Jul 08 2009
Administration Tries To Shade Truth Of Failed Liberal Stimulus Experiment
It was a risky scheme for Democrats. They decided to avoid the tried and true stimulus path of tax cuts (too much like the GOP, their arch enemies – damn what it means to the nation and its people). Instead, knowing full well that the federal spending programs take YEARS to kick into full gear (it’s their congressional red tape policies that legally require the years), they went with an liberal fantasy, and experiment in delusion.
The Democrats decided on a faux stimulus plan. They would yack up how great it was, expecting the recession to be at its peak and turning around normally (many recessions would have by now), but pass a bunch of pork and pet projects. To get the people used to the idea of government intervention and assistance. Paving the way for the take over of health care and taxing energy into oblivion. That was the plan, at least from what we can tell from what the VP said last weekend.
This has now been confirmed by White House led media spin poring out of the DC Political Industrial Complex:
Five months after Congress approved a massive package of spending and tax cuts aimed at reviving an ailing economy, the jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery is on the right track.
…
Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February. But they reported that only about $100 billion has so far been spent and that as increasingly large sums flow out of Washington, the program is on pace to save or create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.
I want folks to take a close look at that accompanying graph, because it is a mastery of deception and lies. First it represents the entire stimulus package amount, not just the ‘shovel ready’ jobs component. It includes the $13 a week tax cut (which I believe we still owe back next year). It includes all the state aid for unemployment benefits.
Of the $ 787 billion shown I believe only about $305 billion was for direct, government job creation. There is no way a third of the job creating stimulus money is spent. I know because I track the amount budgeted and spent for 5 departments and one agency which totals one third of that $305 billion. And to date they have spent less than 1% – only $0.35 billion. These organizations include the two big job creating departments, Energy and Transportation.
The graph is a lie because it hides the truth of the democrat failure behind money not meant to directly create jobs in the package. But even with that bold face statistical lie, the Democrats can’t hide the true result of their mistakes. Here is a graph of the complete unemployment picture as of June, where we have 16.4% of the nation out of work or scraping by in part time, low paying jobs.
(Definitions for the categories can be found here) These are people without livelihoods, without their careers, sinking under the water economically. That is the history of the Democrat experiment running amok. Here is a peek at the future of Michigan under this disastrous scheme:
University of Michigan economists Joan Crary and George Fulton say the state will shed another 300-thousand jobs this year and they expect unemployment to peak at 15.8-percent next year before the turnaround begins. The rate currently stands at 13.9-percent.
Unemployment will peak NEXT YEAR! Not this summer (as predicted in the graph below), not by the end of summer. Not by Thanksgiving. Not by Christmas. Not by New Years. Maybe, just maybe, by Obama’s one year anniversary in office. And this is not the full unemployment number, it is the regularly reported U3 number in the graph above.
How’s this for a peek at our future in terms of our wealth and savings tied up in our homes:
hirty of the 50 biggest metropolitan areas have at least a 75 percent chance of lower prices through March 31, 2011, Walnut Creek, California-based PMI said in a report today. The decline is likely to spread to “all regions of the nation†from California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the states most affected by the housing slump, PMI said.
How about this peek at our future under the Democrats’ risky and now failed scheme:
Just as the nation’s housing market has begun showing signs of stabilizing, another wave of foreclosures is poised to strike, possibly as early as this summer, inflicting new punishment on families, communities and the still-troubled national economy.
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But rising foreclosures will depress home values, pushing more homeowners underwater. Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com estimates that 15.4 million homeowners, about one in five of those with first mortgages, owe more on their homes than they are worth.
Foreclosures push down values, which put people over the top in terms of owing more than the house is worth.Â
This is the result of mistakenly reading seriousness of the economy. The Democrats more than likely made the recession worse with the risky liberal experiment. And now they are trying to cover up the data proving this.
Terrific information. The perfect answer for those who are STILL chugging down the Democratic Kool-Aid! I appreciate the way you lay it out.
Actually, I believe that Progressives referred to “tax cuts” as an “failed economic theory”.
Now we venture into which “failed economic theory” fails least.
If this mistake, the trillion dollar stimulus, wasn’t bad enough, we are going to pull more money out of the economy and into the federal coffers through “cap and trade” and “Nationalized health insurance”. Every penny that the federal government takes from the individual is a penny that the individual can’t use for their own well-being or their families. Every penny the government takes from a business, the business can’t use to hire, expand, to imagine.
The next 2 mega bills will be ready to pass in September or October, so the country will be at a stand still until we see what happens. Then we will be trying to digest the implications of the bills.
Unemployment will continue to go up, tax collections will continue to fall, individuals will continue to suffer, and everything the Feds do will make people more fearful.
From the beginning I believed that Obama was purposely creating more chaos with all these crazy bills, then the frozen banks, and subprime home foreclosures were causing on their own.
None of the bills have been read by congress, none of the bills have been scrutinized by the public, and everything is a big hurry and EVERYTHING IS REALLY BIG.
Either Obama has no clue about human nature, and how the economy works in relationship to CERTAINTY, or he creating this chaos on purpose.
I usually don’t attribute ugly motives to someone, but it has occurred to me that Obama is not naive, but knows what he is doing, and empathy is not at the heart of his thinking.
If you look at what the Dems have done to Sarah Palin, they have thrown her life and her Governship into chaos and made her ability to govern absolutely impossible. As a person with integrity, for the benefit of Alaska she is stepping down. Though it is a little different the result is mostly the same. The Feds are creating chaos through take-overs, or redefining the purpose and scope of basic institutions that touch profoundly every persons life. They are creating so much chaos that the people are stepping down and dropping out, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Something that Obama said to “Joe the Plumber” and to Bill O’Rielly that caught my attention (before the election), was his thoughts on fairness. It is not fair for some to have so much, and others to struggle, like a waitress, or the guy who works as a plumber for a boss who has more then the worker. So Obama has taken 2 popular democrat themes, medical insurance and global warming to achieve a means to an end. The federal government will take trillions of dollars from the hands of individuals and redistribute them to those who have been treated unfairly in our capitalist economy. When no more trillions can be taken from individuals and businesses he will execute the second part of his plan that is being set up with his international speeches. He will begin to decimate the military and the industrial complex that supports it.
His vision of America is of a kinder and equal citizenry, who reaches into the greater world with diplomacy.
I am starting to think the “H” in BHO stands for “Hoover” as in Herbert Hoover.
An addendum to the above post.
We must ask, who are the implementers and informers of our kinder and diplomatic America? We already know, the elite, erudite, opiners of our finest Universities. Those in Chomsky tradition who have told us, the great unwashed like Sarah Palin, that we Americans must repent and expect payback for killing Indians, enslaving Africans, raping and pillaging countries far and wide of gold, diamonds, oil, giving arms to enemies, bombing friends, imprisoning children and the poor while the capitalists make millions off their back. These great thinkers have the answers for us doers, because they have thought and thought and thought, and in theory equality and diplomacy should work.
An aside, Laura Bush spent $500,000 a year to run the office of First Lady. Michelle Obama $1.4 million.
Kathy, excellent posts.
I would say the two keys words to this administration are REDISTRIBUTE and EQUAL, as in equal misery, equal grief, equal everything…except for the privileged few who, by the way, view white people as the privileged ones for the past 233 years so now it’s their(whites) turn to be dominated, as they see it.
These elite are the same coin as the ones they hate-just the opposite side. They ARE the ones they hate/resent.
And I think it’s interesting that no mentions that George W. Bush’s policies AVOIDED a WORLDWIDE DEPRESSION after 9/11…a MUCH WORSE time in our history than now! I remember clearly hearing Dick Morris talk about the possibility of that happening with the airlines frozen and people around the world were frozen, basically…So let’s compare whose policies worked quickly and effectively and whose didn’t. And don’t tell me George is responsible for the economic chaos last year-that mantle belongs to Carter, Dodd, Frank et al. And ACORN! They were continually warned!
AJ, I think you mean peek (a.k.a. a look at). As for one who is trying to leave the disaster called Michigan and land some place around DC where my type of work does exist with livable wages. It is not much fun hearing from my wife on almost a daily basis of another family impacted by this recession. The scary part is that once you lose your job in Michigan. There is nothing available locally in regards to finding a replacement job and if you do find something, the wages are pathetic and they are seeking Superperson. Also, I am really not looking forward to finding out how much I am going to get for selling my house.
I don’t understand how our government thinks it can spend the economy back to health. Here’s an idea … how about leaving more money IN the economy in the first place.
Maybe cut income tax rates in half for self-employed individuals grossing under 1 million/year. That should stimulate a lot of new business ventures, maybe the hiring of some new employees, and certainly some new business investment from current small business. THAT is where the growth is going to come from. Until small business begins to grow, the economy is going to remain stagnant. We need to replace the destruction of wealth in real estates with a creation of wealth in business.
Looks like the word is getting out. 0bama’s pols are dropping in Va as well as Ohio.
http://www.redstate.com/brianfaughnan/2009/07/08/virginia-souring-on-obama-too/
They knew in advance that this crud wouldn’t work as expected.
That is why they came up with a new unverifiable metric of Jobs Created or Saved.
Sounds nice but doesn’t mean a durn thing and there is not a way in heck to calculated it.
If you want to know why the Democrats are going to be run out of town on a rail, then read this.
The government is going to tell you what energy renovations you need to do to your house before you can sell it or even get a building permit. In my country one must get a building permit to simply replace a water heater. That means the state will be out inspecting for energy compliance every time someone installs a new water heater.
Oops, blew that tag. Also meant “In my county” not country.
AJ, you might be interested in this tidbit: http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/07/08/maybe-this-is-why-the-stimulus-isnt-creating-tons-of-jobs-yet/
Short form: Roughly 85% of the porkulus money has been used to bail out state budgets. I guess shoveling my tax dollars into a hole counts as “shovel-ready”.