Obama’s Tall Fiscal Tales

Barack Obama continues to peddle the myth that he has been the most fiscally responsible president since World War II. The facts, however, are stubbornly against him. Meanwhile, Wes Pruden explores the “bigotry” of opposing Obama, the president explains what a nasty campaign he’s going to run, and some hateful leftists have messages for our Armed Forces for Memorial Day. Thank goodness we can finish it off with some humor.

The Foundation
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” –John Adams

Editorial Exegesis

“Mitt Romney ‘warned about a “prairie fire of debt.” That’s what he said,’ Mr. Obama said on the Des Moines fairgrounds on Thursday, as if he couldn’t believe it either. … ‘What my opponent didn’t tell you was that federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any President in almost 60 years.’ … [P]ress secretary Jay Carney chimed in [saying] … to White House reporters that they should not ‘buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this Administration….’ Mr. Carney the media critic deeply sourced his view to someone named Rex Nutting, who wrote an 856-word column for MarketWatch that argued ‘There has been no huge increase in spending under the current President, despite what you hear.’ … His accounting methods are, er, unusual. Mr. Nutting claims that Mr. Obama is only responsible for $140 billion worth of spending in his hyperactivist first year in office because … the fiscal year technically begins on October 1, 2009. Therefore he says Mr. Obama had no control over the budget, though in February 2009 he did famously manage to pass an $800 billion stimulus that was supposed to be a one-time deal. Mr. Nutting then measures Mr. Obama’s spending growth rate against an inflated 2009 baseline that includes the spending Mr. Obama caused but which he attributes to Mr. Bush. … The larger conceptual error of the Nutting-Obama-Carney troika is neglecting to compare the budget to the size of the economy. The best perspective on how outlays, tax receipts and deficits change over time is as a share of GDP. … Prior to Mr. Obama, the U.S. had not spent more than 23.5% of GDP … since the end of World War II. Yet Mr. Obama has managed to exceed that four years in a row: 25.2% in 2009, 24.1% in 2010 and 2011, and an estimated 24.3% in 2012, up from a range between 18%-21% from 1994-2008. … As for that prairie fire of debt, Mr. Obama can fairly blame $1 trillion or so of the $5 trillion debt increase of the last four years on Mr. Bush. But what about the other $4 trillion? Debt held by the public now stands at 74.2% of the economy, up from 40.5% at the end of 2008 — and rising rapidly.” —The Wall Street Journal

Essential Liberty

“The Origination Clause in Article I, Section 7 states: ‘All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.’ … The Founding Fathers required revenue measures to originate in the House because they wanted this authority to belong to the legislative body closest to the people. … Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has taken to thumbing his nose at this clear mandate. Recently, he publicly dismissed the Origination Clause as a ‘hyper-technical budget issue,’ raised by his Republican opponents as ‘a fig leaf to hide their blatant obstruction.’ … One unnamed Senate staffer even speculated that the House’s fealty to the Constitution ‘may be part of some Republican plan.’ … Liberal Senate leaders, it seems, are determined to do what they want when they want to do it, Constitution or no Constitution. … One of the chief operational principles of the current Senate seems to be, to paraphrase that famous line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre: ‘Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution!’ That’s one more reason why the tea-party movement remains politically relevant more than three years after its birth.” —Heritage Foundation’s Michael G. Franc

Upright

“Barack Obama and his friends in the mainstream media, so called, can’t believe that anyone could vote against someone as wonderful as he is (and they are). Only a bigot would vote against such a wonderful president. … Sixteen states have offered Democratic voters an alternative to Barack Obama, either an actual candidate, ‘Uncommitted,’ or an opportunity to write in someone’s name. So far 15 percent of those Democratic voters have done so. In five states where there has been an actual opponent, 27 percent voted against the president. In New Hampshire, 1 Democrat in 10 wrote in an alternative. Twenty percent of North Carolina Democrats voted for ‘Uncommitted.’ That’s a lot of ‘bigots.'” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden ……MORE HERE

READ FURTHER:

Why Did Obama Lose his Base?

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Greed belongs to those who have NOT … not to those who have!

Tags

baby boomers, Capitalism, Existentialism, greed, the "ME" generation, Union bosses

There sure are a few angry & uneducated Americans out there who haven’t a shred of understanding how Capitalism works. I’m not sure I should be the one to attempt to rectify that situation because I have a tendency to over-simplify things … like reducing them to their lowest common denominator >>> Anyone remember that? The lowest common denominator? I digress …

For many of us growing up in America, our first brush with Capitalism is the Lemonade stand we do for girl or boy scouts or helping out with a school or church (or synagogue) bake sale or rummage sale. Yup! THAT is Capitalism, my friends, pure & simple! Create a product or service, find a market, sell your service or product at a price the market can bear, reap the rewards, use some to continue or build the business, the rest is PROFIT. Please notice, profit is NOT a 4 letter word! You worked for it; you earned it. If you sell enough lemonade that you need a helper, then you share the PROFIT with that helper in some way (this is “overhead” – the cost of running the business). If you have a good product/service and if the price is right, your business will grow and more helpers will be needed. If, on the other hand, the product/service is NOT good or the price is NOT correct, your business will fail. From Main street to Wall Street, this is how capitalism works. On Wall Street, however, the business has achieved huge success because the owner has made good decisions, provides a Good product/service at an excellent price, but the concept is the same.

What happened somewhere along the way, is really not as complicated as many have said. It’s simple GREED! Union bosses, notoriously corrupt for decades, charge Union members DUES – meant as insurance in case of strikes, to cover the cost of … uh, Union bosses, etc. The vast majority of Union contracts include pensions. The Union members never knew when the pensions started that funding them would soon be a very real issue, but … no worries, every Union member deserves 30 days vacation, full medical benefits, dental, 401K … etc! Again, the majority of Union workers never gave a thought to where all this was coming from … who was paying? Then sometime in the 70’s, people started to ask.

So greed drove Union bosses to levy contracts with pensions without funding. OOOOPS! In the meantime, Corporate CEO’s, with an eye on the bottom line, began to get wise to the unreasonable cost of Union employees, and began to move jobs overseas. Union bosses drove the price of steel, for example, significantly beyond what the market could bear. As a result, steel mills shut down, jobs were shipped overseas because the product could be made cheaper there. It is CAPITALISM = all about the bottom line! Now, if the Union bosses had the foresight to promote EXCELLENCE in the product or service, a slightly higher price wouldn’t have been an issue, but most of us realized that Honda, and Suzuki, and Panasonic, and Sony … actually put out a better product AND cost less – at least in the 60’s – 70’s.

What has happened in the last few decades? More of the same. the Rich get richer because they know how to do it, they know how to provide a product, how to market a product, how to price a product. They are willing to work long hours, in odd places around the clock and around the nation, or even the globe to push their product/service. At some point, it is no longer about the money, but about the “deal!” The high rollers, as we might call them, are all about the “deal,” the bargaining, the trying to out-smart, out-think, out-gamble the other players. GREED? Not really! Greed belongs to those who have NOT … not to those who have!

The turmoil now … the unrest, the angst against the RICH? All based on … you guessed it, GREED! Because Existentialism has been the religion of choice for colleges and universities since the 60’s – maybe earlier, a large segment of our population had their heads filled with the hopelessness and purposelessness that fills what some call good literature. People, however, cannot survive long without a purpose, so … ENTER … well, we can call it SELF-pity, SELF-loathing, or SELF-destruction. After all, we were the “ME” generation. We were ripe for re-programming! In creeps the socialist “fairness” theories. In walks the misplaced anger. Frankly, I think maybe some of us were moving in the phase of indestructibility, thinking America had become indestructible! America could handle our angst no matter how we screwed things up!

Whatever our thoughts, after the “Establishment” was been torn down, we found out there was some value in that Establishment! We wanted the peace and serenity our parents knew. No, not world peace, but inner peace – peace with ones SELF!

Found it yet? If you’re chasing your tail for a bigger bone, or bigger piece of the proverbial pie, I can tell you it will not satisfy! Nothing, no fancy car, no mansion, no gorgeous clothes can FIX what’s broken until you and I come to grips and admit something IS broken. If I am not content with who I am,

A> It is my own fault/responsibility, and

B> No one can make me content.

It is something You and I must do for ourselves. If we manage to conquer this, GREED will not be an issue any longer. And that’s my 2 bits for today!

One of the most dangerous beliefs in western thought is that STUFF and the accumulation of such is the measure of success (or contentment!)

Success consists of going from failure to failure
without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill