He's alive. And where is the "wonderful"?

Obama Porkway: Road Built With Stimulus Money Will Bear President’s Name

[...] Most roads that are constructed are paid for with taxpayer dollars, but the fact that the first new road named after Barack Obama is being funded by his beloved “stimulus” is only appropriate.

If you’re in Orlando looking for this road, it’s just a mile west of the intersection of Hope and Change, and a half-mile east of the corner of Shovel and Ready. Why did local officials decide to name the stimulus road after the president? Because “A Blatant Attempt to Bankrupt America Boulevard” wouldn’t fit on the sign. [...]

Remember when people used to get things named after them, only after they were dead? And only if they had achieved something wonderful?

So far as I know, Obama is still alive. And as for the wonderful, I'm still waiting.
     

Jobs created by the Stimulus? What jobs?

Featherbedding stimulus job numbers

[...] Featherbedding occurs when paychecks are issued for nonexistent employees and the money goes directly into union coffers. Thousands of the jobs Obama officials say were saved or created by the stimulus program are no more real than those invisible positions invented by unions to bulk up their treasuries. We know this to be the case because as Obama’s chief economist, Christina Romer, admitted several weeks ago, “It’s very hard to say exactly because you don’t know what the baseline is, right, because you don’t know what the economy would have done without [the economic stimulus program].”

Even if we take at face value the White House claim that it created or saved all these jobs with approximately $150 billion of the economic stimulus money, a little simple math shows the taxpayers aren’t getting any bargains here: $150 billion divided by 650,000 jobs equals $230,000 per job saved or created. Instead of taking all that time required to write the 1,588-page stimulus bill, Congress could have passed a one-pager saying the first 650,000 jobless persons to report for work at the White House will receive a voucher worth $230,000 redeemable at the university, community college or trade school of their choice. That would have been enough for a degree plus a hefty down payment on a mortgage.

Actually, taxpayers would be better off with such a deal, too, compared with the reality of the Obama stimulus program. [...]

Read the whole thing, it gets worse. Is this even America anymore?

     

States are raising taxes despite Stimulus Bill

New York is going to top the list, joining states like California and Michigan that are also crippling their economic base, while states including Oregon, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, Arizona and New Jersey are also considering huge take hikes. Wasn't the massive Federal Stimulus bill supposed to relieve states from the pressure to raise taxes? It doesn't seem to be working:

The Tax Capital of the World
States are raising taxes despite the 'stimulus'; New York is No. 1.

Like the old competition to have the world's tallest building, New York can't resist having the nation's highest taxes. So after California raised its top income tax rate to 10.55% last month, Albany's politicians leapt into action to reclaim high-tax honors.

[...]

One explicit argument for the $787 billion "stimulus" bill was to help states avoid these tax increases that even Keynesians understand are contractionary. Instead, the state politicians are pocketing the federal cash to maintain spending, and raising taxes anyway. Just another spend-and-tax bait and switch.

[...]

Mr. Silver says of the coming tax hikes: "We've done it before. There hasn't been a catastrophe." Oh, really? According to Census Bureau data, over the past decade 1.97 million New Yorkers left the state for greener pastures -- the biggest exodus of any state. New York City has lost more than 75,000 jobs since last August, and many industrial areas upstate are as rundown as Detroit. The American Legislative Exchange Council recently said New York had the worst economic outlook of all 50 states, including Michigan. And that analysis was done before these $4 billion in new taxes. How does Mr. Silver define "catastrophe"?

[...]

This is advertised as a plan of "shared sacrifice," but the group that is most responsible for New York's budget woes, the all-powerful public employee unions, somehow walk out of this with a 3% pay increase. The state is receiving an estimated $10 billion in federal stimulus money, and Democrats are spending every cent while raising the state budget by 9%. Then they insist with a straight face that taxes are the only way to close the budget deficit. [...]

California did the same thing, and drove out many businesses, ours included. Now Oregon is one of the states talking about large increases. They are spending more money than they have, and instead of cutting the suit to fit the cloth, they keep making plans using money they don't have.

On our local talk radio, people are really fed up that the government keeps spending on things that aren't going to create jobs or stimulate the economy. We already have 11 percent unemployment, and now they want to raise taxes while also saying they have to cut services.

19 percent of the jobs in Oregon are government jobs. Many of those jobs are for activities that limit and restrict jobs in the private sector. The government is spending huge sums of money to rip out dams that generate electricity. They are forcing farm families off of good farmland so the government can un-drain it and turn it back into swamps. They are working hard at expanding limits on fishing and hunting, creating new fees for all sorts of things. All this while also destroying job opportunities and raising taxes while shrinking the tax base.

How will the government's budget ever be brought under control? It's like watching a snake eat it's own tail. They can't just keep expanding their spending while crippling, diminishing and destroying revenue sources. Somethings gotta give.
     

Is Obama compounding Bush's mistakes?

I'm talking about financial mistakes, such as inflating our currency by spending money we do not have. It makes no difference what the money is used for; the end result will be the same: inflation, and all the dangers that entails. From George Melloan at the WSJ:

Why 'Stimulus' Will Mean Inflation
In a global downturn the Fed will have to print money to meet our obligations.

As Congress blithely ushers its trillion dollar "stimulus" package toward law and the U.S. Treasury prepares to begin writing checks on this vast new appropriation, it might be wise to ask a simple question: Who's going to finance it?


That might seem like a no-brainer, which perhaps explains why no one has bothered to ask. Treasury securities are selling at high prices and finding buyers even though yields are low, hovering below 3% for 10-year notes. Congress is able to assure itself that it will finance the stimulus with cheap credit. But how long will credit be cheap? Will it still be when the Treasury is scrounging around in the international credit markets six months or a year from now? That seems highly unlikely.

Let's have a look at the credit market. [...]

He goes into detail about out trade relationships with China and Japan, who hold the majority of U.S. Treasury securities that are held by foreign owners. But our financial relationship with them is changing. The dynamics will not continue as they have, and the results to us will be dramatic.

[...] The Congressional Budget Office is predicting the federal deficit will reach $1.2 trillion this fiscal year. That's more than double the $455 billion deficit posted for fiscal 2008, and some private estimates put the likely outcome even higher. That will drive up interest costs in the federal budget even if Treasury yields stay low. But if a drop in world market demand for Treasurys sends borrowing costs upward, there could be a ballooning of the interest cost line in the budget that will worsen an already frightening outlook. Credit for the rest of the economy will become more dear as well, worsening the recession. Treasury's Wednesday announcement that it will sell a record $67 billion in notes and bonds next week and $493 billion in this quarter weakened Treasury prices, revealing market sensitivity to heavy financing.

So what is the outlook? The stimulus package is rolling through Congress like an express train packed with goodies, so an enormous deficit seems to be a given. Entitlements will go up instead of being brought under better control, auguring big future deficits. Where will the Treasury find all those trillions in a depressed world economy?

There is only one answer. The Obama administration and Congress will call on Ben Bernanke at the Fed to demand that he create more dollars -- lots and lots of them. The Fed already is talking of buying longer-term Treasurys to support the market, so it will be more of the same -- much more.

And what will be the result? Well, the product of this sort of thing is called inflation. The Fed's outpouring of dollar liquidity after the September crash replaced the liquidity lost by the financial sector and has so far caused no significant uptick in consumer prices. But the worry lies in what will happen next. [...]

Remember the late 1970's? Something like that is coming, only potentially even worse. The chickens will come home to roost. Then what? stagflation? Look what we have done already:



And we are going to compound this mistake further? And when that fails, then what? Print up even more money? What goes up must come down. The higher that blue line goes, the sharper it will fall. It's already taken a sharp turn straight upward. Now we are going to push it up even further? Has everyone gone mad?

At the very least, it's making our currency fragile. A large terrorist attack or some other event that disrupts our economy could cause a run on our banks. Because of FDIC, the Feds would be required by law to print up even more money. Then what... Hyper-inflation, like Zimbabwe? What ARE we doing?


Our current National Debt is $10.7 Trillion!

Related Links:

Commentary: Stimulate the economy, not government

What would a U.S. currency collapse look like?

THE GREAT BUST AHEAD
     

Democrat economics VS the creation of wealth

Why Tax Rate Reductions Are More Stimulative Than Rebates:
Lessons from 2001 and 2003

With slower economic growth raising fears of a recession, Washington is abuzz with economic stimulus proposals centered on tax rebates. Tax rebates, however, don’t stimulate the economy. Lawmakers currently examining economic stimulus proposals should reject rebates in favor of tax rate reductions.

Tax Rebates Don’t Stimulate. By definition, an economy grows when it produces more goods and services than it did the year before. In 2007, Americans produced $13 trillion worth of goods and services, up 3 percent over 2006.

Economic growth requires four main factors:

(1) an educated, trained, and motivated workforce;

(2) sufficient levels of capital equipment and technology;

(3) a solid infrastructure; and

(4) a legal system and rule of law sufficient to enforce contracts and contain a functioning price system.

High tax rates reduce economic growth, because they make it less profitable to work, save, and invest. This translates into less work, saving, investment, and capital—and ultimately, fewer goods and services. Reducing marginal income tax rates has been shown to motivate people to work more. Lower corporate and investment taxes encourage the savings and investment vital to producing more and better plants, equipment, and technology.

By contrast, tax rebates fail, because they do not encourage productivity or wealth creation. To receive a rebate, nobody has to work, save, invest, or create any new wealth. [...]

Read the whole thing, it goes on to give examples from recent history: the failed 2001 tax rebates, and the successful 2003 tax cuts, which illustrate this dynamic in action. You can't "fix" the economy, without a basic understanding of how it works.

I always thought this understanding of wealth creation was common sense. But is it? We've elected a government that is going to do the opposite of creating wealth, at a time when wealth and job creation is most crucially needed. It seems common sense isn't so common anymore.

Yet ironically, the latest Rasmussen poll shows that a majority of Americans see a problem looming:

59% Fear Too Much Government Spending Is Coming

Hat tip to Neal Boortz for the link. He said about it:

Well duh! What did you expect when you voted these people into office? A bit late to worry about that, don't you think?

If you vote in a Democrat majority, expect them to behave like Democrats and do Democrat things. Duh, indeed.


Related Links:

Dave Ramsey's solution for the financial crisis

Financial Crisis: a free-market solution?