tax and spend liberalism

The Easiest Prediction in the World: That Liberals Will Fail

Mark Noonan55 Comments

First off, a blast from the past – January 1st, 2011:

…the Californians wanted it. People get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. California is America’s Greece and when the collapse hits, hopefully a majority will wake up to the fact that liberalism is a failure.

And, now – from the New York Times:

The state budget shortfall in California has increased dramatically in the last six months, forcing state officials to assemble a series of new spending cuts that are likely to mean further reductions to schools, health care and other social programs already battered by nearly five years of budget retrenchment, state officials announced on Saturday.

Gov. Jerry Brown, disclosing the development in a video posted on YouTube, said that California’s shortfall was now projected to be $16 billion, up from $9.2 billion in January. Mr. Brown said that he would propose a revised budget on Monday to deal with it…

Given that this is the New Y0rk Times, you do have to be careful – the budget shortfall didn’t “increase dramatically”; it was built in.  When Jerry and the liberals of the California legislature passed their budget they made a whole bunch of absurd assumptions both as to revenues and expenditures…that they would be, respectively, much higher and much lower than what has actually happened.  Any real analyst would have predicted this right from the start –  or, even, just a moderately informed amateur, like me.

The key to understanding what is wrong with America is to understand three things:

1.  We spend too much money via government.

2.  Our debt is too large to be managed given our current ability to create wealth.

3.  Our ability to create wealth is hampered endlessly by the tax and regulatory system.

All three of these problems are liberal-created problems:  it is liberals who want to spend too much (yes, plenty of Republicans join in, but liberals always lead the way…as is shown by the fact that they increased federal spending by a trillion per year since Obama took office).  Because we spend too much, we end up borrowing too much – and now our debt (federal, State and local) is so large that, given our current base of wealth, it simply cannot be repaid (when you factor in the un-funded mandates).  Our only way out of this mess is to cut spending and grow wealth – but we can’t grow wealth effectively because liberals have erected a positively Byzantine tax and regulatory system which rewards failure and punishes effort and success.

Liberalism must go if America is to survive.  Remember this as we approach November.

 

 

 

230,000 Shovel Ready Jobs!

Mark Noonan12 Comments

If, that is, what you want is manure to be shoveled – from Hot Air:

The president has found a way to add jobs, after all — 230,000 of ‘em, all within the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the number of new bureaucrats the federal government will need to hire to implement new proposed greenhouse gas regulations…

The cost would be $21 billion a year for these extra bureaucrats.  And here’s the real kicker – they would be setting about the enforcement of greenhouse gas rules the EPA does not have statutory authority to enforce.  Cool, huh?  230,000 more government drones costing us more money and enforcing laws which are created not just at the whim of the President, but at the whim of any one of the 230,000 bureaucrats.  Liberal fascism is a wonderful thing, ain’t it?

Once again – 2012 will be a pivotal election.  We’ll decide, probably for good, whether America survives and thrives, or starts to die.

Obama: “I’m Irresponsible and Unpatriotic”

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Well, that is the case if we take his own words at face value – from NRO’s The Corner:

…Two days ago, CNSNews unearthed a video that captured a July 3, 2008 campaign speech by then-candidate Obama. In it, he said:

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from 5 trillion for the first 42 presidents–number 43 added 4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have a 9 trillion dollar debt that we are going to have to pay back–$30,000 for every man, woman, and child. That’s irresponsible. That’s unpatriotic.”…

If that is the standard, then Obama is vastly more irresponsible and unpatriotic than President Bush…it took Bush 8 years to pile up $4 trillion in debt, Obama did it in 2 years, 8 months.

To be sure, it is doubtful that Obama really meant what he said – it is highly likely that he was just doing the typical liberal Democrat thing…saying whatever proved necessary to win.  Had President Bush lowered the debt by $4 trillion, Obama would have accused Bush of being unpatriotic and irresponsible for not “investing” in America…and If Obama charges up another $8 trillion by 2017 (presuming he is re-elected) he still won’t consider it unpatriotic or irresponsible.  And if the next President is Republican – in 2013 or 2017, doesn’t matter – and creates only $2 trillion in debt over his 8 year term, Obama and the Democrats will call it irresponsible and unpatriotic.

For a liberal Democrat, the only test is victory – if Democrats obtain more power and personal wealth, then it was good…if they don’t, then its bad.  Right and wrong, human decency, the fate of the nation and the world – all is subordinate to the power and wealth of our liberal Democrats, their RINO enablers, and their crony capitalists.  Keep that in mind any time a liberal Democrat speaks…they aren’t saying what is relevant and true, but what they think (and have likely poll-tested) will help them win.

Obamunism! $4 Trillion in New Debt

Mark Noonan11 Comments

From CBS News:

The latest posting by the Treasury Department shows the national debt has now increased $4 trillion on President Obama’s watch

The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion

It’s the most rapid increase in the debt under any U.S. president.

The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. The debt now is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama’s four-year term…

Obama has been President for 2 years, 7 months and 3 days…I calculate this works out to about $4 billion dollars in new debt each day Obama has been in office.  That is just an incredible figure – and made worse by the fact that all we’ve got for it is money for liberal interest groups.  No real economic growth, no real jobs, no real wealth creation.  Its all been a bust – and a bankrupting bust, in to the bargain.

So, what is the new plan, liberals?  Start piling up $8 billion in debt per day?  Would that work?  You tell us…how much further in to debt do we need to go in order to make liberal economic policy works?  And can you give us a date certain while we’re borrowing that much where we’ll be done and prosperity will result?

2012 can’t get here fast enough…

Liberal Proposes to Finish Off Los Angeles

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Bankrupt?  Municipal services decaying?  Everyone who can leave moving out as fast as they can?  Then here’s your liberal solution…raise taxes!  From Bloomberg:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the chief of California’s largest city, called for sweeping changes in Proposition 13, the nucleus of the nation’s anti-tax movement.

The state’s perennial budget crises could be eased by as much as $8 billion a year by removing Proposition 13’s limits on tax assessments for commercial property, Villaraigosa said in a speech to the Sacramento Press Club today. He also urged new taxes on services such as legal representation that he said might yield as much as $28 billion a year…

In the “give credit where it is due” spirit, I have to say I agree with the proposal to tax legal services.  It would be the most effective means of killing of liberalism’s most effective means of gaining power.  They use lawyers to subvert America day in and day out – lay a 90% tax on legal fees, and that will come to a screeching halt.  Of course, given that trial lawyers are a mainstay of Democrat fund raising, you can expect such a proposal to go nowhere…but, it is still a good idea, and we should think about putting it in the GOP platform along with the “wealth tax”.

Aside from that, Villaraigosa’s proposals are just economic suicide.  Los Angeles and California are suffering from the inability of Californian’s to create wealth.  The block to such creation is California’s insanely burdensome tax and regulatory environment…Villaraigosa proposes to increase the burden.  And he wants to do it in lieu of cutting back the worthless, wealth-destroying California bureaucracy.

I guess they just don’t learn – from Obama right on down to mayors like Villaraigosa:  all liberals can ever think to do in a crisis is raise taxes and keep spending.  We have the answer for that – and we’ll give it November next year.

Who is Bankrupting America?

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Tino over at Super-Economy has the chart:

 

There is simply no arguing with this – Obama has massively increased spending since he took office.  It isn’t just a slight difference, it is night and day.  He’s gone on a binge of spending – and that means that if we want to get our deficit under control, the only rational thing to do is at least return it to the average.

The reason Obama and his Democrats won’t do this is because when they finally gained full control of the government in January of 2009 – for the first time since 1994 – they were determined to pump up all the spending they couldn’t get when all or part of the government was under GOP control.  They pined away for this…for years they dreamed of the day when the Treasury and the printing press would be entirely theirs and they could spend to their heart’s content.  They aren’t about to give it up.  First off because a reduction in spending would reduce their immediate power (they ability to buy votes with taxpayer money), secondly because they have vastly enriched their cronies and don’t dare take it away.

This isn’t about tossing granny over the cliff – cutting spending is about taking Democrat special interest groups and crony-capitalists off the government teat.  That is what the whole debate really comes down to – will we reduce the spending, save our economy and rebuild our nation?  Or will we continue to lavish money on Democrats and their hangers-on until America is destroyed?

The fight is on – 2012 will decide it; but as we fight it, don’t for a minute let Democrats tell you they are helping granny…they are just helping themselves and greedily and senselessly want to keep doing it no matter what happens.

Mmmmm, Toasted Obama: My Favorite!

Mark Noonan39 Comments

From James Pethokoukis at Reuters in response to Goldman Sachs lowering GDP projections:

…Alarms bells must be ringing all over Obamaland today. Unemployment on Election Day about where it is right now? Sputtering — if not stalling — economic growth? To many Americans that would sound like the car is back in the ditch — if it was ever out. Maybe Goldman is wrong, but economists across Wall Street have been growing more bearish.

And recall that back in August of 2009, the White House — after having a half year to view the economy and its $800 billion stimulus response — made an astoundingly optimistic (PDF) forecast. Starting in 2011, with Obamanomics fully in gear and the recession over, growth would take off. GDP would rise 4.3 percent in 2011, followed by … 4.3 percent growth in 2012 and 2013, too!  And 2014? Another year of 4.0 percent growth. Off to the races, America…

Do take a look at that “astoundingly optimistic” White House forecast – as far as Obama and Co were concerned, the stimulus was going to get us rip roaring in to boom economic times.  It is all there – carefully laid our projections about how wonderful things were going to be.  I can only guess that they really believed it – after all, they were being rather arrogant in their assumptions of 2012 victory back there when questions first arose about the effects of the stimulus.  Only people who really believed in it could have looked at the 2010 data and assumed that 2011 would have 4.3% GDP growth (if we’re lucky – very lucky – we’ll see official growth at 2.5% for the year 2011; which is not nearly enough to get things rolling).  The big question:  do they still believe it?

As Pethokoukis notes at the end of his article, there is still a very short time left for Obama to change course and have a chance at a reasonably good economy for election day, 2012.  But I mean he’d really have to move fast – in the next few weeks we’d have to see serious proposals to cut the tax and regulatory burden on wealth creation for it to have a noticeable positive effect by election day.  Wait until the end of August and it will be too late – the good news would start to roll in around January of 2013, just as we’re swearing in President Bachmann.  But if they are still retaining their faith in the stimulus, then they’ll do nothing and just cross there fingers that some how, some way, what has thus-far failed will start to work in an astounding manner over the next 15 months.

And if that is the case, then the good news is that Obama won’t be re-elected – the bad news is that the economy will be very much worse before we get rid of him.