I thought “tax cuts” caused the recession!

President Obama Has Secret Jobs Plan

by Kent Hoover

President Obama said Friday that his economic team is looking at additional steps that can be taken to grow jobs in the United States.

Some might say it’s about time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate in October climbed to 10.2 percent—its highest level in more than 26 years. Others would say please, no more help. They contend the federal government is doing more to stifle job creation than spur it, because of policies that will lead to higher taxes, higher health care costs, and higher energy prices.

Economists agree that job growth tends to lag overall economic growth, so a little patience is in order. Gross domestic product increased by 3.5 percent last quarter—the largest quarterly increase in two years—so jobs should follow, eventually.(not really; that was an annualized figure, so actual growth for that quarter was one fourth of the reported figure, or .875%-r108)

[...]

To speed job growth, the president said his economic team “is looking at ideas such as additional investments in our aging roads and bridges, incentives to encourage families and businesses to make buildings more energy efficient, additional tax cuts for businesses to create jobs, additional steps to increase the flow of credit to small businesses, and an aggressive agenda to promote exports and help American manufacturers sell their products around the world.”

[...]

Inaction may not be such a bad thing—despite the higher unemployment rate, the rate of job loss is slowing. By the time Obama has decided on his jobs plan—or at least by the time Congress has enacted it—the private sector may have taken care of the unemployment problem on its own.

So the best jobs plan may be the simplest jobs plan: First, do no harm.

When President Bush cut tax rates to facilitate economic growth, yielding about a 5% unemployment rate, the lefties squealed that he was causing a recession.  Now, in times of 10+% unemployment due to the threat of higher taxes and more punitive regulations on the private sector, Obama is promising that his “tax cuts” will “boost job growth”.
There may be an additional layer of flim-flam here: President Bush’s modest tax rate cuts are due to expire in early 2010, so Obama might just renew them, and call that a “tax cut”.

Neighbor: Fort Hood suspect emptied his apartment

FORT HOOD, Texas – An Army psychiatrist suspected of opening fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood cleaned out his apartment in the days before the rampage that left 13 people dead, a neighbor said Friday.

The neighbor, Patricia Villa, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came over to her apartment Wednesday and Thursday and offered her some items, including a new Quran, saying he was going to be deployed on Friday. She wasn’t sure if he was going to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Authorities said Hasan went on a shooting spree later Thursday at the sprawling Texas post. He was among 30 people wounded in the spree and remained hospitalized on a ventilator Friday. All but two of the injured were still hospitalized, and all were in stable condition.

Investigators were still trying to piecing together how and why an Army psychiatrist facing deployment allegedly gunned down his comrades in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base.

[...]

Soldiers who witnessed the rampage reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — an Arabic phrase for “God is great!” — before opening fire, said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander. He said officials had not yet confirmed that Hasan made the comment before the shooting spree.

[...]

Cone said some 300 soldiers had been lined up to get vaccinations and have their eyes tested at a Soldier Readiness Center when the shots rang out. He said one soldier who had been shot told him, “I made the mistake of moving and I was shot again.”

[...]

“With ricochet fire, he was able to injure that number of people,” Cone said. He said authorities were investigating whether Hasan’s weapons were properly registered with the military.

The gunfire broke out around 1:30 p.m. Nearby, some soldiers were readying to head into a graduation ceremony for troops and families who had recently earned degrees.

[...]

___

More information at the link.  I think it would be wise if the military investigated whether or not Hasan was a sleeper agent or was part of a sleeper cell.  Lives are at stake.

Wholly Ineffective: Lefty Boycott of Whole Foods Has No Noticeable Financial Impact

By Tom Blumer

Whole Foods (WFMI) announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 30 yesterday. The quarter closed about 50 days after outraged leftists called for a boycott of the grocery chain to retaliate for a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by CEO John Mackey. In that column, Mackey identified “Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit,” asserting that:

  The last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction — toward less government control and more individual empowerment.

Well, if there’s so much support out there for statist health care, you would think that the Whole Foods boycott dedicated to punishing an opponent would have had a significant impact on the company’s most recent quarterly results.

You would be wrong:

  Whole Foods Market Inc.‘s (WFMI) fiscal fourth-quarter earnings soared as revenue climbed and unusual items took less of a bite from the bottom line, leading the high-end grocer to declare that its sales have “officially turned the corner.”

  The company expects the sales growth to continue in its new fiscal year, with increases of 5% to 8% in overall sales and 1% to 4% in comparable-store sales. Whole Foods noted that total sales are up 5% in the first five weeks of the fiscal year, with comparable-store sales up 1.6%. Analysts were recently projecting a sales increase of 6% to $8.54 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

  .... With shoppers looking for bargains and grocers engaged in a full-scale price war, Whole Foods has been balancing its upscale image with a value message in its marketing. While it has made progress—offering meals that feed a family of four for $15—the company has still pared store openings and suspended its dividend.

  For the quarter ended Sept. 27, Whole Foods reported earnings of $36.4 million, or 20 cents a share, compared with $1.5 million, or 1 cent a share, a year earlier. The latest quarter included a gain of 1 cent a share related to inventory accounting, while the year-ago included a host of charges that brought earnings down about 15 cents.

  Revenue climbed 2.3% to $1.83 billion. Comparable-store sales fell 0.9%. Meanwhile, identical-store sales, which exclude eight relocations and two expansions, dropped 2.3%.

[...]

It’s impossible not to conclude that the establishment media chooses to cover or not cover boycotts based on their degree of political correctness, and not on their level of participation or demonstrated effectiveness.

Trying economic terrorism to suppress free speech should be prosecuted, IMO.
The American people saw through the leftie scam.

Just how bad for Obama were Tuesday’s election results?

So bad White House senior adviser David Axelrod went on Fox News Wednesday to try and spin it?

In case you’ve forgotten, this is about two weeks after Axelrod told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “[T]hey’re not really a news station.”

I guess that’s changed now that the Republicans have come back to life (video of Major Garrett’s unedited interview with Axelrod embedded below the fold, part of it was aired on Wednesday’s “Special Report”): (video at link)

[...]

Well, I guess the Administration NEEDS Fox again, huh?

It’s a sign of how much the conservative movement has them crapping in their mommy jeans.
After all the lies and adolescent namecalling applied to Fox News, they come crawling for air time on the number one cable news channel.

Unlike the White House, Fox News gave the opposition airtime.

After President George W. Bush employed the words, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” addressing a joint session of Congress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks – as the President prepared for the impending war in Afghanistan – liberals eventually treated those words with consternation as if the blunt declaration reflected poorly on America. But pro-democracy activists in Iran seem to like a similar message, as a group of protesters in Iran called on President Barack Obama to support their cause, chanting, “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us!”

Uniquely among the broadcast network evening newscasts, NBC Nightly News correspondent Ali Arouzi – stationed in Tehran – showed a clip of anti-government demonstrators chanting their message to President Obama, as he translated their words into English. During a report that focused mainly on the government-orchestrated anti-America protest organized to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Arouzi also passed on the activities of anti-government activists: “On a day when anti-American sentiment runs high, the opposition was looking for support from President Obama, chanting, “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us.”

The CBS Evening News did run a similar story about both sets of demonstrators, relaying that anti-government protesters faced violent retaliation from government forces, although only NBC picked up on the message to President Obama. ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson did not mention the anniversary of the hostage crisis, although they coincidentally ran another story that also reflects poorly on the Iranian government, informing viewers of a large weapons shipment intercepted by the Israeli military that was headed from Iran to the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Below is a complete transcript of the relevant story from the Wednesday, November 4, NBC News:

  [...]

  CLIP OF PROTESTERS CHANTING: Obama! Obama!

  AROUZI: -chanting, “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us.” Opposition has also vowed to convert all future holidays into opportunities for political protests. Ali Arouzi, NBC News, Tehran.

So far, Obama appears to be with the fascist oppressors in Iran.  Sad.

The left has been defining the political debate in America for decades. The left frames an issue and often the right repeats the narrative, naively agreeing with the Democrats.

The most recent example comes out of the fiasco from NY-23. When Dede Scozzafava withdrew from New York’s 23rd, the New York Times ran a story titled, “G.O.P. Moderate, Pressed by Right, Abandons Race.”

That was the narrative. Scozzafava was a moderate Republican. Everyone in the so-called mainstream media agreed that she was a moderate Republican.

It’s beyond the scope of this piece to prove that Scozzafava is not a “moderate Republican.” But let me provide one paragraph from Michelle Malkin:

Scozzafava is an abortion rights advocate who favors gay marriage. It would be one thing if Scozzafava balanced that social liberalism with fiscal conservatism. But as a state assemblywoman, she voted for massive tax increases, Democratic budgets and a $180 million state bank bailout. She also supported the trillion-dollar federal stimulus package — which every House Republican voted against.

[...]

In context, “moderate” essentially means a fair-minded, reasonable, sensible, open-minded, balanced, temperate, judiciously wise liberal who happens to affiliate with the Republican Party. If only the Republican Party had more moderates!

By labeling Scozzafava as a moderate the left not only frames the debate, it creates the chart and draws the lines in the continuum of social acceptability. If Scozzafava is a moderate in the Republican Party, what is Rush Limbaugh?

Now you see how it works. In reality, Scozzafava might be a moderate in the Democrat Party, if not a lefty. But if she is accepted as a moderate in the Republican Party, then Glenn Beck is an evil extremist. There is no place left on the chart for those on the right except the “Mad Man” category—as Time Magazine recently put it.

[...]

Mr. Boehner, if she would be on the left side of the party why then agree that she is a moderate? And why would you want “moderates” in the party if they will side with the most radical administration in the history of the United States? Would it be a good thing to vote with Obama, Reid and Pelosi?

Considering that 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, and only 20% as liberals, maybe the Republican Party should change its strategy. Maybe the Republican leadership should define conservatism and promote conservative candidates.

With the Dems skewing far to the left, what is “moderate” to a Dem is left wing to Republicans/conservatives.
Why should the left wing Dems get to define the terms of political debate in this country?

Expect this kind of thing to start happening all over the country. Small to medium sized cities, saddled with astronomical public employee pension obligations, forced to declare insolvency because their predecessors refused to deal with the problem.

According to Mark Stowers writing in the Oakland Press: (via The Blog Prof )

  The Auburn Hills pension plan put in place decades ago for city workers will potentially bankrupt the city if changes are not made, city officials fear.

  Assistant City Manager Tom Tanghe has worked for the city for most of the current decade and has been negotiating city worker contracts. Tanghe said the problem lies with employees in the Defined Benefit Pension plan, which was closed by the city in the late 1990s.

  “The thing that is harming the pension fund is that someone decided and adopted a 5 percent, non-compounding cost-of-living adjustment,” Tanghe said. “If you retired at $40,000 you would get a 5 percent adjustment the following January.”

  The 5 percent amount is added each year to the base pension. Tanghe said that simple 5 percent cost-of-living adjustment will double the pension in 20 years to $80,000. Retirees’ pensions are passed on to spouses in the event of death. Of the city’s 187 employees, 46 are in the defined benefit plan. The rest are in the city’s 401(k) retirement plan.

[...]

Indeed - and this is not the most generous of city pensions around. Some allow the employee to be eligible for up to 70% of these benefits after only 5 years of service. Others allow a city employee to retire, receiving 90% of an average of his final 3 years salary - a salary oftentimes deliberately inflated just so that those last three years can garner the employee as much taxpayer loot as possible.

The solution? Many experts believe that these defined benefit plans should be moved to a defined contribution plan, as well as passing stricter rules for eligibility, and dropping the gold plated retirement provisions.

It may well be too late for Auburn Hills.

A high percentage of Americans believed race relations would improve with the election of America’s first black president. Today, that percentage has dropped dramatically. Could it be because the Obama administration, at every turn, has shamelessly exploited race to further its agenda?

The message of the liberal media/Obama administration tag team comes across loud and clear. If you disagree with Obama, we will brand you a racist and we will hurt you. If this administration was made into a movie it should be titled, “Mr. Chicago Thug Goes to Washington”. Bullying (banks, the auto industry, insurance companies, national Chamber of Commerce, doctors, Fox News and more) appears to come quite naturally to the Obama administration.

[...]

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly introduce to you courageous high school student, Kristen Campbell. Here is her dad’s letter which he gave me permission to share publicly.

  “Hi Lloyd,

  Kristen wrote this editorial (No thanks, Mrs. Obama ..) for her high school newspaper in February of this year. After the article was published, she underwent attacks from African-American students, parents, local church groups, and members of the community. She was called a racist, threatened with a knife, attacked verbally and physically in the hallways at school, and her vehicle tires were slashed in the school parking lot. Members of some local minority organizations even met to discuss how to retaliate against her and a boycott of her school newspaper was launched.

  Some parents and grandparents asked the school administration to censor her work so that she would be unable to publish controversial editorials in the future, but Kristen went before the administration and stood her ground. Because of her determination, the administration agreed not to censor her work and to allow her to continue to publish editorials without approval from the principal or school board.

  Since then, she has written other conservative editorials and is still getting some resistance from the student body. But she has not backed down.

  Since then she gave a follow up speech (Protecting the Pie) on the subject at a state-level 4-H event and at a meeting of the Choctaw Co. Republican Party.

  She is passionate about what she believes and is eager and ready to speak anytime she is asked. She is hard-hitting and doesn’t mince words. We are very proud of her as you can imagine!

  Looking forward to seeing you in Jackson (Tea Party Express rally) on the 8th.”
  Tommy and Dee Ann Campbell

Folks, doesn’t this young lady remind you of another gutsy and great conservative woman from Alaska? I am extremely proud of Kristen. I reminded Kristen that eagles fly alone. Without question, Kristen Campbell is an eagle. We need more Americans, businesses and institutions to show the same courage and backbone as this high school student. It is time to say “NO!” to the Obama administration. We will be not be silenced. We will not be bullied. We will vote you out in 2010!

Lloyd Marcus (black) Unhyphenated American

This is what you get when you elect a Marxist who practices Chicago thug politics and community organizer tactics.
Apparently, Kristen is guilty of being a white conservative.
She does show the way to victory for real Americans, though: focus on telling the truth, and refuse to be intimidated, and never back down from real American values.

Blue State Exodus

Joel Kotkin

Why the middle-class are fleeing for the hills.

For the past decade a large coterie of pundits, prognosticators and their media camp followers have insisted that growth in America would be concentrated in places hip and cool, largely the bluish regions of the country.

Since the onset of the recession, which has hit many once-thriving Sun Belt hot spots, this chorus has grown bolder. The Wall Street Journal, for example, recently identified the “Next Youth-Magnet Cities” as drawn from the old “hip and cool” collection of yore: Seattle, Portland, Washington, New York and Austin, Texas.
It’s not just the young who will flock to the blue meccas, but money and business as well, according to the narrative. The future, the Atlantic assured its readers, did not belong to the rubes in the suburbs or Sun Belt, but to high-density, high-end places like New York, San Francisco and Boston.

This narrative, which has not changed much over the past decade, is misleading and largely misstated. Net migration, both before and after the Great Recession, according to analysis by the Praxis Strategy Group, has continued to be strongest to the predominately red states of the South and Intermountain West.

This seems true even for those seeking high-end jobs. Between 2006 and 2008, the metropolitan areas that enjoyed the fastest percentage shift toward educated and professional workers and industries included nominally “unhip” places like Indianapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis, Tenn., Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo.

The overall migration numbers are even more revealing. As was the case for much of the past decade, the biggest gainers continue to include cities such as San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. Rather than being oases for migrants, some oft-cited magnets such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago have all suffered considerable loss of population to other regions over the past year.

Much the same pattern emerges when you look at longer-term state demographic patterns. A recent survey by the Empire Center for New York State Policy found that the biggest net losers in terms of per capita outmigration between 2000 and 2008 were, with the exception of Louisiana, all blue state bastions. New York residents lead in terms of rate of exodus, closely followed by the District of Columbia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and California.

An even greater shock to the sensibilities of the insular, Manhattan-centric media, the report found that most of the movement from the Empire State was not from the much-dissed suburbia, but from that hip and cool paragon, New York City. This can not be ascribed as a loss of the unwanted: According to the report, those leaving the city had 13% higher incomes than those coming in.

How can this be, when everyone who’s smart and hip is headed to the Big Apple? This question was addressed in a report by the center-left, New York-based Center for an Urban Future. True, considerable numbers of young, educated people come to New York, but it turns out that many of them leave for the suburbs or other states as they reach their peak earning years.

[...]

More important, the key group leaving New York and other so-called “youth-magnets” comprises the middle class, particularly families, critical to any long-term urban revival. This year’s Census shows that the number of single households in New York has reached record levels; in Manhattan, more than half of all households are singles. And the Urban Future report’s analysis found that even well-heeled Manhattanites with children tend to leave once they reach the age of 5 or above.

The key factor here may well be economic opportunity. Virtually all the supposedly top-ranked cities cited in this media narrative have suffered below-average job growth throughout the decade. Some, like Portland and New York, have added almost no new jobs; others like San Francisco, Boston and Chicago have actually lost positions over the past decade.

In contrast, even after the current doldrums, San Antonio, Orlando, Houston, Dallas and Phoenix all boast at least 5% more jobs now than a decade ago. Among the large-narrative magnet regions only one—government-bloated greater Washington—has enjoyed strong employment growth.

[...]

The likely reasons behind these troubling trends are things rarely discussed in “the narrative”—concerns like high costs, taxes and regulations making it tough on industries that employ the middle class. One clear culprit: out of control state spending. State spending in New York is second per capita in the nation (anomalous Alaska is first); California stands fourth and New Jersey seventh. Illinois is down the list but coming up fast. Over the past decade, while its population grew by only 7%, Illinois’ spending grew by an inflation-adjusted 39%.

The problem here is more than just too-large government; it lies in how states spend their money. Massive public spending increases over the past decade in California, New Jersey, Illinois and New York have gone overwhelmingly into the pockets and pensions of public employees. It certainly has not flowed into such basic infrastructure as roads, bridges and ports that are needed to keep key industries competitive.

[...]

Even in the face of the Obama administration’s strongly urban-centric, blue state-oriented economic policy, these generally less than hip places appear poised to grow as the economy recovers. Virtually all the top 10 economies that have withstood the recession come from outside the “youth-magnet” field: San Antonio; Oklahoma City; Little Rock, Ark.; Dallas, Baton Rouge, La.; Tulsa, Okla., Omaha, Neb.; Houston and El Paso, Texas. The one exception to this rule, Austin, also benefits from being located in solvent, generally low-tax Texas.

This continued erosion of jobs and the middle class from the blue states and cities is not inevitable. Many of these places enjoy enormous assets in terms of universities, strategic location, concentrations of talented workers and entrenched high-wage industries. But short of a massive and continuing bailout from Washington, the only way to reverse their decline will be a thorough reformation of their governmental structure and policies. No narrative, no matter how well spun, can make up for that reality.

Dem economic policies are toxic to the private sector, and people are voting with their feet to get away from them.

Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky, The American Organizer

Reveille for Radicals
by Saul Alinsky
Vintage; Reissue edition (October 23, 1989)
Buy It

Rules for Radicals
by Saul Alinsky
Vintage; Reissue edition (October 23, 1989)
Buy It

An inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!

[...]

These people are running the govt schools and are “educating” our children!

It’s time to throw them out!