Category Archives: Barack Obama

Updated: Obama’s Shocked: More Jobs ‘Lost’

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Debt, Economy, Regulation, Taxation

STATISM AND STUPIDITY ARE INTERCHANGEABLE. “Employers chopped 85,000 jobs last month, and difficulty finding work helped chase more than half a million people out of the job market,” reports the Hartford Courant.

To Obama, this is genuinely surprising. Didn’t he do everything possible to avert such a scenario? Didn’t he do everything right?

Sure, if you consider stupendous spending, the creation of faux industries—“the average cost of alleged new green jobs will be $135,000 per job”—and the taking over of failed ones.

With “the $780 billion stimulus plan,” the prez purports to have saved 1 million jobs, but by Kudlow’s calculations, each cost “roughly $200,000 per job.”

Mr. Midas touch has closed “down federal lands for oil and gas drilling,” opened up more EPA departments for capping-and-trading, is leading a government takeover of health care, and this is barely the beginning of BO’s transformation of “the government’s relation to the private economy.”

Because he is a dyed-in-the-wool statist, BO cannot conceive that by dolling out unemployment benefits, and state aid; launching government jobs programs—all of which necessitate the seizure of private wealth through taxing, borrowing, and printing paper—he is taking a wrecking ball to the job market, and the private economy.

Update (Jan. 9): I think BO is genuinely surprised. Contra Glenn Beck, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe in the banality of evil. BO believes in the Keynesian “remedied.” I think he’s scratching his head.

Here’s the mundane truth conspiracies obscure (from the post “On Conspiracy Theories”):

The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.
Conspiracy is not congruent with a view of government as fundamentally antagonistic to the individual and to civil society, a position I hold.

Updated: Obama's Shocked: More Jobs 'Lost'

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Debt, Regulation, Taxation

STATISM AND STUPIDITY ARE INTERCHANGEABLE. “Employers chopped 85,000 jobs last month, and difficulty finding work helped chase more than half a million people out of the job market,” reports the Hartford Courant.

To Obama, this is genuinely surprising. Didn’t he do everything possible to avert such a scenario? Didn’t he do everything right?

Sure, if you consider stupendous spending, the creation of faux industries—“the average cost of alleged new green jobs will be $135,000 per job”—and the taking over of failed ones.

With “the $780 billion stimulus plan,” the prez purports to have saved 1 million jobs, but by Kudlow’s calculations, each cost “roughly $200,000 per job.”

Mr. Midas touch has closed “down federal lands for oil and gas drilling,” opened up more EPA departments for capping-and-trading, is leading a government takeover of health care, and this is barely the beginning of BO’s transformation of “the government’s relation to the private economy.”

Because he is a dyed-in-the-wool statist, BO cannot conceive that by dolling out unemployment benefits, and state aid; launching government jobs programs—all of which necessitate the seizure of private wealth through taxing, borrowing, and printing paper—he is taking a wrecking ball to the job market, and the private economy.

Update (Jan. 9): I think BO is genuinely surprised. Contra Glenn Beck, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe in the banality of evil. BO believes in the Keynesian “remedied.” I think he’s scratching his head.

Here’s the mundane truth conspiracies obscure (from the post “On Conspiracy Theories”):

The premise for imputing conspiracies to garden variety government evils is this: government generally does what is good for us (NOT), so when it strays, we must look beyond the facts—for something far more sinister, as if government’s natural venality and quest for power were not enough to explain events. For example, why would one need to search for the “real reason” for an unjust, unscrupulous war, unless one believed government would never prosecute an unjust war. History belies that delusion.
Conspiracy is not congruent with a view of government as fundamentally antagonistic to the individual and to civil society, a position I hold.

Updated: The CBOafs (They Really Can’t Count)

Barack Obama, Business, Government, Healthcare, Reason, Regulation, Socialism

In trying to sell the viability of BO’s Health plans, the oafs at the Congressional Budget Office (CBOafs) posit at least one scenario that doesn’t wash. Check the tables attached (via the WSJ). The CBOafs would like you to believe that an employer will choose NOT to drop a $10,000 health benefit for a paltry penalty of $750, thus saving $9,250, in the case of a high-valued employee. In an employer’s market??! Where are they living? Have they even surveyed the private sector?

This is, it would seem, a postulate ObamaCare is premised upon. The bastards.

NA-BC960A_BIZHE_NS_20091222215544

Update I (Dec. 23): THEY REALLY CAN’T COUNT. The “CBO has discovered an error in the cost estimate released yesterday,” the correction of which “reduces the degree to which the legislation would lower federal deficits in the decade after 2019,” confessed the Chief CBOaf. The entry, tucked away on the “Director’s Blog,” made select TV headlines today.

Call me simple, but with the prospect of merging one Bill (The House’s) that’s estimated to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years (according to the “nonpartisan” CBOafs) with another (The Senate’s) priced at $871 billion over the next 10 years (CBOafs again)—I’m unclear how the cost curve, as they put it, will be bent.

Updated: The CBOafs (They Really Can't Count)

Barack Obama, Business, Government, Healthcare, Reason, Regulation, Socialism

In trying to sell the viability of BO’s Health plans, the oafs at the Congressional Budget Office (CBOafs) posit at least one scenario that doesn’t wash. Check the tables attached (via the WSJ). The CBOafs would like you to believe that an employer will choose NOT to drop a $10,000 health benefit for a paltry penalty of $750, thus saving $9,250, in the case of a high-valued employee. In an employer’s market??! Where are they living? Have they even surveyed the private sector?

This is, it would seem, a postulate ObamaCare is premised upon. The bastards.

NA-BC960A_BIZHE_NS_20091222215544

Update I (Dec. 23): THEY REALLY CAN’T COUNT. The “CBO has discovered an error in the cost estimate released yesterday,” the correction of which “reduces the degree to which the legislation would lower federal deficits in the decade after 2019,” confessed the Chief CBOaf. The entry, tucked away on the “Director’s Blog,” made select TV headlines today.

Call me simple, but with the prospect of merging one Bill (The House’s) that’s estimated to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years (according to the “nonpartisan” CBOafs) with another (The Senate’s) priced at $871 billion over the next 10 years (CBOafs again)—I’m unclear how the cost curve, as they put it, will be bent.