats’ standards will be accepted. This policy is an effective price control that’s sure to cause losses in the industry.

2012 Primary, Econ, Health Law, Obama, True Talking Points

Survey: Health Care Reform Driving Up Health Plan Costs for Employers

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Of course, this very writer was predicting this from mid 2009 and onward (2) as ObamaCare is phased in more and more people and businesses are seeing the results. So much for Obama’s promise that ObamaCare would save you $2,500 a year.

Business Wire:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Compliance with health care reform is already driving up costs for some employers’ group health plans, and a majority of employers expect price increases to be passed on to employees, according to a health care reform survey released today by the Willis Human Capital Practice, a unit of Willis Group Holdings (nyse:WSH), the global insurance broker.

“The survey suggests employers realize that costs of providing medical benefits will increase and that they will likely have to pass those costs on to their employees.”

This is what will hurt you most:

Employers expect that similar employers will pass increased costs on to employees: More than half of the responding employers felt that other, similar employers would pass more of the cost for dependent coverage on to their employees. One-third of respondents thought other, similar employers would reduce coverage to the lowest-cost package to avoid the “pay-or-play” penalty, and a majority of employers also thought that wellness programs would be expanded in scope. Finally, nearly two-thirds of the employers expected that employee contributions would be increased.

You read that correctly, the result will be increased costs to you AND reduced coverage.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Obama, Treason, True Talking Points

Gov. Mitch Daniels: ‘Terrifying Rate’ at Which U.S. Debt Is Accumulating ‘Will Lead to National Ruin’

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CNSNews:

Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said Tuesday that the size of the U.S. national debt and the rate at which the debt is accumulating will lead the United States to “ruin” — and no other outcome is mathematically possible.

“Whether one believes in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Daniels said.

“There’s no other outcome arithmetically possible,” he added.

As of February 2012, according to monthly U.S. Treasury statements, our national debt is $15.48 trillion, about a $130 billion more from the month prior when the national debt was $15.35 trillion.

The Hoosier governor made his remarks in a conference call hosted by No Labels, a group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents “dedicated to making government work again.”

Daniels said that Congress has become dysfunctional in terms of dealing with our economic and fiscal situation — and picked a “lousy time” to become dysfunctional, since the United States has never faced “a non-military danger or threat as large as the one we face today.”

Daniels said that when addressing the problem of the national debt and trying to level with audiences, he usually asks them to put ideology aside for the moment and focus on the math surrounding our national debt – something he said no longer “works.”

“Look, let’s put the ideological debate off (to) tomorrow,” Daniels said. “You know, for today, can we agree that the math here does not work?”

Mathematically speaking, Daniels said, it all breaks down.

“There is absolutely no way” that cutting or taxing our way out our fiscal problems are the solutions. Instead, we need a private economy that grows much faster, and meaningful entitlement reform, Daniels said.

2012 Primary, Econ, Taxes, True Talking Points

Businesses Flee: California Tax Revenue Plunges 22%

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Breitbart News:

Compared to last year, State tax collections for February shriveled by $1.2 billion or 22%. The deterioration is more than double the shocking $535 million reported decline for last month. The cumulative fiscal year decline is $6.1 billion or down 11% versus this period in 2011.

While California Governor Brown promises strong economic growth is just around the corner, State Controller John Chaing proves that the best way for Sacramento politicians to hurt the economy and thereby generate lower tax revenue, is to have the highest tax rates in the nation.

California politicians seem delusional in their continued delusion that high taxes have not savaged the State’s economy. Each month’s disappointment is written off as due to some one-time event.

The State Controller’s office did acknowledge that higher than normal tax refunds for February might have reduced the collection of some personal income taxes. Given that 2012 has an extra day in February for leap year, there might have been one day more of tax refunds sent out. But the Controller’s report shows personal income tax collections fell by $325 million, or 16% versus last year. Furthermore, leap year would have added another day for retail sales and use tax collection, but those revenues also fell during February-by an even larger $813 million, 25% decline from 2011.

The more likely reason tax collections continue falling is that businesses and successful people are leaving California for the better tax rates available in more pro-business states.

Derisively referred to as “Taxifornia” by the independent Pacific Research Institute, California wins the booby prize for the highest personal income taxes in the nation and higher sales tax rates than all but four other states. Though Californians benefit from Proposition 13 restrictions on how much their property tax can increase in one year, the state still has the worst state tax burden in the U.S.

Spectrum Locations Consultants recorded 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state in 2011, 26% more than in 2010 and five times as many as in 2009. According SLC President, Joe Vranich: the “top ten reasons companies are leaving California: 1) Poor rankings in surveys 2) More adversarial toward business 3) Uncontrollable public spending 4) Unfriendly business climate 5) Provable savings elsewhere 6) Most expensive business locations 7) Unfriendly legal environment for business 8) Worst regulatory burden 9) Severe tax treatment 10) Unprecedented energy costs.

Vranich considers California the worst state in the nation to locate a business and Los Angeles is considered the worst city to start a business. Leaving Los Angeles for another surrounding county can save businesses 20% of costs. Leaving the state for Texas can save up to 40% of costs. This probably explains why California lost 120,000 jobs last year and Texas gained 130,000 jobs.

California Governor Jerry Brown’s answer to the State’s failing economy and crumbling tax revenue is to place a $6 billion tax increase initiative on the ballot to support K-12 public schools. He promises to only “temporarily” raise personal income rates by 25% on any of the rich folk who haven’t already left.

Read more HERE.

2012 Primary, Econ, True Talking Points

“The Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb Cheers Ron Paul’s Economic Platform on CNBC

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This is a must see interview. While I believe that Newt Gingrich is addressing the structural problems as well and has a better chance of getting it done, everything else Prof. Taleb says is spot on, and I mean spot on. This is one of those interviews that one should listen to several times.

Pay close attention to what Prof. Taleb says about the structural fiscal and monetary problems. Also listen to what he says about the value of loss in a market and how it is critical to keeping the economy healthy. Very few economists understand this critical fundamental law of economics.

Special thanks to Tamara de Silva for pointing out this interview to us.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Obama: Largest Wall Street Money Recipient, Hands Out Jobs to Contributors

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There are two sources for today’s story, one is a devastating piece from the normally Obama friendly Washington Post, the other is from an Iowa PAC called the American Future Fund. President Obama was the largest recipient of Wall Street cash of any presidential candidate in 20 years. While Obama was a Senator he took more money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae than anyone in the Senate with the exception of who many call the architect of the financial collapse Christopher Dodd.

Washington Post:

The Influence Industry: Obama gives administration jobs to some big fundraisers

Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration.

Obama campaigned on what he called “the most sweeping ethics reform in history” and has frequently criticized the role of money in politics. That hasn’t stopped him from offering government jobs to some of his biggest bundlers, volunteer fundraisers who gather political contributions from other rich donors.

More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.

At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The list goes on HERE.

 

Related:

Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.

Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.

Wall St. Made More Money In 2.5 Years Of Obama Than 8 Years Of Bush – LINK.

Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.

Hypocrite! Elizabeth Warren Takes Wall Street Cash! – LINK.

Corruption: Most Stimulus Funds Spent in Democrat Districts – LINK.

The taxes Democrats propose to “soak the rich” always seem to miss those who they demagogue for not paying their fair share. They have been “soaking the rich” for decades and keep missing the target. Why? – LINK.

2012 Primary, Econ, Energy Policy, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Obama Administration to Congress: We’re not interested in lowering gas prices – UPDATED

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Secretary Chu: The Energy Department is not working to get gas prices down.

It is amazing when they let the truth out. President Obama’s Energy Secretary Stephen Chu gave an honest answer when he gave a direct answer to a direct question in testimony to Congress:

Chu specifically cited a reported breakthrough announced Monday by Envia Systems, which received funding from DOE’s ARPA-E, that could help slash the price of electric vehicle batteries.

He also touted natural gas as “great” and said DOE is researching how to reduce the cost of compressed natural gas tanks for vehicles.

High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.

“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.

“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”

 

Mark Levin plays some more of Secretary Chu’s testimony where he makes it clear that the Obama Administration intends to drive up prices by limiting future supply:

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Gallup: Unemployment 9%, Not 8.3%

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Yup, it’s like that….

When the administration knew that the 8.3% number was a blip from people leaving the workforce they kept saying 8.3% and still are.

Gallup:

Unemployment in the U.S. rose to nine percent in mid-February, up from 8.3 percent a month earlier, according to a new Gallup survey. The polling company said this suggests that it is “premature” to assume the economy will not feature prominently in the 2012 election season.

Gallup figures typically provide an indication of what the government will report at the end of the month.

“The U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 9.0% in mid-February,” Gallup said in its mid-month unemployment survey, released on February 17. “The mid-month reading normally reflects what the U.S. government reports for the entire month, and is up from 8.3% in mid-January.”

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Obama, True Talking Points

Britain passes 50% tax rate for the evil rich, and loses $807.53 million in tax revenue in three months…

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If you tax the productive, the productive produce less, pay less in tax, pay people off and it ripples through the economy; or as my teenage daughter might say “duh!”. Those stuck in such a bracket rearrange their affairs to avoid the tax. They invest in China, expatriate, buy gold or other hard assets or just stop moving their money; they stop taking as much risk.

UK Telegraph:

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million [that is$807.53 American] compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.

Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.

A Treasury source said the relatively poor revenues from self-assessment returns was partly down to highly-paid individuals arranging their affairs to avoid paying the 50p rate.

“It’s true that SA revenues are a bit disappointing — it’s still early, but it looks like there’s been quite a lot of forestalling and other manoeuvring to avoid the top rate,” said the source.

However, another Treasury source added that the tax deadline had been extended by two days because of industrial action at HM Revenue and Customs. Therefore, it was too early to begin assessing the revenues raised from the 50p rate of tax because about 20 per cent of self-assessment tax is paid in the hours before the deadline.

Francesca Lagerberg, head of tax at Grant Thornton, an accountancy firm, said: “My guess is that because the 50 per cent rate was flagged up in advance many taxpayers, particularly those with their own businesses, decided to extract dividends ahead of the change. It highlights the fact that high tax rates don’t always deliver high tax revenues.”

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Elite Media, True Talking Points

AEI Study: Elite Media Spins Economic News Positive when Democrats in Power, Negative When Republicans in Power

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[Editor’s Note – We have been reporting incidents of this so this seemed like a good time to bring out this study, which I had posted on my old college blog, once again which confirms what so many who are paying close attention have observed.]

According to the elite media “most economists” were surprised by month after month after month of unexpected, unexpected, unexpected, unexpected bad economic news. Of course to those who were paying attention the news wasn’t unexpected at all.

AEI:

https://www.aei.org/publication/partisan-bias-in-newspapers/

Newspaper headlines reporting on unemployment, gross domestic product, retail sales, and durable goods tended to be negative when a Republican is in the White House.

Economists have been puzzled this year by the persistence with which perceptions about the economy have lagged behind the economic data. For the most recent 12-month period for which we have data, for example, the economy grew almost exactly as fast as it did during the best 12-month period during President Clinton’s two terms. But the economic mood of the country has been much different.

It isn’t just the economy that influences people’s perceptions. In research we just released, we find that media coverage is also an important determinant. We found that newspaper headlines reporting economic news on unemployment, gross domestic product (GDP), retail sales, and durable goods tended to be much more frequently negative when a Republican was in the White House. And this was true even after accounting for the economic numbers on which the stories were based and how those numbers were changing over time.

We also found that positive headlines explained whether people thought that the economy was getting better more than the economic variables themselves. Newspapers are indeed important.

There have, of course, been numerous anecdotal claims of media bias. What has been lacking has been a rigorous scientific study of media bias, and our new paper is an attempt to provide just that.

If we limit ourselves to news coverage of economic data, it is possible to get an objective measure of the news behind the stories. Our research team first collected a list of days that important economic news was released for most papers since 1991 and for four major papers and the Associated Press since 1985. We then used Nexis, a computer database of news stories that contains information on 389 newspapers, to gather all of the 12,620 headlines that ran in America’s newspapers covering economic news stories. We excluded follow-up and feature stories because we wanted to be able to link the headlines directly with the numbers on which they were based.

Headlines are relatively easy to classify since they say things are getting better, worse or mixed. For example, on Jan. 31, the government reported that the real GDP had grown 4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003. The New York Times covered this, appropriately, as good news, writing the headline, “Economy remained strong in 4th quarter, U.S. reports.” At the same time, the Chicago Tribune wrote that “GDP growth disappoints; job worries linger.” Headlines are so divergent, it’s sometimes hard to believe they are referring to the same event.

Actual economic data explains much about the headlines–but far from everything. We found that the incidence of positive coverage during Republican presidencies was fairly steady–but economic news under President Clinton received by far the most positive coverage. This partisan gap or bias (the difference in positive headlines between Republicans and Democrats for the same underlying economic news) consistently implied that Democrats got between 10 and 20 percentage points more positive headlines.

We also examined individual newspapers. Among the top 10 papers, we found strong evidence that the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and the Washington Postwere much more likely to have positive headlines for Democrats even with the same economic news. The New York Post showed no statistically significant difference. The Los Angeles Times did not tend to treat Republicans and Democrats significantly differently.

Even including the Los Angeles Times, Ronald Reagan, a president who presided over one of the most vigorous economies in our history, still received seven percent fewer positive news stories than Clinton after accounting for the different economic conditions.

What motivates newspapers and their copy editors to pick the headlines that they do is not a question we tried to answer. Whether these motivations are conscious or not, a partisan gap exists, and it helps explain one of this year’s biggest economic puzzles. Unfortunately, the recent charges of political bias at CBS may only be a small part of the problem with the news.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, True Talking Points

U.S. per capita government debt worse than Greece

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Via the Washington Examiner:


According to a new analysis by the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, the United States has a higher per capita debt burden than any European country, including riot-ridden Greece.

Using the most recent data available from the International Monetary Fund, the Senate Budget Committee found that U.S. federal government debt per capita is nearly $45,000. That is almost 15 percent higher than the per capita debt burden of Greece ($38,937).

The Senate Budget Committee also notes that our debt per capita would rise to $75,000 by 2020 if President Obama’s budget became law.

Earlier last month, the U.S. government’s total out standing debt, $15,419,800,222,325, surpassed the nation’s gross domestic product ($15,294,300,000,000).

Corporatism, Econ, True Talking Points

America is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation

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The Economist:

AMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.

But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.

Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end “too big to fail” by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long. Just one bit, the “Volcker rule”, which aims to curb risky proprietary trading by banks, includes 383 questions that break down into 1,420 subquestions.

Hardly anyone has actually read Dodd-Frank, besides the Chinese government and our correspondent in New York (see article). Those who have struggle to make sense of it, not least because so much detail has yet to be filled in: of the 400 rules it mandates, only 93 have been finalised. So financial firms in America must prepare to comply with a law that is partly unintelligible and partly unknowable.

Read more HERE.

2012 Primary, Econ, Health Law, Lies, Obama, Treason, True Talking Points

RomneyCare and ObamaCare architect: ObamaCare will cause insurance rates to rise dramatically – UPDATED

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Well well well, who didn’t see this coming? The readers of my former college blog knew all about it as we explained how ObamaCare is designed to increase costs and insurance to such a point that the only “solution” would be a total government take over. Even Nancy Pelosi said that the bill was designed to make them “cry out for a public option”.

[I have nine pages of posts and links devoted to this subject on my old college blog starting HERE. To verify that we got it right and called it early just start on this link and proceed forward. Figuring out that ObamaCare was designed to do exactly this, and recognizing that the behavior incentivized by the program creates an economic death spiral – technically called an adverse selection spiral – which is designed to burden the system with such costs and regulation that it will collapse, was not difficult. It did not take an MIT Economist to see what so was obvious in the structure of ObamaCare and quite frankly this editor rejects the idea that Prof. Gruber just figured this out in some grand revelation recently. Anyone with some decent economics training could see this coming a mile away; yes it has always been that obvious – Editor.]

Via our friends at The Daily Caller:

Medical insurance premiums in the United States are on the rise, the chief architect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul has told The Daily Caller.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis he provided the White House in support of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, informing officials in three states that the price of insurance premiums will dramatically increase under the reforms.

In an email to The Daily Caller, Gruber framed this new reality in terms of the same human self-interest that some conservatives had warned in 2010 would ultimately rule the marketplace.

“The market was so discriminatory,” Gruber told TheDC, “that only the healthy bought non-group insurance and the sick just stayed [uninsured].”

“It is true that even after tax credits some individuals are ‘losers,’” he conceded, “in that they pay more than before [Obama’s] reform.”

Gruber, whom the Obama administration hired to provide an independent analysis of reforms, was widely criticized for failing to disclose the conflict of interest created by $392,600 in no-bid contracts the Department of Health and Human Services awarded him while he was advising the president’s policy advisers.

 

UPDATE – CNBC’s Jim Cramer: CEO’s scared to hire because of ObamaCare. Moving more operations overseas

2012 Primary, Econ, Elite Media, Energy Policy, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Gas Prices Under President Obama

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Via our friends at Heritage:

Fact: President Barack Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” At the time he made the statement, gas cost $7 – $8 a gallon in Europe.

Fact: Since taking office, President Obama’s entire energy agenda has made a gallon of gas more expensive:

All of these policies raise gas prices at the pump by either: 1) decreasing the availability of domestic energy supplies, or 2) increasing regulatory costs on gasoline production.

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

1.2 million people driven out of the workforce in a single month! 1.5 million jobs vaporized …..

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Human Events:

It’s the headline that a President facing re-election with a dismal economic record didn’t want to see:

1.2 million people driven out of the workforce in a single month!

A frantic White House exploded into damage-control mode, as a deeply shaken President Obama retreated into his chambers.  Nervous spokesmen fanned across the airwaves to stammer apologies, search for silver linings among the storm clouds, offer campaign boilerplate about “hope and change,” and desperately search for some way to blame George Bush for an absolute unemployment disaster that occurred over three years after he left office…

What’s that, you say?  You didn’t see that headline?  Well, of course not, silly.  All you’re seeing in the headlines is good news, because the official, heavily-massaged U-3 unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent.  Fewer people in the workforce means the percentage of unemployed people in the workforce drops.

ZeroHedge is incredulous:

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million.

No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.

As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.

Now, I suspect that while a lot of people dropped out of the workforce last month, part of what we’re seeing here is some numerical mutation that caused an abnormally large chunk of the labor-force reduction from the past year to be piled into a single month.  There was some decent overall job creation in January, with about 243,000 jobs added to non-farm payrolls, and a nice 50,000 job bump in the manufacturing sector.  That total is good enough to modestly outpace current population growth.  With the usual backwards adjustment to previous months, it looks like the final quarter of 2011 pretty much kept pace with population growth.

However, the fact remains that even as we get back to the (dismal) 8.3 percent U-3 unemployment we last saw in February 2009, the work force is about half a million people smaller in absolute numbers, and that doesn’t include the increase in the working-age population over the past two years.  Throw them in, and you’re looking at roughly 1.5 million jobs completely vaporized, to the point where they don’t even count in the official, widely-reported unemployment statistics.

 

Famed economist Dr. John Lott comments:

A 1.2 million drop out of the labor force is the record for any one month. And 500,000 a month dropping out of the workforce because they are just giving up because there jobs just aren’t out there. This is something we have not seen before.  People just start giving up.

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Mitt Romney, Newt, Taxes, True Talking Points

Deroy Murdock: Newt’s 15 percent flat tax option trumps Mitt’s morass

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Deroy Murdock:

Deroy Murdock
Deroy Murdock

Even at 15 percent, the rich will pay more. For argument’s sake, someone who earns $100,000 would pay $15,000 in taxes, while someone who makes $100 million would pay $15 million. Delicate calculations confirm that $15 million exceeds $15,000. The rich will pay more dollars in taxes, but as a proportion of income equal with everyone else. Hello, “fair share.”

Gingrich also would chop America’s corporate tax from 35 percent (the industrial world’s second highest, after Japan’s) to a flat 12.5 percent, which would tie Ireland’s as the lowest and most competitive among developed nations. Coupled with immediate, 100 percent expensing of capital purchases, such a stimulus would unleash dramatic economic expansion — rather than the Obama-style “stimulus” that yields bankruptcies, layoffs, and FBI raids.

Compared to Gingrich’s gutsy blueprint, Romney’s exhibits the caution that has made the former Massachusetts governor the “Oh, well, if we must” choice, even among his supporters.

While Romney would ditch the death tax and cut the corporate tax to 25 percent, he would preserve today’s income-tax rates. He would scrap taxes on interest, capital gain, and dividends, but — echoing Obama — only for those making less than $200,000. – [Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton – the vast majority of those who make over $200,000 in what the IRS calls “earned income” are small and medium sized businesses. Mitt’s plan is so mild that it cannot do the economic heavy lifting to get us out of this morass. Speaking in economic terms, Obama’s plan is an economy killing machine and Mitt Romney’s is only marginally better.]

2012 Primary, Econ, Energy Policy, Obama

Under Obama, Price of Gas Has Jumped 83 Percent, Ground Beef 24 Percent, Bacon 22 Percent

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Via CNS News:

(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent.

When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent increase from January 2009.

The price of unleaded gasoline never reached the 10-year high of $4.09 back in July 2008 under George W. Bush’s administration, but it did get close.

By May 2011, gas prices hit a high under the Obama administration at $3.93, about four percentage points away from the July 2008 high.

The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak.   (Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)

Whole wheat bread prices from January 2009 to December 2011 increased about five percent (5.02 percent) from $1.97 to $2.07. (The inflation rate in December 2011 was 3.0 percent.)

Among the first 36 months of Obama’s presidency, the last four (September, October, November, December) showed the average price of one pound of whole wheat bread hovering slightly above two dollars.

Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.

Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1 percent.

One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed  $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.

nn

Budget, Econ, Obama, True Talking Points

VDH: We too can lose our civilization…

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Dr. Victor Davis Hanson (excerpt):

In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland, and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.

It wasn’t. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there’s much of an emergency.

Traffic flows no better on most of the state’s freeways than it did 40 years ago — and often much worse, given the crumbling infrastructure and increased traffic. Once-excellent K–12 public schools now score near the bottom in nationwide tests. The California state-university system keeps adding administrators to the point where they have almost matched the number of faculty, though half of the students who enter CSU need remedial reading and math. Despite millions of dollars in tutoring, half the students still don’t graduate. The taxpayer is blamed in constant harangues for not ponying up more money, rather than administrators being faulted for a lack of reform.

In 1960, there were far fewer government officials, far fewer prisons, far fewer laws, and far fewer lawyers — and yet the state was a far safer place than it is a half-century later. Technological progress — whether iPhones or Xboxes — can often accompany moral regress. There are not yet weeds in our cities, but those too may be coming.

The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility — and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.

A keen visitor to Athens — or Los Angeles — during the last decade not only could have seen that things were not quite right, but also could have concluded that they could not go on as they were. And so they are not.

Washington, please take heed.

2012 Primary, Econ, Education, School Indoctrination, Stuck on Stupid

Econ Professor: Public Schools Have Students Brainwashed ….

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The teacher asks the students to write an essay on the American Dream. 80% of them said that the government should  buy them a house, pay for their college, and give them a high paying job. They also were taught nothing about capitalism or mainstream economic concepts.

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Economic Indicators Show President Obama’s Failing Record.

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House Ways & Means Committee:

Earlier this week during his State of the Union address, President Obama said, “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that [American] promise alive.”

What he conveniently omitted from his speech was that his failed policies have done nothing to make it easier to achieve, or afford, success.  In fact, as the table below shows, the Obama Administration has left Americans worse off.

America Before President Obama Took Office and Now

  Before Now Change
Number of Unemployed1 12.0 Million 13.1 Million +9%
Long-Term Unemployed2 2.7 Million 5.6 Million +107%
Unemployment Rate3 7.8% 8.5% +9%
“High Unemployment” States4 22 43 +95%
Misery Index5 7.83 11.46 +46%
Price of Gas6 $1.85 $3.39 +83%
“Typical” Monthly Family Food Cost7 $974 $1,013 +4%
Median Value of Single-Family Home8 $196,600 $169,100 -14%
Rate of Mortgage Delinquencies9 6.62% 10.23% +55%
U.S. National Debt10 $10.6 Trillion $15.2 Trillion +43%

 

1 Number of unemployed in January 2009 and December 2011. http://www.bls.gov/data/#unemployment.
2 “Long-term unemployed” means for over 26 weeks; data for January 2009 and December 2011. http://www.bls.gov/data/#unemployment.
3 Unemployment rates in January 2009 and December 2011. http://www.bls.gov/data/#unemployment.
4 “High unemployment” means having a 3-month average unemployment rate of 6% or higher.  From the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Extended Benefits Trigger Notice” for January 18, 2009 and January 22, 2012. http://www.ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/trigger/2009/trig_011809.html and http://ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/euc_trigger/2012/euc_012212.html.
5 The “Misery Index” equals unemployment plus inflation.  For January 2009 and December 2012.  http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.asp.
6 Average retail price per gallon, January 2009 week 3 and January 2012 week 4. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMM_EPMR_PTE_NUS_DPG&f=W.
7 U.S. Department of Agriculture, values represent monthly “moderate” cost per family of four for January 2009 and November 2011. http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USDAFoodCost-Home.htm.
8 U.S. median sales price of existing single-family homes for metropolitan areas for 2008 and 2011 Q3. http://www.realtor.org/research/research/metroprice.
9 Residential mortgage delinquencies (real estate loans) for 2008 Q4 and 2011 Q3. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/chargeoff/default.htm.

10 Values for January 21, 2009 and January 23, 2012.  http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np.

Corporatism, Econ, Obama, True Talking Points

MF Global scandal have you wallowing in financio-babble?

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Our good friend Tamara De Silva has written a series of articles on the MF Global scandal. In her latest piece Tamara presents the information “in English” so that regular folks who are not in the industry can understand it.

This is one of the MUST READ pieces of the year.  Here is a teaser:

….a possible conflict of interest between Jon Corzine [former NJ Governor and Democrat Bundler] and Mr. Gensler [CFTC Chairman] based upon their friendship, and a common political and professional involvement. What follows is a laundry list of connections-the applicability to MF Global comes later. For starters, Jon Corzine was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs during part of the eighteen years that Gary Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Gensler donated $10,000 to Corzine’s campaign for governor of New Jersey. They worked together in Congress when Corzine was a Senator and Mr. Gensler a Senate aide. They worked closely together drafting large portions of the investor protection act, Sarbanes Oxley, while Corzine served on the Senate Banking Committee.

More…

In 2010, Corzine invited Gensler to lecture at Princeton about financial regulation and Gensler also spoke to the audience assembled about his friendship with Corzine. Gensler donated $300,000 to the prominent Democratic candidates including President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Corzine has been one of President Obama’s elite bundlers, this past April 2011, alone holding an exclusive fundraiser from his Manhattan apartment where he was able to pass the hat around for more than $500,000. Gensler authored much of the Dodd-Frank Act and analysts like Sandler and O’Neill Partners wrote that they expected Corzine’s contacts in Washington as he took over as CEO of MF Global in 2010 to help him “navigates a shifting regulatory environment.”

Read on HERE!

Hmmm I wonder if the CFTC will have the ability to put service before self and investigate their own boss? After what we have already seen in the Obama Administration I am not holding my breath.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, History, Mitt Romney, Newt, Reagan

Art Laffer: Why Gingrich’s Tax Plan Beats Romney’s

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Art Laffer is the economic genius behind the Reagan Recovery where 8 of the top 10 economic indicators showed almost unending growth for two decades.

Read every last word carefully before you vote.

Art Laffer at the Wall Street Journal:

If we judge both leading contenders in the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, by what they’ve done in life and by what they propose to do if elected, either one could be an excellent president. But when it comes to the election’s core issue—restoring a healthy economy—the key is a good tax plan and the ability to implement it.

Mr. Gingrich has a significantly better plan than does Mr. Romney, and he has twice before been instrumental in implementing a successful tax plan on a national level—once when he served in Congress as a Reagan supporter in the 1980s and again when he was President Clinton’s partner as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. During both of these periods the economy prospered incredibly—in good part because of Mr. Gingrich.

Jobs and wealth are created by those who are taxed, not by those who do the taxing. Government, by its very nature, doesn’t create resources but redistributes resources. To minimize the damages taxes cause the economy, the best way for government to raise revenue is a broad-based, low-rate flat tax that provides people and businesses with the fewest incentives to avoid or otherwise not report taxable income, and the least number of places where they can escape taxation. On these counts it doesn’t get any better than Mr. Gingrich’s optional 15% flat tax for individuals and his 12.5% flat tax for business. Each of these taxes has been tried and tested and found to be enormously successful.

Hong Kong, where there has been a 15% flat income tax on individuals since 1947, is truly a shining city on the hill and one of the most prosperous cities in history. Ireland’s 12.5% flat business income tax propelled the Emerald Isle out of two and a half centuries of poverty. Mr. Romney’s tax proposals—including eliminating the death tax, reducing the corporate tax rate to 25%, and extending the current tax rates on personal income, interest, dividends and capital gains—would be an improvement over those of President Obama, but they don’t have the boldness or internal integrity of Mr. Gingrich’s personal and business flat taxes.

Imagine what would happen to international capital flows if the U.S. went from the second highest business tax country in the world to one of the lowest. Low taxes along with all of America’s other great attributes would precipitate a flood of new investment in this country as well as a quick repatriation of American funds held abroad. We would create more jobs than you could shake a stick at. And those jobs would be productive jobs, not make-work jobs like so many of Mr. Obama’s stimulus jobs.

Tax codes, in order to work well, require widespread voluntary compliance from taxpayers. And for taxpayers to voluntarily comply with a tax code they have to believe that it is both fair and efficient.

Fairness in taxation means that people and businesses in like circumstances have similar tax burdens. A flat tax, whether on business or individuals, achieves fairness in spades. A person who makes 10 times as much as another person should pay 10 times more in taxes. It is also patently obvious that it is unfair to tax some people’s income twice, three times or more after it has been earned, as is the case with the death tax.

The current administration’s notion of fairness—taxing high-income earners at high rates and not taxing other income earners at all—is totally unfair. It is also anathema to prosperity and ultimately leads to the situation we have in our nation today.

In 2012, those least capable of navigating complex government-created economic environments find themselves in their worst economic circumstances in generations. And the reason minority, lesser-educated and younger members of our society are struggling so greatly is not because we have too few redistributionist, class-warfare policies but because we have too many. Overtaxing people who work and overpaying people not to work has its consequences.

On a bipartisan basis, government has enacted the very policies that have created the current extremely uneven distribution of income. And then in turn they have used the very desperation they created as their rationale for even more antibusiness and antirich policies. As my friend Jack Kemp used to say, “You can’t love jobs and hate job creators.” Economic growth achieved through a flat tax in conjunction with a pro-growth safety net is the only way to raise incomes of those on the bottom rungs of our economic ladder.

When it comes to economic efficiency, nothing holds a candle to a low-rate, simple flat tax. As I explained in a op-ed on this page last spring (“The 30-Cent Tax Premium,” April 18), for every dollar of net income tax collected by the Internal Revenue Service, there is an additional 30¢ paid out of pocket by the taxpayers to maintain compliance with the tax code. Such inefficiency is outrageous. Mr. Gingrich’s flat taxes would go a lot further toward reducing these additional expenses than would Mr. Romney’s proposals.

Mr. Gingrich’s tax proposal is not revenue-neutral, nor should it be. If there’s one truism in fiscal policy, it’s this: Wasteful spending will always rise to the level of revenues. Whether you’re in Greece, Washington, D.C., or California, overspending is a prosperity killer of the first order. Mr. Gingrich’s flat tax proposals—along with his proposed balanced budget amendment—would put a quick stop to overspending and return America to fiscal soundness. No other candidate comes close to doing this.

 

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Obama

ZeroHedge: Real Unemployment Rate 10%

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ZeroHedge:

What do the NAR, Consumer Confidence and CBO forecasts have in common? If you said, “they are all completely worthless” you are absolutely correct. Alas, the market needs to “trade” off numbers, which is why the just released CBO numbers apparently are important… And the fact that the CBO predicted negative $2.5 trillion in net debt by 2011 back in 2011 is largely ignored. Anyway, here are some of the highlights.

  • 2012 Deficit: $1.1 trillion; 2013 Deficit: $0.6 – yes, we are cackling like mad too…
  • Unemployment to remain above 8% in 2012 and 2013; will be around 7% by end of 2015; to drop to 5.25% by end of 2022.
    • This forecast is utterly idiotic and is completely unattainable unless the US workforce drops to all time lows and the US economy generates 300,000 jobs a month for 10 years
  • Needless to say, CBO assumes the best of all worlds in this meaningless forecast
  • But here is the kicker: “Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle (on the basis of the experience in previous downturns) not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼ percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7 percent” translation: CBO just admitted that the BLS numbers are bogus and real unemployment is 10%. Thank you
2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Econ, Energy Policy, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Solyndra caught tossing millions of dollars’ worth of assets YOU paid for into dumpsters

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With so many of thee green energy boondoggles it looks like this: Obama gives big taxpayer money to a fund raiser who is an owner in a “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business.

Related:

Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!) – LINK

CBS: Obama Admin knew green energy boondoggles were politically motivated – LINK

Whopping Lies: New Obama ad defends energy policy, Solyndra – LINK

 

2012 Primary, Alarmism, Budget, Econ, Energy Policy, Obama, Treason, True Talking Points

Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!)

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With so many of thee green energy boondoggles it looks like this: Obama gives big taxpayer money to a fund raiser who is an owner in a “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business.

Via GlobalWarming.org:

Earlier this week, Stimulus beneficiary Evergreen Energy bit the dust. Then, Ener1, a manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles and recipient of Stimulus largesse, filed for bankruptcy. And today, the Las Vegas Sun reports that Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that received $5.9 million from the Porkulus, will cut two-thirds of its workforce, about 200 employees, only seven months after opening a factory in Nevada.

I foresaw this spate of bad news last November. As I explained yesterday,

In a previous post, I compared renewable energy spending in the 2009 Stimulus to a green albatross burdening the President. I argued that Stimulus spending was inherently wasteful, because politics invariably corrupts government’s investment decisions. The result is taxpayers losses on bankrupt companies that existed only by the grace of political favoritism, a la Solyndra. I predicted the green stimulus would haunt the President, in the form of a slow drip public relations nightmare, as a litany of bad investments go belly-up in the run up to the 2012 elections.

GlobalWarming.org is a nice site. I suggest that our readers add it to their reading lists.