Did you know your taxes are helping Harry Reid get re-elected?

In Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?, he describes in great detail how during the Depression, FDR increased government “relief” spending in election years, especially in so-called “swing states” which offered him the greatest return on his “investment”. Left to suffer were heavily Democratic states which were always assured in November, but which [...]

I question the timing.

Ever wonder why the Obama Administration, the Pelosi House and the Reid Senate don’t just step out of the way and let Citi, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc. all just file for Chapter 11 reorganization like any other company would have had to do?
I’ve wondered the same thing.

Dry run.

Put in charge of making sure that taxpayer money didn’t get wasted, the vaulted Obama administration has brought the current AIG debacle to our doorsteps. What does this portend for the rest of the Obamagenda?
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary absolutely nails it:
The president’s New Deal II agenda depends on two premises — the sky is falling and [...]

More AIG.

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) wants to pass a law that permits the federal government to recoup the recent AIG bonuses through a confiscatory tax. There are several problems with this, but this one seems an especially vexing one for Mr. Dodd (at least as far as his credibility is concerned):
While the Senate was constructing the [...]

A National Crisis?

What do you make of the fact that 50% of all home foreclosures last year happened in only 35 United States counties clustered in about 7 States?
 
Does it make you wonder whether this is a National Crisis or not?
It sure makes me feel that way.
Eventually, the responsible people of this country are going to learn [...]

What’s a thing worth?

Whatever price the market will bear.
The rest is all fluff.
So why not let the housing market find it’s own solution? We’ve got lots of people apparently struggling to make payments on houses that are no longer worth as much as the outstanding loans. While this may be a sad case for the individuals involved, it’s [...]

We’re all children now.

It’s obvious what’s happening. The question is why. It’s clear that this glib, self-important aristocrat from the South side of Honolulu by way of private schools in Indonesia named Obama thinks that America works better for him as a Socialized welfare state despite all evidence suggesting it works better for ITSELF as a free market [...]

Sickening

Senate hastens our demise.
The bill passed the House 246 to 183 and, in a vote held open for several hours, the Senate 60 to 38, both largely along party lines. President Obama is expected to sign it into law early next week.
The legislation represents the start of a new ideological era that places the federal government at the [...]

Pot, meet kettle.

Michelle Obama’s comments from July, 2008 on President Bush’s rebate checks:
PONTIAC, Mich — In response to a question about the economic stimulus checks administered by the U.S. government earlier this year, Michelle Obama said her husband believes that short-term fixes don’t solve economic problems.
“You’re getting $600,” she told an audience of mostly African-American women here. [...]

No confidence.

No nuance at all to the financial sector’s reaction to the passing of the bailout:
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) – U.S. stocks fell, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its biggest drop since Barack Obama’s inauguration, while Treasuries rallied on skepticism that the government’s bank rescue will work. The dollar and gold rose.
Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. slipped [...]

Assume the position.

The Senate passed the nearly $900billion spending bill masquerading as a “stimulus package” today 61-37. Every Democrat voted for it, and all but 3 Republicans voted against it:
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Counting the bill (in modified form) that passed the House 2 weeks ago, that’s a grand total of THREE Republicans  (out of [...]

What’s in a name?

UPDATE: 2/9/09. Excellent article at Forbes.com today breaking down the “naming-rights-as-advertising” angle:
Stadium naming rights deals make money, at least when they’re done right. In addition to the general exposure, a company like Citi gets its foot in the door to handle all of the banking for the team and the venue, access to players and [...]

Cut to the chase.

Here’s a sober, intellectual pantsing of the spending bill. Print it out and discuss it with your families tonight at dinner. Or at your play-date tomorrow. Or after church on Sunday. Whatever you do with it, make sure you understand it. If it was such a slam dunk, it would have been passed by now. [...]

Greeks bearing pork.

So you may have heard. President Obama published an op-ed in today’s Washington Post pleading with the American public to take Porkenstein to its collective breast and squeeze it ever so tenderly.
So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington’s bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can [...]

The gift that keeps on giving.

NEW YORK (CBS) ― President Obama’s Wall Street salary cap may be well intentioned and it certainly taps into public sentiment, but it’s a killer for New York.
“Without the talent of Wall Street to bring us back into a position of leadership in the global economy, we’re going to be in bad shape as a [...]

Porkenstein.

Print this out and carry it around with you all day. Then wave it in the face of anyone trying to claim that the Obama Spending Bill is anything other than a Liberal Christmas list to Santa.
Enjoy.
*    $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
$380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants [...]

God help us.

Twice today, CNN has done short segments on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s declaration that
To give the proposed economic stimulus plan some perspective, “if you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion.”
via The Stimulus: More Than a Million a [...]

Deep thoughts.

Bravo.
It is time to bury out-dated Keynesian economics forever.
The experiment of spending your way out of a recession with money we don’t have has time and again succeeded to fail, and this immoral, $825 billion spending package will be no exception.
We need deep tax cuts, across the board, to stimulate his economy and shock it [...]

C’mon, kill this thing already.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the massive stimulus bill backed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could go down to defeat if it’s not stripped of unnecessary spending and focused more on housing issues and tax cuts.
The Senate version of the bill, which topped out at nearly $900 billion, is headed to [...]

The New Deal didn’t work.

So why are the Democrats so eager to drive us off that cliff again?
The most damaging policies [of the New Deal] were those at the heart of the recovery plan, including The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which tossed aside the nation’s antitrust acts and permitted industries to collusively raise prices provided that they shared [...]

Whole lotta nothin’.

Here’s a nice little rundown of some goodies that the Democrats are trying to cram down our throats under the guise of “economic emergency”. Recall that all of this money is supposed to create jobs and stimulate economic growth. Some of these are real howlers.
There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned [...]

Stimulus bill to enlarge welfare.

WASHINGTON – Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.
The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states [...]

Rush’s bipartisan solution.

From today’s Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh offers some insight on how to navigate these recessionary waters:
There’s a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they’re [...]

Sleight of hand.

Thomas Sowell has an inkling that the Democrats aren’t serious about stimulating the economy and wants to tell you about it.

Even if it had worked, putting cash into banks, in hopes that they would put it into circulation, seems a rather roundabout way of doing things, especially when the staggering sums of money involved are [...]

We’re going wrong.

Isn’t Cream great? Has there been anything that Eric Clapton’s touched that hasn’t turned to gold?
In any event:
President Obama was a teenager when some of the smartest liberals in America (dubbed the neoconservatives) were beginning to have doubts about the power of government to do good. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, [...]