Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category

Many have charged that President Obama’s decision to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan 10 months from now is hampering our war effort. But now it’s official. In a stunning statement last week, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that the July 2011 date is “probably giving our enemy sustenance.”

A remarkably bold charge for an active military officer. It stops just short of suggesting aiding and abetting the enemy. Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.

How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser told the New York Times’ Peter Baker. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”

If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate members of Congress, pass health care and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out.

But Obama sees his wartime duties as a threat to his domestic agenda. These wars are a distraction, unwanted interference with his true vocation — transforming America.

Read more at the Washington Post

Almost Half of U.S. Fatalities in Afghan War Took Place Since Obama Took Office

Afghanistan: The Anatomy of Defeat

When Congress returns from its summer recess, members will face a pivotal decision about the expiring Bush tax cuts. President Barack Obama has called for their permanent extension for singles with incomes below $200,000 and married couples with incomes below $250,000, but has proposed that most of the tax cuts for households with higher incomes be allowed to expire.

To buttress this position, the president and his supporters have repeatedly asserted that the expiration of these cuts will have little impact, because they affect only a tiny fraction of the wealthiest Americans, people who “can afford it.”

The numbers are clear. According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.  Would Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden deny that the more successful firms owned by individuals in the top income-tax bracket are disproportionately responsible for investment and job creation?

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

More Dems buck plan to let taxes increase for rich

The Facts About the 2003 Tax Cuts

The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

The Business of America Is Business

Today the Labor Department released the September jobs report, showing nonfarm payrolls decreased again by 54,000 and that the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.6%.

By every objective measure, President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has been a complete failure. When President Obama was selling his stimulus plan to the American people, he promised it would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. At the time, employment stood at about 134.3 million, according to the Labor Department’s most commonly used measure. That established an Obama jobs target for December 2010 at 137.8 million. According to the latest jobs report, total U.S. employment stood at 130.3 million in August, which means the cumulative Obama jobs deficit stands at 7.5 million.

Despite the mounting evidence of failure, the Obama administration is still completely unapologetic. Defending her tenure as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer told journalists at the National Press Club Wednesday: “The current recession has been fundamentally different from other postwar recessions. … Precisely because such severe financial shocks have been rare, there were no reliable estimates of the likely impact. To this day, economists don’t fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did, and why they cut labor so much more than they normally would, given the decline in output.” But after first admitting that the experts don’t understand the current crisis, she then confidently asserts:

It is clear that the Recovery Act has played a large role in the turnaround in GDP and employment. In a report that Jared Bernstein and I issued during the transition, we estimated that by the end of 2010, a stimulus package like the Recovery Act would raise real GDP by about 3½ percent and employment by about 3½ million jobs, relative to what otherwise would have occurred…. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, CEA’s own estimates, and estimates from a range of respected private sector analysts suggest that the Act has already raised employment by approximately two to three million jobs relative to what it otherwise would have been.

Got that? Romer first admits that her magic Keynesian formulas were completely useless in predicting how bad the recession would be, and then she turns right around and uses those exact same formulas to justify the success of the stimulus. If that bootstrapping weren’t audacious enough, Romer then went on to claim that “the United States still faces a substantial shortfall of aggregate demand” and that “structural changes in the composition of our output or a mismatch between worker skills and jobs” having nothing to do with continued high unemployment. So instead of changing course, Romer wants us to double down with a second round of economic stimulus.

How much more stimulus does the Obama administration want to spend? Romer wouldn’t say, and the White House is desperate to avoid calling any new action “stimulus,” but The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle has crunched the numbers and come up with a ballpark size of how big the original economic stimulus package would have to have been if we take the left’s Keynesian economics as gospel: “Full employment is perhaps 4.5-5%. If we assume that stimulus benefits increase linearly, that means we would have needed a stimulus of, on the low end, $2.5 trillion. On the high end, it would have been in the $4-5 trillion range.”

Even the Obama administration doesn’t want to add another $5 trillion to our $13.5 trillion national debt. That is why the Obama administration is pushing a $921 billion tax hike set to take effect on January 1, 2011. There is only one word for proposing $981 billion in taxes to pay for trillions in failed stimulus spending in the midst of 9.6% unemployment: audacity.

Today the Labor Department released the September jobs report, showing nonfarm payrolls decreased again by 54,000 and that the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.6%.

By every objective measure, President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has been a complete failure. When President Obama was selling his stimulus plan to the American people, he promised it would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. At the time, employment stood at about 134.3 million, according to the Labor Department’s most commonly used measure. That established an Obama jobs target for December 2010 at 137.8 million. According to the latest jobs report, total U.S. employment stood at 130.3 million in August, which means the cumulative Obama jobs deficit stands at 7.5 million.

Despite the mounting evidence of failure, the Obama administration is still completely unapologetic. Defending her tenure as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer told journalists at the National Press Club Wednesday: “The current recession has been fundamentally different from other postwar recessions. … Precisely because such severe financial shocks have been rare, there were no reliable estimates of the likely impact. To this day, economists don’t fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did, and why they cut labor so much more than they normally would, given the decline in output.” But after first admitting that the experts don’t understand the current crisis, she then confidently asserts:

It is clear that the Recovery Act has played a large role in the turnaround in GDP and employment. In a report that Jared Bernstein and I issued during the transition, we estimated that by the end of 2010, a stimulus package like the Recovery Act would raise real GDP by about 3½ percent and employment by about 3½ million jobs, relative to what otherwise would have occurred…. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, CEA’s own estimates, and estimates from a range of respected private sector analysts suggest that the Act has already raised employment by approximately two to three million jobs relative to what it otherwise would have been.

Got that? Romer first admits that her magic Keynesian formulas were completely useless in predicting how bad the recession would be, and then she turns right around and uses those exact same formulas to justify the success of the stimulus. If that bootstrapping weren’t audacious enough, Romer then went on to claim that “the United States still faces a substantial shortfall of aggregate demand” and that “structural changes in the composition of our output or a mismatch between worker skills and jobs” having nothing to do with continued high unemployment. So instead of changing course, Romer wants us to double down with a second round of economic stimulus.

How much more stimulus does the Obama administration want to spend? Romer wouldn’t say, and the White House is desperate to avoid calling any new action “stimulus,” but The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle has crunched the numbers and come up with a ballpark size of how big the original economic stimulus package would have to have been if we take the left’s Keynesian economics as gospel: “Full employment is perhaps 4.5-5%. If we assume that stimulus benefits increase linearly, that means we would have needed a stimulus of, on the low end, $2.5 trillion. On the high end, it would have been in the $4-5 trillion range.”

Even the Obama administration doesn’t want to add another $5 trillion to our $13.5 trillion national debt. That is why the Obama administration is pushing a $921 billion tax hike set to take effect on January 1, 2011. There is only one word for proposing $981 billion in taxes to pay for trillions in failed stimulus spending in the midst of 9.6% unemployment: audacity.

Read more at the Heritage Foundation

Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession

Why Obamanomics Has Failed

The Jobless Obama “Recovery”

Repeating FDR’s Mistakes

Give Capitalism a Chance

We have a foreign invasion underway and our president does NOTHING but posts signs and sue the very people who are trying to protect us. How is this not TREASON?

The Washington Times reports that the state of Arizona has essentially ceded parts of the southern border to Mexican drug cartels in what — we hope — is a tactical retreat:

The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8″ and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,” he said. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

And blogger the Hyacinth Girl has experienced the warnings firsthand:

On a recent trip to Phoenix, I pulled off the I-8 to let the dogs out and let the kid get her wiggles out. I’d stopped at this place before; it has some abandoned buildings I like to look at. About ten minutes after I’d stopped, a sheriff’s SUV pulled up and a very nice lady sheriff asked me politely but with some urgency if I could gather my wayward puppies and child and leave immediately.

I asked her why, as I’m pretty familiar with Arizona and the freedom within its borders. She explained that it was too close to sunset for us to be on that particular side of the freeway, as the drug and human traffickers would be out very soon. “They’ll shoot you if they don’t know you,” she said, “Even if you’re just here with you kid and obviously not a threat.”

Needless to say, I gathered everyone, and even though Mr. HG needed some convincing on account of his problems with authority, we got out of there posthaste.

But hey, at least they didn’t ask her for her identification or something.

Two months ago, Arizona governor Jan Brewer cut a campaign ad standing in front of one of the warning signs, calling on President Obama to “do your job” to secure the border.

Well, the Obama administration is doing something. Namely, suing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for failing to turn over documents as part of a DOJ inquiry into whether Arpaio’s intense illegal-immigration operations were discriminatory toward Hispanics.

Read more at the National Review

Arizona Sheriff: Border Patrol Has Retreated from Parts of Border Because It’s ‘Too Dangerous’

Arizona Sheriff: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’

The Obama White House has created an uncertainty surplus as investors and corporations wonder what kinds of anti-business regulation the president might end up supporting.

This uncertainty is why we hear so much speculation about the economy moving toward recovery but not fast enough to create new jobs. Job creation requires investment and investment requires confidence. Even Wall Street adores certainty, and uncertainty over Obama’s intentions is causing businesses to sit on their cash instead of plowing it back into the economy.

As of the end of March, non-financial companies in the U.S. were holding on to $1.84 trillion in cash, a staggering 26 percent increase from a year earlier. Even companies with good earnings are reluctant to convert those earnings into capital investment and hiring until they get a clear sense of the regulatory climate that’s going to take root under Obama. And companies looking for signs of a pro-growth regulatory regime won’t find any comfort in the president’s apparent fondness for net neutrality regulation of the broadband Internet. Call it rent control for the Internet.

Like rent control, the changes being pushed like net neutrality by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski with White House backing are almost confiscatory when it comes to broadband networks that are the backbone of the Internet in America.

Mr. Genachowski’s “Third Way” plan for net neutrality regulation would force broadband operators to sell capacity on their networks to other companies, including rivals, at prices and conditions dictated by government regulators. You know where that leads: innovation is killed; stagnation and capacity shortages ensue.

By reclassifying broadband from an information service to a telecom service, the FCC would give itself sweeping powers to micro-manage America’s broadband networks. Unlike the Bell telephone networks of yesteryear, these broadband networks were not built with government subsidies in the form of monopoly markets and guaranteed returns. They were built and financed by their entrepreneurial owners, at their own risk.

Read more at Fox News

New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access

The Internet “Kill Switch”

US Cybersecurity Czar wants online “identity cards”

President Barack Obama has said that America would reach out to other countries as “an equal partner” rather than as the “exceptional” nation that many before him had embraced; that “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail”; and that “[o]ur problems must be dealt with through partnership” and “progress must be shared.” He has laid out in his public statements the tenets of a doctrine that, if enacted, would enable his Administration to remake America as one nation among many, with no singular claim either to responsibility or exceptionalism:

(1) America will ratify more treaties and turn to international organizations more often to deal with global crises and security concerns like nuclear weapons, often before turning to our traditional friends and allies;

(2) America will emphasize diplomacy and “soft power” instruments such as summits and foreign aid to promote its aims and downplay military might;

(3) America will adopt a more humble attitude in state-to-state relations; and

(4) America will play a more restrained role on the international stage. These tenets, however well-intentioned, will make America and the world far more insecure. Examining President Obama’s doctrinal statements and actions more closely demonstrates why reasserting American leadership on behalf of liberty would be the wiser course.

Read more at the Heritage Foundation

Looks like Obama thinks it’s enough to “speak softly” without having to carry a “big stick”.

John Bolton’s policies are looking more appealing every day. 

Bolton: “Negotiation is not a policy, it is a technique.”

America, If We Want Peace, We Must Prepare for War…Now

The World Doesn’t Hate America, the Left Does

Judicial Watch reports:

In its fervent crusade to befriend Muslims, the White House will host special workshops this week to provide members of radical Islamic groups with direct access to U.S. government funding, assistance and resources.

While this may sound surreal, it’s reality in the Obama Administration, which has embarked on a never-ending mission to befriend the enemy. Previous efforts include secret meetings between Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and extremist Arab and Muslim groups to discuss national security matters and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special order allowing the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties have for years banned them from the U.S.

As contemptible as those moves may seem, the latest effort is even more outrageous. Various government agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Education and Health will participate in the White House seminars which were exposed by an independent nonprofit dedicated to monitoring the nation’s security.

The goal is to provide the leaders of groups associated with the parent organization of Hamas and Al Qaeda (Muslim Brotherhood) with tips on cutting through “red tape” when seeking U.S. government access or money. In all 20 national Muslim groups with ties to the global Islamist organization that preaches Jihad are scheduled to participate. Their mission is to obtain cash and other resources from Uncle Sam.

While the U.S. government has kept the event quiet, it was announced in a newsletter by a Saudi-funded group (Islamic Society of North America or ISNA) that was a co-conspirator in a federal terrorist funding case a few years ago. Featured in a Judicial Watch special report on Muslim charities that finance terrorism, ISNA is firmly committed to spreading the radical form of Islam, which is the driving force behind Jihad.

Now the Obama Administration is helping ISNA and its radical Islamic counterparts access American taxpayer resources as well as top government officials.

Obama sends taxpayer money to terrorists

Obama Funding Hamas

American Taxpayer, Financial Jihadist

The Islamic Infiltration: Inside Our Government, Armed With Our Secrets

US Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Pro-Palestinian Ad Campaign in Israel

Jonah Goldberg writes for the National Review:

Yes, there were some fine parts. How could there not be?

But I really disliked it. Maybe I’m letting other factors poison my take, and I should probably sleep on it before rendering final judgment. But here are a few things that really stuck in my craw.

1) As we speak, al Qaeda continues to plot against us, and its leadership remains anchored in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists. And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense. In fact, over the last 19 months, nearly a dozen al Qaeda leaders –and hundreds of Al Qaeda’s extremist allies–have been killed or captured around the world.

I understand we’re launching a surge in Afghanistan, and I know Obama will never let go of the “Iraq was a distraction” stuff, but did the Commander-in-Chief really need to say that only now, thanks to the draw down in Iraq, can we go “on offense” against al Qaeda? Have we been on defense for the last 9 years?

2) As we do, I am mindful that the Iraq War has been a contentious issue at home. Here, too, it is time to turn the page. This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.

This is what passes for bipartisan graciousness at the highest level of national security? Bush was a really swell guy who loved his country. Okay. What about the fact that he was right about the surge and our ability to leave Iraq (as much as we are) is attributable not to Obama’s fidelity to his campaign pledge, but to a decision made by Obama’s predecessor, a decision Obama opposed vociferously. I don’t expect an “I was wrong” from an Oval Office address (though it would be nice — as it would have been from Bush more than once, too). But Obama’s lawyerly avoidance of reality makes him seem petty and raises the suspicion that he can’t think straight about these issues. That is dangerous.

3. And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad. They have met every test that they faced. Now, it is our turn. Now, it is our responsibility to honor them by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for –the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.

Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jumpstart industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as President.

This is what really disgusted me. If you read this closely, what Obama is saying is that not only do we owe it to the troops to rally around his discredited and partisan economic agenda (“It’s our turn”), not only is it a test of our patriotism to sign on with his environmental and industrial planning schemes, but that doing so “must be our central mission as a people.”

I find everything about that offensive.

Bush wins, Obama takes the credit

Cuts, Not Parades, for Returning Troops

Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “This is no time for premature victory parades or self-congratulation”

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the tea party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats‘ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a Ground Zero mosque.

What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the tea party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president’s proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Read more at the Hartford Courant

Great response!

View on YouTube

Obama attacks 1.2 million Americans For Prosperity activists in speech

Last Thursday, a who’s who of the progressive movement met for a conference call organized by Families USA and hosted by the advocacy group for government-run health care, The Herndon Alliance. The Alliance’s partners include AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others. Democratic pollsters John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg were the call’s main event, and they were there to deliver some bad news.  Politico reports:

“Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. … The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.”

Health care is not the only issue where the left is retreating in the face of strong disapproval from the American people. Versionista, a Portland, Oregon-based company that tracks changes to the White House website, reported last week that the Obama administration had made “whole-cloth” changes to its “Energy & Environment” issues page. Out are any references to a cap on carbon emissions and a campaign pledge to spend $150 billion on clean energy technologies. In its place the new White House site includes a three-minute Earth Day-themed video from President Barack Obama. And across the country, leftist Senate candidates in Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana have all come out against President Obama’s impending trillion dollar tax hike, due in January.

As satisfying as it is to see Obamacare’s supporters come to terms with the failure of their grand plan, it is not enough for conservatives to just say “no.” Conservatives must have real plans for reform if the American people choose to empower them. The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America chapter on Getting Health Care Reform Right recommends:

Repeal Obamacare: There is a precedent for repealing highly unpopular and misguided laws: the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988. Recently, over 70% of Missouri residents rejected a key provision of Obamacare­—the requirement that individuals purchase a health insurance plan designed and approved by government bureaucrats. The House of Representatives even voted recently to repeal one provision of Obamacare that will impose draconian paperwork requirements on millions of small businesses. The easiest way to address all these grievances: repeal Obamacare.

Promote Personal Control Through Tax Equity: Today, workers who purchase coverage through their employer receive an unlimited tax break on the value of their health care benefits. However, those who purchase coverage on their own receive no comparable tax break. Ideally, the current tax exclusion should be replaced (or at the very least capped) with a system of universal tax credits for taxpayers. Medicaid and SCHIP spending should also be redirected to help low-income individuals and families purchase private health insurance

Read more at the Heritage Foundation

Warning for Republicans: Don’t underestimate Barack Obama

Half-Measures Won’t Work Against Tyranny

Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.

Otellini’s remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth.”

Not long ago, Otellini said, “our research centers were without peer. No country was more attractive for start-up capital…We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case.”

Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”

Since an unusually sharp downturn accelerated in late 2008, the Obama administration and its allies in the U.S. Congress have enacted trillions in deficit spending they say will create an economic stimulus but have not extended the Bush tax cuts and have pushed to levy extensive new health care and carbon regulations on businesses.

“They’re in a ‘Do‘ loop right now trying to figure out what the answer is,” Otellini said.

As a result, he said, “every business in America has a list of more variables than I’ve ever seen in my career.” If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions “the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They’ll invest elsewhere.”

Take factories. “I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States,” Otellini said.

The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don’t impose.

Read more at Investors Business Daily

Anti-Business Obama

Business Leaders Explain How to Create Jobs

States are starting to fight back against unconstitutional power grabs.  God bless Texas!

The state’s slogan is “Don’t mess with Texas.” But the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is doing just that, and at stake is whether the Obama administration can impose its global-warming agenda without a vote of Congress.

President Obama’s EPA is already well down the path to regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, something the act was not designed to do. It has a problem, however, because shoehorning greenhouse gases into that 40-year-old law would force churches, schools, warehouses, commercial kitchens and other sources to obtain costly and time-consuming permits. It would grind the economy to a halt, and the likely backlash would doom the whole scheme.

The EPA, determined to move forward anyway, is attempting to rewrite the Clean Air Act administratively via a “tailoring rule,” which would reduce the number of regulated sources. The problem with that approach? It’s illegal. The EPA has no authority to rewrite the law. To pull it off, the EPA needs every state with a State Implementation Plan to rewrite all of its statutory thresholds as well.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Bryan W. Shaw saw the tailoring rule for what it really is: a massive power grab and centralization of authority. They are fighting back, writing to the EPA:

“In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations – regulations that are plainly contrary to U.S. laws. … To encourage acquiescence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcement authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency. On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Texas leaders are doing what Congress so far has been unable to do (a Senate vote to stop the EPA’s global-warming power grab got just 47 votes on June 10): take on the EPA. Good thing, because Texas would be hit especially hard by these regulations.

Federalist principles have allowed Texas to become the strongest state in the union. The Lone Star State leads the nation in job creation, is the top state for business relocation and has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and is the top state for wind generation. President Obama said he wants to double U.S. exports in five years; he could look to Texas, as we are the top exporting state in the country. The Obama administration could learn a lot from Texas.

Instead, it is attempting to ride roughshod over Texas, and it goes beyond the greenhouse-gas issue.

Read more at the Washington Times

Thank God we bought our much-needed used minivan before this program was announced!   We were able to pay cash - $3,000 – to a family who’s kids were grown and out of the house, so we didn’t end up with payments we couldn’t afford.  If we had waited just a couple of months later, the seller would probably have traded it in for a $7000 government credit at the dealership instead of selling it to us at a price we could afford.   It would have been destroyed by the dealer (mandatory), and right now we would be stuck with all the other struggling families who are unable to find a used minivan within their price range. 

From Hot Air:

With home prices falling, fewer people employed, and every economic indicator on the dashboard flashing red, deflation has started to become a big enough worry that the Fed has adjusted its monetary policy to account for it.  There are no such worries in the used-car industry, however.  Prices have jumped 10% overall and in some cases as much as a third for used cars, thanks not to demand as much as a restricted supply after the government destroyed billions of dollars in assets as part of its Cash for Clunkers program last year (via Instapundit):

Car buyers on average paid $1,800 more for a used vehicle in July than they paid a year ago at this time, according to Edmunds.com data. That’s a 10.3 percent increase, bringing the average cost of a 3-year-old vehicle to $19,248. The price of a Cadillac Escalade spiked nearly 36 percent. “A lack of confidence in the economy is driving more people to used cars, putting upward pricing pressure on a limited supply of vehicles,” said Joe Spina, a senior analyst for Edmunds. …

Spina said that at this time last year, a troubled economy had consumers buying less- expensive fuel-efficient vehicles and trading in “gas guzzlers” through Cash for Clunkers (more formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System). “Now, those who need trucks and large SUVs are buying them and in many cases are turning to used vehicles as a way to save money,” he said. ”Prices are high because this demand comes at a time when inventory is low as a result of the current shortage of lease returns and trade-ins for vehicles of this type.” And, he said, while prices are indeed very high now, last year’s prices were low, making the gains even more dramatic.

In other words, there was real and rational demand for the cars that the Obama administration sent to the grinders.  That demand hasn’t stopped, even if tainted with political incorrectness.  The top four vehicles for price increases in Edmunds’ used-car tracking are all high-end, larger cars or SUV:

• Cadillac Escalade – 35.6% increase
• Chevy Suburban – +34.2%
• Dodge Grand Caravan – +34%
• BMW X5 – +33%

As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them.  The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new.   By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction.  Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money.

In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families.  Nice work.

Used Car Prices Up As Much as 30%

Clunkers: Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car

Dave Ramsey’s Thoughts On “Cash For Clunkers”

Cash for Clunkers Hurt The Poor

Anybody who’s studied FDR’s mistakes and the miserable historical results of Keynesian economics could see this coming a mile off. The question is, are we going to learn our lesson before we drag this out for another 8 years, the way FDR did?

Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression, Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday.

Writing in his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had its high points, with a series of positive GDP reports and sharp stock market gains.

But then as now, those signs of recovery were unsustainable and only provided a false sense of stability, said Rosenberg.

Rosenberg calls current economic conditions “a depression, and not just some garden-variety recession,” and notes that any good news both during the initial 1929-33 recession and the one that began in 2008 triggered “euphoric response.”

“Such is human nature and nobody can be blamed for trying to be optimistic; however, in the money management business, we have a fiduciary responsibility to be as realistic as possible about the outlook for the economy and the market at all times,” he said.

The 1929-33 recession saw six quarterly bounces in GDP with an average gain of 8 percent, sending the stock market to a 50 percent rally in early 1930 as investors thought the worst had passed.

“False premise,” Rosenberg said. “And guess what? We may well be reliving history here. If you’re keeping score, we have recorded four quarterly advances in real GDP, and the average is only 3%.”

Read more at CNBC

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