Millions of Green Jobs...NOT!

Barack Obama promised us millions of "green" jobs.  He "invested" billions of dollars of 'stimulus' funds in those businesses.  Most of these are owned by cronies of Obama.  Here's the list.

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

1. Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($69 million)*
5. AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)
6. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
7. SunPower ($1.5 billion)
8. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
9. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
10. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
11. Amonix ($5.9 million)
12. National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)
13. Fisker Automotive ($528 million)
14. Abound Solar ($374 million)*
15. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
16. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)
17. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
18. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
19. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
20. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
21. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
22. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
23. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
24. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
25. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
26. Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*
27. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
28. LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*
29. UniSolar ($100 million)*
30. Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*
31. GreenVolts ($500,000)
32. Vestas ($50 million)
33. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)
34. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
35. Navistar ($10 million)
36. Satcon ($3 million)*

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.
The problem begins with the issue of government picking winners and losers in the first place. Venture capitalist firms exist for this very reason, and they choose what to invest in by looking at companies’ business models and deciding if they are worthy. When the government plays venture capitalist, it tends to reward companies that are connected to the policymakers themselves or because it sounds nice to “invest” in green energy.
The 2009 stimulus set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that time, 1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse (although not all are linked to the green-energy funds), and nearly 600 convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have since either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.

 All of these companies have gone belly up. Not one has produced any real jobs...and all of them have laid off  their production staff.

August Unemployment

Here's the chart showing unemployment under the "stimulus" package...

and another graphic:

Congression Budget Office: Stimulus Hurts Growth

According to the CBO, Obama's "stimulus" hurts economic growth in America. Via Newsalert.

It's The Economy Stupid: Chapter 312

Barack Obama, again has refused to take responsibility for the failing economy.  The trillion dollar "stimulus package" that his Democratically controlled Congress rammed through along party lines in 2009 has utterly failed in it's declared goal to keep unemployment below 8% (even the biased "politifact.com" finds that Obama said so...and failed misserably. 

Even that being said, with regulations as welll as currently existing ones costing the economy $1.5 trillion dollars per year, the EPA is set to ramp up even more costly carbon emissions standards. This will cost at least an additional half trillion dollars. So...

Who does Mr. Obama blame for the economy that he and his party have driven over the cliff?  Why you and me! 

A cascade of bad economic and political news knocked President Barack Obama off his game today, and prompted him to revive his 2008-style criticism of his predecessor, and also to suggest that investors, consumers and even the media are responsible for today’s stalled economy.

The blame-game rhetoric – which pollsters say is counterproductive – came during the White House’s joint press conference with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. “It is just very important for folks to remember how close we came to complete disaster,” he told the watching TV cameras and reporters.

“The world economy took a severe blow two and a half years ago, and in part that is because of a whole set of policy decisions that had been made, and challenges that have been unaddressed over the course of the previous decade,” he said, standing alongside Merkel, whose economy has rebounded during the last two years.

Of course, it's not his fault, or that of his party...it's ours...you and me. It's the voters fault! That's the ticket, yeah...

Even James Carville, who thought up "It's the economy, stupid," thinks Mr. Obama is in for a rough time.

“[L]ook, I don’t think anybody — if 54,000 new jobs is the new standard, it’s going to be a very, very rough 2012 for President Obama,” Carville said. “But the three-month average was 160,000. If that is the case, then he will do OK. I can’t tell you what will happen. But yes, if this, if this last jobs number is an indication of future job numbers, it’s going to be very, very rough.”

Things are so bad in this administration ecnomic team, that Austan Goolsbee, who lead the Council of Economic Advisors for only 9 months has resigned to return to academia...where he can teach  progressive ideas (that don't work) to future progressive leaders.   Mr. Obama in 2009 formed a "dream team" of economic advisors who would "turn the country around." 

With Goolsbee’s departure, the collapse of the president’s economic team is nearly complete. The first to leave was the president’s original chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, University of California-Berkeley economist Christina Romer. She holds the distinction of predicting an $800 billion stimulus program would bring joblessness down to 8%. Also gone is Jared Bernstein, the actual architect of the stimulus, and the man who was behind Vice President Biden’s “Summer of Recovery.”

Mr. Obama is out of ideas, and almost out of time, while we're almost out of money.  I suspect that he'll keep trying to redistribute it until he's out of office.

The Sailor Has Spoken

Hat Tip:  Chicago Boyz

Explosive Video Reich, Obamas economic advisor no "White Male Construction Workers"

Here's how Robert Reich feels about "white construction workers"...and the wasted stimulus package:

Obama Panel To Probe Stimulus Waste @ Arizona Ritz-Charlton...You Just Can't Make This Stuff UP!

Here's an email I just sent to the

Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, a sub-committee of the larger Recovery Accountability and Transparency board (sometimes known as the RAT board). The stimulus bill set up the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, or RIAP, to make recommendations to identify and prevent waste of the bill's $814 billion in stimulus spending.

I found a link on Instapundit that leads to a story in the Washington Examiner

Dear Sir, I'm writing in response to the upcoming meeting in Arizona on, "The purpose of the November 22, 2010 meeting is to allow the RIAP to have an open dialogue, with input from the public, on issues relating to fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds," says a notice in the Federal Register.

Sooo...this board is meeting to discuss how the "stimulus package" is being wasted...you really can't make this stuff up. How in the world can you justify, in the midst of a huge recession, meeting in an exclusive $1000 per night resort? Honestly...

A reader emails: “Would send a damn fine message if a few hundred people joined these clowns for ‘Tea at the Ritz’.” Heh. That's from http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/109722/

Instapundit.com is hosted by Glenn Reynolds and it's a site that gets several million hits a month...and he's going to spend the next several weeks talking about it...so am I...and I get a couple hundred hits per week. On the other hand, I do know some someone from both the DNC and RNC are hitting my web site as is someone in the office of the Speaker of the House (that would be Nancy Pelosi's office until this coming January).

Now, how do you justify spending several hundred thousand dollars of my hard earned tax money on this meeting? Especially a meeting that is for "participants in the meeting will discuss various techniques to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as larger issues of transparency and public awareness." Just how do you cretinous, brain-dead bureaucrats in our government justify this? Isn't there a nice federal office building in Arizona...that doesn't have to be rented for tens of thousands of tax dollars? Or wouldn't that be fair to those on the board, having to sit in hard government chairs instead of the plush, soft chairs of the Ritz-Charlton? I'm about to lose my apartment because I can't find a full time job and you people are wasting money like this?

Have you no shame? You wonder why the Democratic Party got pasted so badly this past election, this is why. You waste money like there's no tomorrow...but tomorrow does come...and January is coming very soon.

Sincerely,

Richard A. Vail
Pikesville, MD 21208
http://thevailspot.blogspot.com/

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.--Thomas Jefferson

Just for fun, I sent courtesy copies to various state and federal legislators, including my Congressman, State Delegates and Senator, and of course those paragons of fiscal virture, Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, my wonderful US Senators.
Here's the email address if you feel inclined to write with your comments on this wonderful meeting

panel@ratb.gov

Here's a link to the Federal Register for the announcement of the meeting.  How could I forgo a link to the hotel website for a great description of how these bureaucrats will be basking in luxury at our expense.

Here's a link to the room calculator for a suite it's $359.00 per night...until the 25th when rates go up to $605 per night. 

Obama's Stimulus As Seen In North Dakota

Here's a couple of pictures of Mr. Obama's Stimulus Package...as viewed in Bismark, ND

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words...

Yet Another Appology For Barack Obama

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is a hasidic rabbi who made waves in the haredi community a few years ago with a book entitled "Kosher Sex"...I've not read it, haven't had either the time or the money to buy it. But I digress he wrote for AOL today yet another appology opinion piece on how Mr. Obama has lost his "magic." 

The real story in this election is not that America has no jobs, that the economy continues to falter or that the national debt continues to balloon. While all three are true and, more importantly, Obama has failed to fix them, it is also true that these conditions existed prior to Obama's election. Yet somehow his personal charisma and captivating charm elevated the electorate.


The real story of campaign 2010 is how boring Obama has become.

This is pretty much how he starts off...not really inspiring to say the least.  The gist of his peice is that Mr. Obama has over exposed himself  by always being in the public eye...which I think is true, but he fails to reach the hearf of why Mr. Obama is flailing and failing in the White House.  There were several pertinent comments, but here is mine: 

The were always signs of what kind of President Mr. Obama would make. They were obscured as much as possible by the syncophantic reporters of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN & MSNBC as well as the NY Times, LA Times, Wash Post, Time, etc...but if you took a close look with WHOM he associated himself with. Those people who influenced him in his formative years...they were all socialists or communists.

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After all, he kicked off his political career in the living room of one of America's few domestic terrorists. A man whom Mr. Obama later referred to as..."just someone who lives in my neighborhood."
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Mr. Obama is the least prepared president in our history. He's never had to actually make any real decisions prior to his election to the Presidency...nor has he any real executive experience. Running for office isn't executive experience, since a campaign manager makes many if not most of the campaign decisions. What we have is...a disaster unfolding on a daily basis.
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Mr. Obama did in fact inherit a financial mess, one of his own party's making. Three leaders of the Democratic Party pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to extend "sub-marginal" loans...loans to people who didn't put any money down, were extended often 125% of the value of the home "to make repairs & renovations." Nor could many of these people actually pay the mortgages...thus many defaulted and those homes were forclosed on. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA4) and Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) fought every single attempt to reign in Fanny and Freddy, often lambasting those who tried to stop the runaway train as "racists"....Geo Bush tried in 2003 and John McCain in 2005. By 2007 the signs were there that both were beyond being on an unsustainable path.
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Then cam TARP...AIG was bailed out because it managed Congress' retirement funds (can't have those in jeapardy). The "Stimulus" that wasn't sucked a trillion dollars out of the credit markets and socked them into 30 year treasurey notes...that money's gone as if it never was...Cap & Trade (which will probably be passed in the Mad Duck session in December) will add $2400.00 per household in fuel and electricity costs. Then there was ObamaCare...which will add significantly to the cost of health insurance and the deficit, which in the past two years has added $3,000,000,000,000.00 to the debt and when combined with the budgets that have been passed since Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid (both Democrats I might add) took control of Congress in 2007...that number become $5 trillion dollars...more than 1/3 of the national debt has been added in the past four years!
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No wonder voters are pissed...the Tea Party was brewing BEFORE Mr. Obama took office...the rumblings were there to see since 2006...but they bloomed full when the Democratic leadership last year ignored the economy and worked for a year to pass seizure of health care...
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So...we'll see what happens next Tuesday...and then next year. This is the last chance for the GOP. If they don't get it right...by reducing spending significantly. Ending earmarks and all extra-Constitutional methods of wasting tax dollars as well as significantly reducing both the size and scope of the federal government, you WILL see a 3rd party running against them in 2012. Bet on it.

Rich Vail,
Pikesville, MD

Not much more to add...

Washington Spent $800,000 of Economic Stimulus on African Genital-Washing Program

Here is an excellent lesson in why we need to kick out EVERYONE presently in Congress.  All emphasis is mine:

(CNSNews.com) – The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.

The genitalia-washing program is part of a larger $12-million UCLA study examining how to better encourage Africans to undergo voluntary HIV testing and counseling – however, only the penis-washing study received money from the 2009 economic stimulus law. The washing portion of the study is set to end in 2011.

“NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Competitive Revision Applications,” the grant abstract states. “We propose to evaluate the feasibility of a post-coital genital hygiene study among men unwilling to be circumcised in Orange Farm, South Africa.”

Because AIDS researchers have been unsuccessful in convincing most adult African men to undergo circumcision, the UCLA study proposes to determine whether researchers can develop an after-sex genitalia-washing regimen that they can then convince uncircumcised African men to follow.

“The aim of the proposed feasibility study is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a post-coital male genital hygiene procedure, which participants will be asked to practice immediately post-coitus or at least 12 hours after,” reads the abstract.

Entitled “Community-Based HIV VCT: South Africa,” the name of the broader umbrella project, the program plans to test how well received the penis-washing regimen is among South African men.

If most of the men in the study wash their genitals after sex, are willing to do so after the study ends, and report that their partners accept the regimen, the researchers will develop another study to see if the “penile cleansing procedure” actually works to prevent HIV infections.

“If we find that men are able to practice consistent washing practices after sex, we will plan to test whether this might protect men from becoming HIV infected in a later study,” the grant says.

The study’s lead investigator Dr. Thomas J. Coates was the fourth highest-funded researcher in the country in 2002 and is currently conducting HIV research on three continents.

CNSNews.com asked both Coates and NIMH the following question: “The Census Bureau says the median household income in the United States is $52,000. How would you explain to the average American mom and dad -- who make $52,000 per year -- that taxing them to pay for this grant was justified?”

Coates, who was unavailable for comment, directed CNSNews.com to ask grant-related questions of his assistant, Darya Freedman, who did not respond.

The NIMH also declined to respond to CNSNews.com’s question.

We borrowed money, that our grand children will have to pay back, to spend it teaching African men how to was their dicks...this is an excellent example of just what is wrong with Congress.  These stupid bastards just don't have a clue about what's important for our country...and this isn't it.  It's time to dump the entire lot of them and start over.

A reader who requests anonymity sends this: 

This country needs a non violent political revolution, the best (only) way to do it (peacefully/bloodless) is take the money away from DC by a giant mass tax revolt (hold or don't pay taxes) by a majority of Americans, pull the rug out from under them, cut off their lifeblood (our money) and kill the over-bloated self important, not for the people political monster Washington has become.. Join the revolution, Downsize DC!

REMEMBER NOVEMBER!

Recovery Summer? Where?

I don't know about you, but I don't think that this has been the recovery summer we were promised by our political elite in Washington...as a matter of fact, things have gotten worse.   More and more people have stopped looking for work (though I've never been able to figure out when the "guv'ment" knows) because there's none to be had.  Unemployment has increased from 9.5% to 9.6%. 

For one thing, the so-called underemployment rate, which includes workers who are working part-time but who want full-time work, increased from 16.5 percent to 16.7 percent. During our supposed “Recovery Summer,” we have lost 283,000 jobs (54,000 in June, 171,000 in July, and 54,000 in August). And for August, the employment-population ratio — the percentage of Americans with jobs — was 58.5 percent. We haven’t seen figures this low in nearly three decades. As Henry Olson of the American Enterprise Institute points out, “Since the start of this summer, nearly 400,000 Americans have entered the labor force, but only 130,000 have found jobs. … America’s adult population has risen by 2 million people since [August 2009], but the number of adults with jobs has dropped by 180,000. The unemployment rate declined slightly despite these numbers, from 9.7 percent to 9.6 percent, because over 2.3 million people have left the labor force entirely, so discouraged they are no longer even looking for work. ”

So, not only has the economy lost jobs, but a couple of million more people have entered the adult work force...some recovery. 

“The jobs lost in the 2000-2001 recession don’t seem to have ever come back. The percentage of people in the workforce stabilized, but never recovered. This time, it looks like the re-employment picture will be even worse. . . . The Boomers are not retiring. Their workforce participation rate is well above forecast. Have you looked at your 401(k)?” Understandable, but of course that means fewer new jobs will open up.

Even Christina Romer admitted that the stimulus package that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8%...has failed miserably. 

She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things.


What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: "Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare."
...
Romer had predicted that Obama's stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate at 8 percent or less; it is now 9.5 percent. One of her bosses, Vice President Biden, told Democrats in January that "you're going to see, come the spring, net increase in jobs every month." The economy lost 350,000 jobs in June and July.

 Thus...the Obama Administration really has no clue on what to do...except spend ever more money we don't have...I have a novel idea:  STOP SPENDING MONEY WE DON'T HAVE!  Balance the budget.  Reduce the size and scope of government and end the over regulation of our economy.  Top down economies inevitably fail...even the Chinese have stopped doing that, but your home-grown socialist just don't understand that.

Sen Michael Bennet D-CO Admits Stimilus Package A Failure

Senator Michael Bennet, D-CO, said in a town meeting last Saturday, 21 August, 2010, that the trillions the Obama administration has spent has been wasted. 

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet” and, “in my view we have nothing to show for it.” Speaking of the debt, he said our debt almost equals the economy. Regarding the current job situation, Bennet said the situation has been dire for over a decade saying, “We have created no net new jobs in the United States since 1998” which were the last two years of the Clinton administration. Pointing to a slide showing budget expenditures, he said that currently 65 percent of the budget was for social security, Medicaid and Medicare expenditures and that we could not grow our way out of debt.

Those remarks were made in one of the few town hall meetings held by Democrats this summer.  This meeting was held in Greeley, Colorado, and reported by the local paper, the Greeley Gazette.  My own Senators (Mikulski & Cardin, both D) and Congressman (Sarbanes, D-MD2) have failed to hold any either.  It's time to make these spendthrift legislators accountable for their actions.  They have spent $3,000,000,000,000.00 in the past year in stimulus packages and bailouts.  Nothing has come out of this but more debt.  Mr. Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are proposing to spend ever more money in an attempt to rape the country to pay off ever more of their rapacious union supporters (SEIU-government employees in particular have faired far better than the average worker in this country).

Obama's Failed Stimulus Package Cost More Than Entire Iraq War

Here are some facts about Mr. Obama's spending when compared to the cost of the Iraq War, but first, a graph showing the costs of both:

• Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.
• Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.
• Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.
• Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.
• Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.
• The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).
• During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

  

Us vs Them

By

JP Bender

An age old proven method, to attain and control the political agenda of arrogant, elite, propagandists in their pursuit to control a nation.


In dictatorships like Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, etc., the Us vs. Them philosophy was used to demonize those not in the inner circle and to sway the citizens into a frenzy for hypnotic support.

It has always been an effective way to seize power in dictatorships. Blame others for past problems, constantly hammer away that we know better than the common man and we will make your life better from the cradle to the grave. Once in power the common man is quickly forgotten and is no longer a factor.

Now the Us vs. Them approach has gained a newfound foothold, not in a dictatorship in a foreign country but in a democracy – right here in America.

Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, along with a host of whore “journalists,” have successfully convinced America that it is Us vs. Them.

The mantra that it was all ‘George W. Bush’s fault’ started the demonizing within hours of Obama’s swearing in ceremony. You remember that day – when millions of Americans were told that hope and change was now a reality. That mantra continues to this day and if you don’t hear it five times a week you must be in the Antarctica.

We were assured that the new administration would be open and transparent and would operate on a bipartisan basis, after all this was a new dawn and Americans would come first.

We quickly were told, by Pelosi and Reid, that bipartisanship was not possible because the president had a congress with a majority to stop filibusters and he didn’t need minority support. The republicans were obstructionists because they wouldn’t support the White House’s agenda.

We soon learned that trillions would overshadow wild spending by Bush; but it all started when Bush wasted a mythical five trillion surplus handed to him by Bill Clinton. Radical programs, unpopular with Americans, were rammed through Congress, without reading them to find faults and their true costs. Step by step, Obama is building a record of major legislation that's equal to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Obama has given us the most sweeping financial regulation since the Great Depression, provided the expansion of health care, which Democrats have wanted for more than six decades. A $862-billion stimulus package that locked in long-sought Democratic priorities.

Despite the fact economy remains shaky. Obama went further with a big-government, big-deficit approach than some voters wanted, notably independents, who now have turned against him. Obama has broken some of his own promises in the process thus becoming a backroom deal-making politician to get his health care reform package. But the loyal members of the liberal media don’t cover this part of the news.

Americans give the president mixed reviews. According to the latest Gallup Poll, only 44 percent approve of his performance in office, while 48% disapprove.

Obama’s biggest problem is that unemployment remains high and people are worried about their jobs, their paychecks and, if they have any, their savings.

The White House reported last week that the economic stimulus had saved or created about 3 million jobs. Some tout that success while others don’t think it is a reasonable estimate. The liberal news media accepts that finding equal to the word of God. But most don't buy hypothetical conclusions, because Obama said that unemployment would stay below 8 percent, if Congress enacted his stimulus package; instead, it jumped past 10 percent and is now hovers at 9.5percent.

Many question benefits yet from such major initiatives as healthcare, which is being phased in over several years. The price tag has already risen by $250 billion according to the Office of Management and Budget. It seems in their haste to provide data, some issues were overlooked.

The White House is preparing to launch a new summertime campaign to turn that around. This past Friday, senior White House adviser David Axelrod stressed the president's achievements, and said the political benefit would take care of itself.



"Obama’s motivation was not politics. Someone once said that good government is good politics, and it's certainly true," Axelrod said, referring to a quote from the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.



Axelrod cited the new financial regulations that will protect credit card users and mortgage borrowers, the health care law's guarantee of insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions and the student loan overhaul's expansion of aid to college students. The news media reported all of this without questioning or verifing.



If we have learned anything in the first 18 months of the Obama administration, there are two important points to remember; it is all George W. Bush’s fault and it’s Us vs. Them. What happened to the We as in We The People?

The Stimulus Has Failed

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Study Shows Government Spending Slows Job Growth

A new research study by Harvard's Business school professors, Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy shows that when government spends money in a Congressional district or state, that businesses stop growing. Imagine that, when your government spends money in your state business don't invest money in either capital improvements or in hiring new employees.

companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

"It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman's state did not benefit at all from the unanticipated increase in spending," Coval reports.

Now, what effect did the "stimulus package" and the various bailouts have upon the economy as a whole? When the government, in a 5 month period spent a minimum of $1.5 trillion dollars to, first prop up failing corporations (banks, investment firms, and GM/Chrysler) and then in the hugely ineffective porkulus package, it literally sucked the life out of the credit industry by taking those funds that would have been used by business to grow and expand and sank it into long term government bonds. That had the effect of stifling the ability of small business and then the construction industry who need easily available credit in order to conduct day to day business operations.

Small business need credit for operating capital in order to purchase necessary materials. The construction industry does so even more...for example, a housing construction company (as well as commercial firms) need to borrow money to purchase materials to build homes...when that money is available in much smaller increments, fewer houses are built. It's the same for large construction firms as well. When you build/manufacture less, you need fewer workers...fewer workers mean fewer available jobs, that means less taxes are raised...smaller tax revenue means municipalities/counties/states have less money to operate on...

Their conclusion is simple. The government shouldn't spend money to stimulate the economy. Reducing taxes and the increase in available money for loans will...have a much more positive effect.

Our findings suggest that they should revisit their belief that federal spending can stimulate private economic development. It is important to note that our research ignores all costs associated with paying for the spending such as higher taxes or increased borrowing. From the perspective of the target state, the funds are essentially free, but clearly at the national level someone has to pay for stimulus spending. And in the absence of a positive private-sector response, it seems even more difficult to justify federal spending than otherwise.

Weatherization Act A Failure

Like pretty much everything else the Obama Administration has attempted, the weatherization portion of the "Stimulus Package" has  failed to do what was promised last year when it was passed.

"In short," the report says, "the Nation has not, to date, realized the potential economic benefits of the $5 billion ... The job creation impact of what was considered to be one of the Department's most 'shovel ready' projects has not materialized. And, modest income home residents have not enjoyed the significant reductions in energy consumption and improved living conditions promised as part of the massive Recovery Act weatherization effort." This bureaucratic failure has churned up significant backlash to the administration's efforts. Some have called this program a stimulus waste; others are asking about the merit of weatherizing homes at all.

Just goes to show you that government can't solve most problems even when you throw billions of dollars at the problem.  Sometimes, it's easier just not to spend the money, especially when you're borrowing it in the first place.

Putting America In Debt

The sign on the bottom has been corrected. Look closely at it...notice the differences.

Romer Want's Even More Stimulus

Today, Christina Romer, the Obama Administration's chief economic wonk admitted that the "stimulus package" had failed. She said, that in effect, it was terrible that so many remained jobless almost a year after the bill had been passed. As the Council of Economic Advisers chief she said,

"you'll get no argument from" her on the need to improve the miserable jobs picture. Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer said it's devastating that some workers have been unemployed for two years and that job losses were continuing nearly a year after passage of the so-called stimulus bill."

Even so, with the jobless rate remaining above 10 percent in December as more than 660,000 people had left the workforce involuntarily. But Ms. Romer qualified her remarks by saying the loss of jobs from the market had "slowed".

"In the first quarter of 2009, when we first came in, we were losing on average 691,000 jobs per month. With these new numbers in the fourth quarter, we were losing 69,000 jobs," she said. "It's still terrible. We're still losing jobs, and we absolutely have to go from losing any jobs at all to adding them at a robust rate."

While Ms. Romer refused to predict what the job market would look like this fall prior to the mid-term election, she did say it was "still a very realistic estimate that job growth could begin in the spring."

Ms. Romer also seemed to back a Democratic Party effort to spend an additional $75 billion outside of normal spending with an additional "stimulus package," though this time it would be spent in programs like COBRA and for those who are attempting to weatherize their homes "cash for caulkers" -- energy saving retrofits.

"The sense that we need to do more is overwhelming," she said.

Though she didn't specify how the government would pay for it all...more bond sales, most likely. That would add another almost $100 billion to this years record deficit, which is on mark to reach $1,800,000,000,000.00. Just what we need.

The Stimulus Was A Flop

via BigGovernment.com, By Dan Mitchell,

President Obama claimed a $787 billion Keynesian spending bill would keep the joblessness rate at 8 percent or below, so it’s no surprise that the White House is feeling defensive now that the unemployment rate is 10 percent. The supposedly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has jumped to the defense of the Administration, estimating that Obama’s so-called stimulus actually generated beween 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs. How can that be, you may ask, when the number of jobs has fallen by more than 3 million? The CBO neatly sidesteps that real-world concern by moving the goalposts, using a slightly more sophisticated version of Obama’s “jobs created or saved” alchemy. The CBO simply estimates how many jobs there are now compared to a make-believe baseline of how many jobs there would be “without the law.” Needless to say, this means there is no objective benchmark. The unemployment rate could jump to 15 percent and total job losses could reach 10 million, but CBO would continue to say, for all intents and purposes, that the results from their Keynesian model are more important than any real-world numbers. This is the fiscal-policy version of the Wizard of Oz, and we’re supposed to ignore reality just as Dorothy and friends were supposed to ignore the man behind the curtain. A previous post included a video explaining why Keynesian economics was theoretically flawed. This video specifically debunks Obama’s $787 billion faux stimulus, notwithstanding CBO’s make-believe numbers.