Another great moment in Charles Krauthammer history. After Republicans pointed out yesterday the waste in the President’s porkapalooza stimulus bill (money for ant research) … Krauthammer couldn’t resist the opportunity to call it like he sees it and he sees with great clarity and very little political correctness. Read more
It’s not supposed to work this way, but our federal leaders continue to make up new policy, procedures and unconstitutional legislation at every turn. President Obama will introduce his own health care legislation and post it on the White House Web site tomorrow or Monday.
Part of the Obama administration’s stimulus program included a plan to weatherize 600,000 homes in three years – and “save or create” jobs of course – has only completed somewhere between 9,000 and 22,000 homes during it’s first year. The program cost is $5 billion.
As Ronald Reagan said, government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. This little clip starts with Jim Cramer and ends with Alan Greespan both agreeing. Washington’s crazy socialist agenda of spend and control has business frozen in its tracks with no intention of hiring until absolutely necessary. Watch and learn you lefties.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpRr-Zb6vBk
Greenspan went on the predict lower unemployment by mid next year … but not by much.
This is just a great piece of video. This Week’s round table discussing the lack of job creation despite the “stimulus”, something that even Ariana Huffington gets. But former “Clintonista” and big time lefty John Podesta clings desperately to the “It’s Bush’s fault” excuse. Read more
Spoken like a man who probably hasn’t dug a ditch, wouldn’t dig a ditch, wouldn’t know a ditch if he hit one in the road.
On This Week Sunday Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, one of the Sunday morning “wizards of smart” (thank you Rush Limbaugh) thinks he has a great idea to stimulate the economy: another WPA program. More infuriating than his cavalier attitude toward working Americans, or rather, out of work engineers, accountants, actuaries, manufacturers, etc, is his remarkable admission, right at the top that not only didn’t the first stimulus do the trick, but the second one he has in mind could be much more stimulating at a much lower price.
So smart. It kicks off with Matthew Dowd explaining why the stimulus didn’t work. No argument here.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hryun2tRoeY
The White House has come up with a new spin on jobs created or saved and well … imagine you’re in an economics class and you turn in a paper that says this. Now imagine your Professor laughing (yes, even the liberal ones), and then imagine the “F” you are going to get on your transcript.
Hot Air has this covered. I post it only because you must not miss it. Because for sure … if I didn’t point it out you most assuredly would believe it’s made up.
Now … your job has been “saved” if you got a raise. No really. Stop laughing. Come on. Stop it. I am writing here. I’m, um, uh … ahhh, bawahahahahahahaha.
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.
Ed points this line out in the AP story:
But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.
“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.
The AP had better watch itself. They might get Foxed.
UPDATE: From last night’s Neil Cavuto program on FBN (which if you don’t have you should demand it), Cavuto challeneged California Congresswoman Jackie Speier on the 640,000 stimulus jobs created or saved …another classic Cavuto moment, followed by another classically dumb Democratic moment. As you listen … keep in mind the story above.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWa4uHIlNho
Fox’s Major Garrett, among others, tried to hold WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs feet to the fire on the “jobs saved or created” fuzzy math coming from the White House. Garret wonders, when you have 500,000 people filing for unemployment each week, how can you crow about 600,000 jobs? Gibbs answer is classic.
Honestly I am not kidding … 20 jobs. Just to review:
But please, don’t take my word for it … straight from Recovery.gov . Click to enlarge.
Just imagine if Connecticut’s senior Senator were a Republican. Damn, we would probably owe this crowd jobs. Can’t ya feel the stimulus?
Thanks to Jim Geraghty at National Review. He did the numbers for Virginia and New jersey where they will likely make a difference this year.
The verdict is finally in on the “cash for clunkers” program, and I doubt that any rational person will applaud.
I know you will find this hard to believe, but, it appears that new car sales weren’t “stimulated” at all, they were just moved from one time period to another.
Last week U.S. automakers reported that new car sales for September, the first month since the clunker program expired, sank by 25% from a year earlier. Sales at GM and Chrysler fell by 45% and 42%, respectively. Ford was down about 5%.
Now, there’s a surprise.
But, the news gets even better, assuming that’s possible.
Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.
How could that be, you ask? Well, we took thousands of old cars that were traded in under the program and destroyed them…no used cars to sell to people who couldn’t afford new cars, no spare parts to sell to people who couldn’t afford new parts, and no sales of used cars to many other poorer nations that eagerly buy our used cars. That dumb piece of the program destroyed capital (i.e. used cars) and, as a result, as a nation, we are $1.4 billion poorer now than we were before this misguided legislation. Taking that further though, I wonder how many jobs were lost in those industries as well?
But, some will say, hey, look at all the gas we will save by having more fuel efficient cars on the road. Certainly that will redeem the program, won’t it? Well, no it won’t.
According to Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, at best ‘the reduction in gasoline consumption will cut our oil consumption by 0.2 percent per year, or less than a single day’s gasoline use.’
So, summing up, cash for clunkers didn’t increase auto sales, destroyed $1.4 billion in capital, put people out of work, reduced our gasoline consumption only by an amount equivalent to one day’s use per year, and it only cost us $3 billion to accomplish that feat. Pretty neat, huh?
And now, they want to run our health care. Think of how much havoc the government can wreak with a $1trillion program.