What isn’t “phony” about the Obama economy is “Slow GDP growth, lagging job creation, constricted free markets, ballooning deficits and debt, growing and counterproductive regulation, crippling taxation, and the penalization of small business…”
Forbes reports that the German Green Energy Bluster Running Out Of Wind. It seems that unreliable wind produced energy can’t compete without massive government subsidies. Combine that with their policy of shutting down carbon neutral nuclear power plants that deliver steady energy at a lower cost than the very expensive wind turbines, and you have rapidly rising energy costs and cold German winter on the way.
No surprise here, but Hillary Rodham Clinton is throwing Tony Weiner under the bus for his sex scandal. Mentioning her husband’s sex scandals would be in bad taste, so ya, he had a lot of them. HRC responded to those by attacking the women who dared bring up her husband’s sexual harassment. Yup, if it wasn’t for double standards, democrats would have no standards.
The brand just isn’t worth what it used to be. Could it be that alternative media has allowed sophisticated news readers a wider range than the what the narrow far left filter of the Boston Globe gave them.
“A liberal would star at you slack-jawed if you explained that the federal government, via Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, forced politically correct lending policies on the banks — policies that were attacked by Republicans but ferociously defended by Democrats–and that banks’ suicidal loans were then bundled into mortgage-backed securities and dispersed throughout the entire financial system, which poisoned the economy, bringing down powerful institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, and destroying innumerable families’ financial portfolios.”
By way of Breitbart comes a WSJ article which details economic data that is no surprise for anyone who has been paying attention.
The economy has become more unequal under Obama. “For four and a half years, Mr. Obama has focused his policies on reducing inequality rather than increasing growth,” the Journal notes. “The predictable result has been more inequality and less growth.” The rich have done well; the middle class has struggled.
Middle class incomes have fallen under Obama. The Journal points out that median real household income has fallen by 5%–not just since the start of the recession under George W. Bush, but also since the start of the economy recovery in 2009, for which Obama and the Democrats have often claimed sole credit.
The administration has constantly failed to meet promises of faster growth. Contrary to Obama’s cherry-picked statistics in his recent speech, theJournal reminds readers that the Obama recovery is “one of the weakest on record,” despite repeated rosy projections by the White House and the media of fast growth.
Obama has made entitlements are a drag on the middle class. The Journal focuses on ObamaCare, which has hurt job creation and created uncertainty. It could have also mentioned the failing state of Social Security and Medicare, which Obama has failed to reform, and the future cost of Obama’s staggering debt.
Even Obama’s few pro-growth initiatives are not serious. Despite the Journal‘s early, enthusiastic support for immigration reform as an engine for expansion, the authors of the editorial finally admit: “we’re not sure [Obama] wants even that to pass…he may be setting it up to use as a campaign wedge in 2014.”
How many times has our Dear Leader turned his laser like focus on the economy? Eight? Nine? More? None of them have been serious or of any useful duration.
Let’s be serious, improving the economy has never been a priority for Barry. One can even argue that an improved economy would run counter to his goals of fundamentally transforming America.
Based on his actions, not his teleprompter supplied speeches, BHO’s priorities are transferring tax payer money to his political allies, taking lavish tax payer vacations, and playing golf.
Since February of 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, 9.5 million Americans have dropped out of the labor force. Nearly 90 million Americans are not working today!
That means that 1.3 Americans have dropped out of the labor force for every one job the administration claims to have created.
Good work Barry! That’s a new record for Presidential failure!
As the nice man from Cold Fury puts it, “To achieve this level of devastation, you usually have to be invaded by a foreign power.” Hmmm…given how Obama Cultists feel about the Constitution, he may be on to something here.
Here are a few more facts about the economy that Barry & his cultists don’t want you thinking about: The current US debt is %16.87 Trillion. That works out to $148,026 per tax payer. Taxes have increased $122.8 Billion in 2013 alone. The current budget deficit is $818.5 Billion. The labor force has 10 million less eligible workers than it did right before Barry started his “Occupy the White House” golf tour in 2009. So when an leftist tries to tell you about Obama’s “job creation” record, it’s a lie. The US is in the hole for 10 million jobs under his watch. Don’t expect much improvement either. You may have missed this if you’ve been feeding at the MSM/DNC trough: Obamacare to destroy up to 1 million low-wage jobs and completely bankrupt Medicaid.
Let’s not forget some other items our Dear Leader is desperate to sweep under the rug, including gathering of phone records of the AP (part of his “most transparent administration evah!” continuing war against Whistle Blowers and Inspector Generals), and Eric Holder’s so-called “Justice Department” which won’t prosecute an open and shut case regarding the Black Panthers.
Remember, this is a short list. There are more Obama Scandals that they want to distract you from by waving the race card.
“Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”
– Mary Frances Berry, former Chairwoman, US Commission on Civil Rights. Clearly she has a basic misunderstanding of the actual meaning of Civil Rights. Given that she was appointed by that idiot James Earl Carter III, this is hardly surprising. Note that she freely admits there is no factual basis for her accusation of racism. It is merely a tactic of the radical left to avoid discussion on their own failures.
The GDP growth rate is out for Q1 2013, and at 2.5%, it is a nice improvement over Q4 2012’s 0.4% rate, which was revised up from the original estimate of -0.1%. It’s also lower than the 3% growth the Keynesian economists the Obama regime is strangely still paying attention to, predicted.
A full percentage point of that 2.5% growth was a one time effect of the farming industry recovering from a drought. So the real growth rate was an anemic 1.5%
Household incomes also dropped at a 5.3 percent rate in the first quarter of 2013, and the saving rate – the percentage of disposable income households are socking away – fell to 2.6 percent, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2007.
Neither of those last two items are a good sign for increases in consumer spending, which is going to get worse, as federal taxes go up, as well as local taxes. The tax burden will be worse in the so-called “Blue” states as their expensive social programs continue to overwhelm their budgets, and their revenue generating working classes flee for states with less oppressive taxes on anyone moderately successful.
The only bright point was that the official government inflation rate was only 0.9%. That is good for tax paying consumers, but is another missed milestone of the Obama Economic Team. They want at least 2%.
To answer that,we need to look at some more numbers. Like the number of jobs the Federal BLS says were added in March, which is 88,000. Since you have been paying attention, you know that the US economy needs to generate at least 120,000 new jobs a month just to break even. So how did the U3 rate drop a tenth of a percent when we missed the break even point by over 33,000 jobs? The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the U3 (and 5 other “U” rates) rate as a percentage of the labor force. While the BLS added 88,000 jobs, it dropped 630,000 workers from the labor force. That gives us a net loss of over a half million workers from the US economy in March 2013. Just what would the Federal BLS U3 number be if those 630,000 Americans were still counted in the labor force? One estimate has it at 11.7%. That is Carter era employment numbers. It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama’s Worst Recovery since the Great Depression is catching up with the Worst Recession since the Great Depression.
Not a shining moment for the Obama regime and it’s Keynesian economy policies. Not enough for them to give up on those failed policies though. For the left, their political agenda always trumps the truth.
“Very few people know, for example, that the gap between black and white incomes narrowed during the Reagan administration and widened during the Obama administration. This was not because of Republican policies designed specifically for blacks, but because the free market policies create an economy in which all people can improve their economic situation.”