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#71
08-13-2012, 12:37 PM
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I still read the local news from back home and follow events on the internet. When visiting relatives, I often surprise them with my knowledge of the goings on in their own back yard.
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"When the lie is so big and the fog so thick, the Republican trick can play out again....."-------Frank Zappa 
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#72
08-13-2012, 12:42 PM
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 Pete
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"America is still a land of promise, especially during a political campaign."
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#73
08-13-2012, 12:55 PM
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This is a large subject. In broad terms Obama has accelerated significantly, and proposes to continue accelerating, the country's drift towards a large expansion of the role of government in the economy moving us towards being a social welfare state. With Europe as the example of what we can expect from heading down this road. Obama has not seriously put forth an effort or a plan to reduce spending and the deficit, indeed his going forward proposals will continue to increase both and bring large tax increases.
The tax cuts he has made have been ill thought out and seem geared towards percieved short-term political gains rather than towards long term ecomonic stimulus. His 2% reduction of individual tax rates for one year will cause workers to save rather than spend (temporary cuts=save, permanent=spend). Also bank reserves are already well above required minimums, thus additional reserves gained from worker savings will do nothing to increase lending. This tax cut costs the federal goverment 93 billion which is just added onto the already staggering debt without any stimulus benefit. For his stimulus Obama deferred to Democrats in Congress for the writing of his fiscal stimulus. He fought for a big total, but he paid much less attention to what was included in the total. The predictable result: a stimulus that most economists condemn as very poorly designed. Congress loaded up the stimulus with old wish lists ultimately scuplted by lobbyists which were utterly irrelevant to the crisis at hand: $15 billion for more Pell grants, $9 billion for community and rural development, $20 billion for the renewable energy tax credit and so on. $87 billion was used to bail out state governments that had overspent on Medicaid. About $140 billion was put toward individual tax rebates that -- most economists warned -- would do little or nothing to stimulate economic activity. Infrastructure spending was only a fraction (1 of every 8 dollars). Giving Obama the best benefit of the doubt we possibly could by believing their claims of having created nearly 3 million jobs with the stimulus, we are still looking at each job (which pays on average 63k per year) costing the government 300-400k each to create. Obama's energy policies have been unproductive and wasteful at best, prohibitive and tainted by scandal at worst... having hindered our efforts to attain more self-reliance while squandering a lot of federal dollars with ultimately questionable motives to some suspiciously connected entities. Obama's hugely unpopular health care bill essentially through various vehicles, regulations, fines, taxes etc to add millions who currently do not have formal insurance to the health care system. While the cause in theory may be a valid one, the costs are the real issue. The system is already faced with a scarcity of resources and adding 10s of millions into the rolls without any proposed expansion in service capabilities (they aren't plannig to build more hospitals or any big investment of care efficiency improvements) can (and will if allowed to stand) only result in rationing of service (increased wait times/denial of care). So to attain this lesser level of service we'll be faced with billions of dollars of tax increases. People in America were not dying in the streets before Obama came along. It's obvious that health costs are getting out of control for people, but Obama's plan to whitewash the quality of our healthcare service delivery for everyone is not the answer. Finally, Obama has almost no reform agenda. His stated proposal is to stay the course on his policies (described above) and continue to wait for results while all the while continuing to vastly increase the national debt with continued expansion of the role of government, widespread growth of entitlements, and rely on large tax increases to pay for it all. By demonizing business Obama has insured a climate of excessive caution which handcuff private sector investment and private sector job growth (two things which Obama doesn't seem to credit with being the real engines of our economy in favor of government spending which he does see as that engine). It should be pretty obvious that Obama's vision as such is unsustainable and his mistakes thus far are enough to disqualify him from being a wise bet for turning things around during another 4 years. I've omitted a lot here and kept this very broad and high level. As I said above this is a large subject. Most people who study the efforts of Obama on the economy, who can be truly politically objective, will come to the conclusion that overall Obama seems over his head with these issues and his attempts to address our econo,ic problems were ill conceived, half-hearted and half-assed . His early appointments (Geitner, Summers) were horrible mistakes which should have been obvious even before their tenures. The policies that do seem to be part of some plan have predominantly been shown to be flawed in their logic and often shoddy in their implementation anyway. His lack of leadership capability as well as his deficiencies of character permeate his performance on the economy as they have done and continue to do in every other area of his responsibilites as potus. Just look at his campaign and the people he's surrounded himslef with to get an idea of this presidents character. Decidedly unpresidential - as far as the US standard goes anyway. Last edited by mezz; 08-13-2012 at 01:02 PM.
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#75
08-13-2012, 01:27 PM
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Carl
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#76
08-13-2012, 01:29 PM
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#77
08-13-2012, 01:34 PM
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That Ford loan looks private.
Pete
__________________
"America is still a land of promise, especially during a political campaign."
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#78
08-13-2012, 01:41 PM
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#80
08-13-2012, 01:46 PM
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"JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are arranging the financing, which will be completed by Dec. 31, Ford said."
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