Bacon Double Cheesburger Deluxe and a Diet Coke.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama has announced a two-year pay freeze for federal employees, saying the step is necessary to help bring the federal deficit under control. The freeze would apply to all civilian federal employees but would exclude military personnel. Obama says the sacrifices of limiting government spending must be shared by government [...]

Coincidence?

As you gather around the table with your family this Thanksgiving, ask yourself this question: are you better off today than you were four years ago? Unfortunately, most Americans are not. [snip] If you watch the economic statistics from week to week and month to month, it will seem like sometimes they are getting worse [...]

War on Profits.

A company is able to provide goods and services to you only if it makes more money by selling those things to you than it costs him to produce those things. Otherwise, why bother, right? If it costs $100 to make a candy bar, but nobody is willing to pay Hershey more than $2 for [...]

Biting the Hand.

Obama released his budget proposal today for FY 2011. We should all be petrified. Ostensibly to help fund his proposed $3.8million in federal outlays, Obama has announced a tax increase of nearly a trillion dollars on the so-called wealthy families and small businesses out there having the audacity to earn $250k. This will largely be [...]

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

The New York Times demonstrates once again that it’s on the wrong side of the issue–whatever issue that might be. This time, it’s jobs. President Obama has a jobs problem. Fifteen million Americans want work. Few companies want to hire. The burden shifts to the government. What can it do? Short answer? Get the hell [...]

Filthy lucre.

Fact—we rely on businesses (large and small) to supply us with essential goods and services every day. Fact–In order to keep bringing us those goods and services, the businesses which provide them must take in more money than they spend in providing those goods and services. This is called a profit margin. Without profit margin, [...]

Taxing.

How much is too much? When the “carrot” of earning lots of money becomes the “stick” that beats you to death with taxes, what’s a young entrepreneur to do? Does she work hard, innovate and pioneer? Or does she reconsider? How is America better if she reconsiders? Why are we incentivizing that reconsideration? Consider: Newly [...]

Snapshot.

Has Obama rescued the economy? You very well may think that if you get your news from the NY Times or MSNBC or any one of a trillion other mouthpieces for the Democrat party, but reality (as it often does) has intervened to spoil the party. Cast thine eyes on this from the indispensible Innocent [...]

Fallout boy.

With the economy still faltering and jobs still being lost, Mr. Obama’s credibility is sinking and his job approval rating is declining along with the popularity of his initiatives. Republicans, who had insisted the stimulus was wasteful and wouldn’t work, are being vindicated. The political fallout that mattered most, however, has been among Democrats in [...]

Waste.

It’s not surprising that the much-ballyhooed “economic stimulus” hasn’t done much stimulating. President Obama and his aides argue that it’s too early to expect startling results. They have a point. A $14 trillion economy won’t revive in a nanosecond. But the defects of the $787 billion package go deeper and won’t be cured by time. [...]

Jerk his leash.

To a plurality of Americans, that’s the hope. According to a new Rassmussen poll: Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans say the rest of the new government spending authorized in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan should now be canceled. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 36% disagree and 20% are not sure. [...]

Gobbledegook.

Had to read this headline twice. Obama seeks fiscal responsibility mantle He’s seeking it now? I mean, it’s nice, if it’s true, but I can’ t believe that this is about anything except Obama trying to cover his ass after his MASSIVE outlay of irresponsible spending contained in the “stimulus” package. Let’s see what you [...]

And the band played on.

May unemployment numbers are in, and they’re pretty bad. Worse, worse in fact, than even Obama’s crack team of experts predicted. Has the stimulus made things worse?     I guess there are 2 ways of looking at that steaming mess, aren’t there? First, Obama’s estimates for joblessness with and without the stimulus were way [...]

The horse has left the barn.

Here’s Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke today testifying in front of the House Budget Committee: [L]arge U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can’t continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall. “Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither [...]

You don’t say.

NEW YORK Reuters – Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged on Tuesday that some waste is inevitable in the spending of a $787 billion economic stimulus package, in a characteristically blunt assessment. “We know some of this money is going to be wasted,” Biden said during a roundtable discussion in New York with business leaders aimed [...]

Tax flight.

If you’ve never read Arther Laffer (he of the famous “Laffer Curve”), may I suggest you start by reading this. In a nutshell, he believes (and history bears this out), that lowering tax rates creates an incentive to work & produce more, which in turn increases tax revenue. When tax rates are increased and the cost of doing [...]

Act now!

We’ve all seen the infomercials. The hucksters claiming that their extra special product “won’t last” or that their “supplies are limited” They tell us that their offer is only available “for a limited time” and as an extra incentive to get us to open our wallets, tell us that the “first 100 callers” get a [...]

Unintended consequences, Exhibit one million and one.

One of Maryland’s budget-balancing tactics – asking millionaires to pay more money to the state – appears to be backfiring as the number of the highest-earning taxpayers dwindles with the flagging economy. A year ago, Maryland became one of the first states in the nation to create a higher tax bracket for millionaires as part [...]

Colossal waste.

In early January, 2 members of President Elect Obama’s economic team, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, published what Team Obama was billing as their plan for economic recovery. You can find the full text of the document here. In it, we were shown how unprecedented massive government spending was to be our ticket out of [...]

Good money after bad.

Some local NYC news hit this week about the MTA raising fares on every bit of service it provides: NEW YORK (AP) – New York’s mass transit agency voted Monday to raise the base cost of a subway ride from $2 to $2.25 and raise fares overall by an average of 10 percent. The vote [...]

GM wants to make a profit? Egads!

From Friday’s Washington Post: The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company’s new jobs will be filled by workers overseas. According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number [...]

Tuesday afternoon read.

If you’ve got 5 minutes to spare, I recommend spending it on this piece on Fascism by Sheldon Richman. Mussolini’s fascism took another step [in 1925] with the advent of the Corporative State, a supposedly pragmatic arrangement under which economic decisions were made by councils composed of workers and employers who represented trades and industries. [...]

Bleeding a stone.

Megan McCardle from The Atlantic, on why Obama’s unprecedented spending plans will simply run out of gas. So far, Obama’s only proposal for dealing with the funding shortage is a tax increase on high earners, leaving “95% of working families” untouched. But the math doesn’t work. In 2006, the latest year for which data are [...]

Because this sends the right message.

When you’re volunteering at a food bank. Via NY Daily News: While volunteering Wednesday at a D.C. food bank, the First Lady sported her usual J.Crew cardigan, a pair of utilitarian capri pants and, on her feet, a sneaky splurge: trainers that go for $540. That’s right: These sneakers – suede, with grosgrain ribbon laces [...]

Denial.

Matt Kibbe, in yesterday’s reasononline, on how the Left is trying to  make sense of the Tea Party Movement: Some tried to diminish the tea parties as misguided tax protests. In reality, the protestors demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of economics that went well beyond objections to higher tax rates. You can’t spend money you don’t [...]