Barack Obama Is Not A Socialist

That is the message President Barack Obama presented to a group of business leaders yesterday.

Some of what President Obama had to say:

“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, I am an ardent believer in the free market.”

 ”I believe businesses like yours are the engines of economic growth in this country.”

“I firmly believe that America’s success in large part depends on your success.”

President Obama then went on to speak to the gathering of CEO’s about his plans to reform health care, impose new regulations for the financial industry, amd to move America towards a “green” economy.

Barack Obama claiming he supports free market economics is about as believable as Bill Clinton saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

Liberals Test Positive For Stupid

Jim Yardley on Pajamas Media makes the case that liberal progressives don’t have the common sense that God gave to a goldfish.

My son and his wife just had their first child, and he recently asked me what books he should get to read to his son.

I thought about it for a minute, and suggested the works of a renowned thinker who lived around 600 B.C. Before you say that ancient philosophy would be wasted on a child, I told him to get a children’s version of the works of Aesop.

Even though our liberal/progressive/Democrat (LPD) friends continue to insist that we have evolved as a species, reading Aesop will show any but the most obtuse observer that we really haven’t. Aesop continually shows us that there is a strain of humanity that “wants what it wants, when it wants it” and assumes that making such a statement is equivalent to postulating a law of nature. And just reading any recent news reports illustrates his point.

The new and current LPD “natural law” is illustrated in the “spread the wealth” mantra. But it hearkens back to two of Aesop’s fables. The fable about the ant and the grasshopper comes to mind, as does the one about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

It’s the latter that demonstrates beyond any doubt that the LPDs have tested positive for stupid.

In 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall agreed with Daniel Webster when he stated “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Now we have a Congress dominated by LPDs, who show that they also have tested positive for stupid. Taxes, higher taxes, and still more taxes (even when misnamed as fines or penalties) is a guaranteed formula for economic collapse, followed shortly by societal decay and national disaster.

They are, as so imaginatively illustrated by Aesop, trying to kill the golden goose. And in this reality, the golden goose is the real engine of wealth creation — small businesses. Without the engine that creates wealth, there will be no wealth to spread around, regardless of how anyone thinks that is supposed to happen.

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A Liberal Spender In Conservative Clothing

Even the favorite daughter of the Tea Party Nation, Sarah Palin, has glowing praise for Congressman Paul Ryan.

But when the heat is on, he stops being a conservative.

This past Sunday was a big day for Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints—but it was also a big day for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Rarely has a lowly House member received so much glowing praise from such diverse commentators. In just one day, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin effusively gushed to Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday that she was “impressed” by him—George Will imagined him as vice president—and even “progressive” Washington Post health care blogger Ezra Klein grudgingly complimented him on the “daring solutions” offered in his budget plan (this all came on the heels of President Obama’s complimenting Ryan during the GOP conference Q&A session).

In recent weeks, Ryan’s stature has increased to the point where people are beginning to talk of him—not just a future vice president—but even (daresay) a future president. And, in all honesty, his budget plan is terrific. As ranking member on the House Budget Committee, Ryan has emerged as a rare, articulate spokesman for conservatism. (It would be difficult for me to criticize his plan, inasmuch as many of his ideas are identical to the ones I proposed in my “Contract for America, 2.0.”).

But while Ryan’s boyish looks, youthful style, and sharp intellect have garnered him much praise from conservatives desperate to find the next Ronald Reagan, he has one major problem: His actual voting record.

Though he talks like Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, some of Ryan’s most high-profile votes seem closer to Keynes than to Adam Smith. For example, in the span of about a year, Ryan committed fiscal conservative apostasy on three high-profile votes: The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or  TARP (whereby the government purchased assets and equity from financial institutions), the auto-bailout (which essentially implied he agrees car companies – especially the ones with an auto plant in his district—are too big to fail), and for a confiscatory tax on CEO bonuses (which essentially says the government has the right to take away private property—if it doesn’t like you).

While Ryan’s overall voting record is very conservative, the problem with casting these high-profile votes is that they demonstrate he is willing to fundamentally reject conservatism when the heat is on.

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Ten Rules For Republican Radicals

One of President Obama’s favorite books is Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.

As we pointed out here recently, it is even on the list of recommended reading on the recruitment applications that the members of Obama’s Army, Organizing For America, are passing out to high school students.

So if the leftists can follow the Socialist views in Alinsky’s book, it’s only fair that conservatives have their own set of rules to live by.

1) Always try to decentralize power as much as possible. The further power is removed from the people, the less it serves them. That’s why anti-government radicals should always look for ways to push power downhill. From the federal government to state governments, from state governments to local governments, from local governments to the people — the more power that can be shifted away from the government towards the people, the better.

2) Earmarks are corruption. Earmarks may be a small part of a deficit, but they’re responsible for a large part of the corruption in Congress. That’s because earmarks have turned into a way for members of Congress to pay off campaign contributors, political allies, and family members with our tax dollars. Until we get a handle on earmarks, we’re not going to have honest government in this country.

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President Obama Brings His Dog And Pony Show To Pennsylvania

President Obama is off on yet another whirlwind tour, his excuse this time is that he is traveling to “summits to create jobs.”

Barack Obama knows as much about creating jobs as I do about quantum physics.

Before saddling the taxpayers with the costs of his latest (sure to be) boondoggle, he had a meeting at the White House with such helpful advisors such as the CEO’s of Boeing, Comcast, AT&T and Disney.

I’m not holding my breath waiting to see the Walt Disney Company start employing people all across small town America.

Why doesn’t the President talk to some people who may actually be able to give him some advice about job creation?

Better yet, can one of you who supports the President explain to me how holding a question and answer session with a group of people who are not business owners at a community college in Pennsylvania is going to do anything to spur job creation?

I couldn’t begin to come close to the amount of resources available to President Obama.

Yet in ten minutes of doing research, I came across two Pennsylvania firms, both of them automotive, that the owners of would be able to tell the President what it takes to create jobs.

They are both family-owned firms, both started out with one location, one has grown to 26 locations throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania, the other has 53 locations that stretch from Northeast Pennsylvania to the Canadian border.

The owners of these firms are the people the President should meet with if he wants to learn something about creating jobs.

Instead, he uses the usual liberal ploy of presenting a lot of style and very little of substance.

Meanwhile, the country’s unemployment rate will continue to rise, adding millions of job losses to the already frightening number of Americans who are unemployed.

We are putting are hopes of job creation and an economic turnaroud in the hands of a President who, along with the chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, promised America that if Congress passed his stimulus plan, unemployment would rise no higher than 8 percent.

Yeah, that plan has worked out really well.

Wasn’t there someone who said something about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

By repeating the same tactics that didn’t work before, that seems to be the President’s plan for reducing unemployment.

That and traveling around the country making speeches to crowds of unemployed people as a means of stimulating the economy.

Good luck with that one Mr. President.

 

 

Employment Situation News Release

The latest Employment Situation news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

The unemployment rate edged down to 10.0 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-11,000). In the prior 3 months, payroll job losses had averaged 135,000 a month. In November, employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and information, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.

Quarterly Data Series on Business Employment Dynamics

The latest jobs data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

From December 2008 to March 2009 the number of job losses from closing and contracting establishments remained essentially unchanged at 8.5 million. The number of job gains from opening and expanding private sector establishments fell from 6.7 million to 5.7 million, the lowest level since the series began in 1992, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

 Gross job losses exceeded gross job gains in all but two industry sectors: utilities and education and health services.

Quarterly Extended Mass Layoffs

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://bls.gov

Employers initiated 1,776 extended mass layoff events that resulted in 277,924 job separations in the third quarter of 2009. The total number of events reached a record high for any third quarter. Nine major industry sectors had a record high number of events for a third quarter.

Employment Situation

The latest unemployment numbers issued today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In October, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000). The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers in October, 2009 is 17.5 percent.

September Mass Layoffs Report

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://bls.gov

In September, employers took 2,561 mass layoff actions
involving 248,006 workers. Mass layoff events decreased by
129 and associated initial claims by 11,301 from August.
Year-to-date events and initial claims reached new program
highs at 23,745 and 2,410,208, respectively.

The national unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in September 2009, seasonally adjusted, little changed from 9.7 percent the prior month and up from 6.2 percent a year earlier. In September, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 263,000 over the month and by 5,785,000 from a year earlier.

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