Or, is this what will be left when he's done?

Or, is this what will be left when he's done?

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Because he allowed the democrats to reverse welfare reform


Pres. Barack Obama vowed to correct the mistakes of the Bush administration but instead is determined to undo one of the great successes of the Clinton years: welfare reform. Democrats have inserted provisions into the catch-all stimulus bill that will reverse Clinton-era welfare reform, re-establishing the wasteful, incentive-killing system whose transformation was the bipartisan pride of the 1990s.

Prior to reform, the federal government simply gave the states more money for every family they added to the welfare rolls. The predictable result was that the states worked hard to maximize their welfare caseloads in order to maximize the amount of federal funding they could therefore claim. The system had zero incentive to help people make the transition from welfare to work and independence—in fact, the states were financially punished for doing so. The Clinton-Gingrich reforms replaced that bounty-hunter system with a flat rate for each state, based on population and other factors. That gave state-level welfare authorities a better set of incentives, encouraging them to use their resources in the most effective manner and to reserve them for the truly needy.

http://article.nationalreview.com/

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Because he doesn't understand that tax cuts increase federal revenue


Several conclusions follow from these data. First of all, reduction in high marginal tax rates can induce taxpayers to lessen their reliance on tax shelters and tax avoidance, and expose more of their income to taxation. The result in this case was a 51 percent increase in real tax payments by the top one percent. Meanwhile, the tax rate reduction reduced the tax payments of middle class and poor taxpayers. The net effect was a marked shift in the tax burden toward the top 1 percent amounting to about 10 percentage points. Lower top marginal tax rates had encouraged these taxpayers to generate more taxable income.

http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Because against all evidence, he thinks CO2 is a greenhouse gas

Please try and bear with me - here's an example of actual research, vs simply buying whatever the talking heads and Al Gore are telling you in your home theater.

"earth's current temperature is no higher now (and maybe just a tad less, in fact) than it was during the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), when (just as at the "beginning of the end" of the LIA) there was over 100 ppm less CO2 in the air than there is today. Consequently, since the great MWP-to-LIA cooling occurred without any significant change in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration, just the opposite could occur just as easily, and the planet could warm, and by an equal amount -- just as it actually did over the past three centuries -- all without any help from an increase in the atmosphere's CO2 content, which remained essentially constant for the first 1850 years of the 2000-year record depicted in the figure above, and which did not begin to really take off until just the last few decades of the 20th century, which brief period of correlation is simply too short to use as justification for claiming that the late 20th-century CO2 increase was responsible for the late 20th-century warming of the globe, and especially since that warming actually ceased at the end of the 20th century, even though the atmosphere's CO2 content has subsequently continued to climb at an unprecedented rate and to ever greater heights."

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N10/EDIT.php

Monday, March 9, 2009

Because he doesn't think Britain is an important ally.


Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama's Oval Office desk. Mr Obama's gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.

Mr Obama rang Mr Brown as he flew home, in what many suspected was an attempt to make amends.

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Because he's already broken his promise to fight pork.


"WASHINGTON – Despite campaign promises to take a machete to lawmakers' pet projects, President Barack Obama is quietly caving to funding nearly 8,000 of them this year, drawing a stern rebuke Monday from his Republican challenger in last fall's election.

Arizona Sen. John McCain said it is "insulting to the American people" for Obama's budget director to indicate over the weekend that the president will sign a $410 billion spending bill with what Republicans critics say is nearly $5.5 billion in so-called "earmark" projects.

"So much for the promise of change," McCain said in this year's version of what has become his annual tirade against pork-barrel spending."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090302/ap_on_go_co/obama_spending_5

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Because he thinks the New Deal worked the first time


This article speaks the truth so well, I had to link to it twice:

"
I will finish with a quotation from Roosevelt's secretary of treasury, Henry Morganthau. He admits, the whole thing failed. Again, the quote, you will never see in a textbook, but I have it right here. I went to the Roosevelt Library and dug this one out. Henry Morganthau, Secretary of Treasury, in May, 1939, years after the New Deal, said, "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot." That is the secretary of treasury in charge of the money disbursement and statistics collection during the 1930s, making that statement."

http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2002/summer_2002_3.html

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Because he doesn't understand the broken window fallacy.


Let's say that we have a nice suburban area sort of like we have here in Washington, DC, out in Chevy Chase. And we have some guy there who has a nice picture window, and some kid goes by, a hoodlum, and throws a rock through that window, breaks it. And let's say that it costs $500 to replace that window. Well, our first reaction might be: What a horrible thing. Let's catch the perpetrator." But what if somebody else came up and said, "Wait a minute. The window's been broken, some time has elapsed, we haven't caught the guy, but maybe we shouldn't catch him to throw him in jail. Maybe we should catch him to pat him on the back. Because I've observed what's happened in that house and what's happened is this: He broke the window, but the guy who had the window broken called up the glassmaker and the glassmaker put the window in and installed it for $500. Then the glassmaker took that $500 and bought a DVD player. He also bought a couple DVDs. And then he bought a reclining chair to sit back and watch the movies, all with that $500. So that broken window has generated business and now we have more DVD sales, more reclining chair sales, and it's generated business all around town. So isn't this a good thing?"

Where's the problem with this argument? The valid point here is that the guy whose window was broken also might have wanted to buy a DVD player and a reclining chair. Or he might have wanted to buy a suit of clothes and some insurance. So that guy, and the tailor, is out $500 because instead of buying a suit and a shirt, he now had to pay for the window. You never generated real business because the guy who had the window broken is out $500 and the guy who had replaced the window is up $500, but the guy who had the window broken would have also been spending $500. So there's really no net gain. Hazlitt called this the broken window fallacy.

http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2002/summer_2002_3.html

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Because he cares more about his agenda than the economy.



"Capital, bluntly put, has gone on strike. Those who own wealth are pushing it to the sidelines, as a young and inexperienced president tries to jam through the most sweeping economic changes in over 70 years.

The prospect of these changes becoming law has already radically altered our nation's economy. Entrepreneurs and CEOs who once created new products, new services, jobs and trillions in wealth for America's workers and retirees now find themselves vilified and punished for their success.

ABC News reported this week that many upper-income taxpayers already are planning to cut back on work and investments to stay under $250,000 in income — the point where Obama's punitive taxes kick in. No one wins from this, yet Obama seems oblivious.

This isn't the only warning sign. A new study asserts that some 100,000 highly educated, well-trained Indians now living in the U.S. will return home in the next few years. Ditto China.

Immigrant entrepreneurs are highly sensitive bellwethers of economic and social conditions. They know where the opportunities are — and where they aren't. They're voting with their feet.

The economy shrank 6.2% in the fourth quarter, worse than first expected. Home sales continue to fall, unemployment is rising sharply, and business investment is prostrate. Such an economy cries out for tax cuts, but we get none. Just punishment of those with wealth who might be able to pull us out of the slump."

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=320892987513114

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Because he believes that money is evil


So you think that money is the root of all evil? . . . Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

- “The Meaning of Money,” For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand, page 88.