Wasting Time With Alex
Energy
Monday, February 22, 2010
Yet another one bites the dust…
So now it looks like the drastically rising oceans, the apocalyptic end game the AGW church has warned us would happen if we refused to accept the collectivist government takeover of our freedoms and cash, was also, erm, exaggerated?
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings. The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.
At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study ”strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results”. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.
Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in Decemberthat projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.
OK, so now we are told that they are unsure of the rise. That’s bull of course because what was likely found is that they have no science to prove this idiotic claim. So now even the threat of Waterworld is gone? No melting glaciers, no disappearing North Pole or ice in the Himalayas, no oceans rising… WTF? What’s left? What’s the impending catstrophe that should scare us all into letting them take away our freedoms and cash in return for, well nothing but an overarching government that has control of every aspects of our lives by limiting our access to energy and controlling our purchase power?
All the fear mongering we used to say was bunk and based on bunk science, is now proven as bunk. That’s why it was retracted. Asked to prove with science their claims, one by one, they are being retracted, or drastically revised, to a point that the end result is a statistical insignificance. And yet, the defenders of the AGW cult are still hard at work trying to make not only like they still have the science behind them, but that the onus is on the “deniers” to disprove the AGW claims, even though now it is a given that the underlying data, methodology, and the projected damage all are outright falsehoods or exaggerations. Even worse, people are starting to see that the real big money influences were not from the people that the AGW cultists demonized, but by the very priests of the AGW cult, which have all made millions, and stood to make billions more, scamming us all.
If the AGW watermelon cultists had any sense, they would drop this lost cause and go invent the next big lie they are going to glom on to try and convince us to let them create their global wealth redistributing collectivist government for the elites by. Of course they will not. They will continue to try and lie & bluff their way through this – after all, they have a complacent and willing media that has so far ignored the scandalous behavior by them – and in the process make sure we all know this is a fanatical cult based more on faith than any kind of science.
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Monday, January 25, 2010
Surprise! Home sales drop drastically..
In another example of why Keynesian economics don’t work worth shit in the long term, we find out that, just like what happened with the “Cash for Clunkers” program, there was a drastic drop in home sales after the $8,000 tax credit expired.
WASHINGTON (AP)—Sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, sinking more dramatically than expected after lawmakers gave buyers additional time to use a tax credit. The report reflects a sharp drop in demand after buyers stopped scrambling to qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homeowners. It had been due to expire on Nov. 30. But Congress extended the deadline until April 30 and expanded it with a new $6,500 credit for existing homeowners who move.
“It’s ‘exit stage left’ for first-time homebuyers,” wrote Guy LeBas, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott. December’s sales fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million, from an unchanged pace of 6.54 million in November, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Sales had been expected to fall by about 10 percent, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
What is surprising to me is the media’s and left’s ability to connect the dots and realize this result was a given. Did they miss the massive slump that car manufacturers are now in after the “Cash for Clunkers” program ended? I know they tried to spin that story too, and that they are no longer reporting on that continued slump, but the writing was easy to see. Basic human nature 101, people. While there was an incentive to behave a certain way, people did it. Once that incentive went away, behavior changed. At the risk of being repetitive, that’s human nature. Why do the collectivists have such a hard time with this concept? Reward people for a certain behavior, or punish them for not doing it, and people will conform. The left knows this. That’s why they want gas to be over $4 a gallon and all energy to be expensive. When we have less freedom to move around, they can control us better.
Anyway, the best piece of this moronic article?
“We do not believe it is fair to consider this a double dip in the housing market,” Michelle Meyer, an economist with Barclays Capital, wrote last week. “The recovery is still under way, but hitting some bumps in the road.”
Yeah, sure! Except for the people without jobs. The people with jobs that still can’t make ends meet, and soon will have less income or purchase power due to a bunch of corrupt and stupid collectivist politicians. And the private sector in general. Otherwise, things are looking good....
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
News potpourri
Our president has received and signed a 1.1 trillion spending bill, and I am sure most people have not heard anything about the bill. Here are some details:
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed into law a $1.1 trillion bill that increases the budgets in many areas of the government by about 10 percent, including health, law enforcement and veterans’ programs. Obama signed the bill privately at the White House on Wednesday after receiving the bill from Congress on Sunday. The bill lumps together six of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2010 budget year that began Oct. 1.
So this is signed in secret, increases government spending on itself by 10%, at a time when the economy is in chaos, the people are hurting bad, unemployment is again going up, government has to do things like borrow close to $300 billion more because we already are over the limit on our spending for next year. And to top this all off, the collectivist crooks are trying real hard to make up their own version of reality with the ludicrous, ridiculous, and odorous claim that their government takeover of the healthcare decision making process and finances plan that under the best of circumstances will add a minimum of $2 trillion dollars to our already astronomically expanding debt, is actually needed to prevent healthcare costs from breaking the bank! Seriously, do they have no shame? In the mean time we find out that these idiots till think government spending is the solution to unemployment. Tax cuts? Never! That crap is evil. Of course we know tax cuts actually spurred growth, and had the government spending not gone up faster than that growth, things would have been good, while this collectivist government spending stuff has never worked to do anything but drag out recessions. Maybe these losers get their ideas from eating stuff from this place? Americans are wising up to the scam run by these bastards though.
In the mean time the cultists gathering in Copenhagen is providing a platform for the worst of the worse. The clergy continues to pretend their house of cards isn’t coming down and on flames, even as more proof comes out that the game is rigged. And the worlds biggest polluter tells the gang of nuts to take a long walk off a short pier. Don’t the peasants know that Waterworld is coming if we do not bow down to Gaia and let the church of AGW run amok with their grand scheme? the Pope of the church of AGW has predicted it! Don’t worry though. If this thing blows up as spectacularly as Pinatubo did back when, it will spew so much junk into the atmosphere - comparable to decades of man doing its worst possible - that we will again see a 1 degree temperature drop world wide.
If this stuff didn’t hurt so much, it would all be funny.
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Friday, December 04, 2009
If they wanted to create jobs, wean us off oil, and help the planet…
We would be drilling like mad for this stuff:
Just a few years ago, the industry didn’t have the technology to unlock these reserves. But thanks to advances in horizontal drilling and methods of fracturing rock with high-pressure blasts of water, sand and chemicals, vast gas reserves in the United States are suddenly within reach. As a result, said BP chief executive Tony Hayward, “the picture has changed dramatically.” “The United States is sitting on over 100 years of gas supply at the current rates of consumption,” he said. Because natural gas emits half the greenhouse gases of coal, he added, that “provides the United States with a unique opportunity to address concerns about energy security and climate change.”
Recoverable U.S. gas reserves could now be bigger than the immense gas reserves of Russia, some experts say. The Marcellus shale formation, stretching across swaths of Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia, has enough gas to meet the entire nation’s needs for at least 14 years, according to an estimate by two Pennsylvania State University experts. Just in Broome County, N.Y., where Fitzsimmons lives, shale gas development could create $15 billion in economic activity, according to consultants hired by the county.
Of course Gore and the donkeys are not going to get rich shilling for this stuff, so I doubt there will be much enthusiasm from the usual suspects for this, just like their isn’t any for drilling for our own oil. But the even better argument to be made for why we should do this is:
With new supplies, the country will be less vulnerable to disruptions from Gulf Coast hurricanes and need to rely less on imports. Already, deliveries of liquefied natural gas from places such as Qatar, Nigeria and Trinidad are down 58 percent in 2008, idling costly U.S. terminals.
Not to mention that we can get much less oil imported if we switch to using gas. Maybe all of what we get from such hell holes as Venezuela or exporters in the ME. Of course the Luddites also had comments to add:
But the prospect of widespread shale gas drilling is also driving wedges in the environmental community. Many environmentalists have sounded alarms about the chemicals that drillers use to fracture the rock and the danger of natural gas or other substances contaminating water supplies.
So what then? Nuclear energy? Because practically everything else they push as alternative sources is junk and unable to produce the energy we need now, let alone in the future. Or is the agenda to make all of us - because they certainly are not going to give up their perks or energy usage from the easy to glean facts - live like people did in the 1800s? It isn’t like the bloated government bureaucracy hasn’t put strict rules in place for these operations that would prevent or drastically reduce any environmental kind of impact. They trust the government to run healthcare but not to supervise this? Heh.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Technically this isn’t a tax, right?
So is Obama keeping his promise not to tax the middle class by getting more of their money without really rasiing their income taxes? Is an inderect tax a tax hike?
The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.
A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.” The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.
That’s all going to help the economy going, right? Ok, I am certain it has the opposite effect, but then again, collectivists believe that government and government jobs should drive the economy anyway. Unless government robs everyone, but especially the productive, there is no money to prop up the bureaucracy. I would be very interested in finding out what that “upper end” American household is for the administration. Is that those making $250K or more, or is this the usual $50K number that democrats use to declare people well off. Here is some more.
These disclosures will probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats’ cap and trade bill. The House of Representatives approved it by a remarkably narrow margin in June—the bill would have failed if only six House members had switched their votes to “no”—and it faces significant opposition in the Senate.
One reason the bill faces an uncertain future is concern about its cost. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. Democrats have pointed to estimates from MIT’s John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family, and noted that tax credits to low income households could offset part of the bite. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, “the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year.”
Sounds like another big government boondoggle to me. First they create a complicated system to rob people of their money, and then they funnel some of that back to a select others of their choosing. Then again, that’s exactly what the entire AGW scam is about: wealth redistribution. Par for the course. My bet is also that the plan for those “low income households” that will get tax credits, is to somehow end up with a higher credit than the tax they pay. To save the environment, you know. And of course to achieve “social justice”. One can safely also guess that in the end all these estimated costs bandied in this article end up being way too low, and that most people will end up paying through the nose for this wealth redistribution scam. At least the non-democrat productive people will. Democrats, and especially democrat politicians, seem to feel they are above tax laws, anyway.
The one good thing about this disaster is that it could help hurt democrats at the polls for the next few elections. If there is any justice in the universe it should do a lot of that.
Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.
One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.” The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.
15% Tax hike huh? Since I feel it is safe to assume that the middle class definitely does not fall into what democrats would call “low income households”, that means the middle class just got a nice indirect tax hike. Obama being a lawyer and all that will certainly point out this is not a tax to them technically, because it is an indirect fee! I wonder if any of the Obama supporters will feel had by democrats for concocting this scheme to funnel so much cash to their special interests and friends. And that on top of all the other ones we have already had rammed down our throat. Wait until they are done with healthcare! That’s when the pain really starts. Get used to that 10%+ unemployment number. That’s a given in socialist economies.
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
The globalists strike back!
The anti-US collectivist agenda seen in anything from the demands that the US ask the UN for permission to pursue its own interests or the demands by the AGW cult for us to allow a one world collectivist government to redistribute wealth - somehow the collectivists believe this will fix the planet warming up, but I have not quite figured the science behind it yet - and the nutjob disarmament clique which views America as the problem score a big one.
Barack Obama will cement the new co-operative relationship between the US and the United Nations this month when he becomes the first American president to chair its 15-member Security Council. The topic for the summit-level session of the council on September 24 is nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament – one of several global challenges that the US now wants to see addressed at a multinational level.
Her remarks were the latest by the Obama administration to emphasise a shift from the strategy of the previous Bush administration, sometimes criticised by its UN partners for seeking to use the world body principally to endorse its own unilateral policies. The US currently holds the month-long rotating presidency of the Security Council. Mr Obama will join other heads of government in New York during the week of the nuclear summit for the opening of the 64th session of the UN General Assembly. The annual meeting of world leaders is this year raising expectations on a number of fronts.
So the left again is legitimizing the most corrupt and vile organization on the planet, the UN. We are talking about the organization that tried to block the US from going to Iraq and accused us of going there to steal oil while running a scam to enrich the its members and Saddam Hussein. The same organization that constantly has people stationed in the third world – when it gets reported, that is – in trouble with the law because they are abusing either the women, the children, or both sexually. The crooks that say the US and Israel are the worlds biggest problem while giving legitimacy to people like Castro, the Kims, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and every other mass murderer, torturer, or oppressor you can conjure up. The idiots that are supposed to stop evil people from murdering their own or their neighbors but actually help make it happen. That organization that is the biggest pusher of the AGW cult because it hopes to profit from it. And that last one brings up this:
UN officials hope a climate change debate on September 22 will give fresh impetus to the search for a global climate deal at Copenhagen in December. There are also hopes a possible meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president, that Mr Obama would host, could lead to a breakthrough about a timetable for Middle East peace.
That’s because the AGW cultists and the UN share the same ultimate goal: a big collectivist world government to redistribute all the wealth. But hey, they will do more!
Heads of state are also likely to consider how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr Obama gave Tehran a September deadline to reply to his offer of negotiations. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad will attend the General Assembly “to encourage Iranian views in managing the world,” an aide said.
Here comes another angry letter and a lot of huffing & puffing. In the end they will blame the US and/or Israel for Iran going nuclear, and claim victory. Great! But what’s Obama and the lefty’s biggest concern?
US officials are concerned Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi might try to steal the limelight during his first visit to New York. A public outcry at the Libyan leader’s visit after he last month welcomed home Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the freed Lockerbie bomber, has already stymied his plans to pitch his tent in Central Park.
This is Barack’s chance to shine on stage! Mouth some meaningless platitudes, apologize for the evils of the US, and bow to one or another despot, while abdicating our sovereignty to the corrupt UN in return for some faked love. How dare Gaddafi! The bastard.
“How President Gaddafi chooses to comport himself, when he attends the General Assembly and the Security Council in New York, has the potential either to further aggravate those feelings and emotions or not,” Ms Rice said.
Maybe he can pull one out of the Chavez play book and call Bush the devil. I am sure this is all going to turn out swell. Maybe Obama can tell them how fast his plan to cripple the US economy will work out so the UN can print the new global currency and help us all down the path to hell.
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Sunday, August 23, 2009
Here is what happens when government helps you.. Part Deux
I am worried that everyone here, including myself got way too focused on the first part dealing with the credit card issue, in my post below, and either ignored or missed the real big point in my post: that the collectivists screwed our economy up, even worse than usual, policy wise, and that it is going to get worse if they keep at it.
I used the example of how they rammed through the stimulus patronage bill, but everyone of their big policy pushed through was disastrous for the economy. Let me enumerate them for you. I hope for the day that we do not need to go into the details and the consequences of the left’s response to the economic crisis of their own making either, but the truth, facts, and logic, never seem to be things the left cares for, so I guess I need to quantify that again. Despite their best efforts, the truth has come out. Those that want to know the facts know that we are where we are today because of ideological policy. It was ideology that drove these politicians to legislate the conditions that resulted in the economic collapse we experienced. Lending institutions were forced by law into giving money to seriously unqualified people. Then when this still was not working the same politicians legislated a hokey and completely opaque trading scheme for those securities based on toxic assets, and used Freddie and Fannie to showcase government backing of these dangerous schemes and legitimize them. Finally they decided to bring down the house of cards, right before an election – so they could score on the political perception, one I never quite understood, that democrats are better for the economy – to win the presidency and big gains. Now their solution to an economic slump that I am certain they did not predict or expect to be this big, is for them to meddle even more but keep the underlying fundamental and illogical problem in place. That’s going to work well.
That above brings us to the government takeover of the banking and lending industry, and the consequences of that. While they demonized the TARP program as corporate bailouts with tax payer money, these leftists not only saw the $700 billion that the Bush people put up, but raised it to over $3 trillion, and are even floating the idea government might have to buy out the entire system fro some $29 trillion. Many of those institutions that lined up to drink at the trough of public cash, now regret the deal, but the real and frightening danger is this concept that government should micromanage the private sector and directly work against market influences collectivists don’t like or approve of. The same ideologues in control of government that created the problem in the first place, I should add. As I already said: this is going to work out well.
I won’t waste too much time on the government take over of two out of three American car manufacturing companies. There is no way of defending the tax payer funded takeover of these companies. Even more disgraceful is how that tax payer money was not used to pay off those people that put their own money on the line as investments in GM or Chrysler, but to prop up unions as majority stake holders. Yes, the same unions that are the fundamental underlying problem which made these companies unable to compete and cranked out the low quality wares that turned people off. Talk about your mob style pay-offs. And now the politicians in DC can tell both Chrysler and GM to make cars nobody really wants too. I am sure that once other companies, but especially Ford, all start running circles around these two, that the politicians will use the power of government to rig the system in favor of their new holdings. At the tax payer’s expense, of course. What do you think the “Cash for Clunkers” program was all about anyway? How well has that worked?
We also got graced by the watermelons – the collectivists masquerading as environmentalists – with the “Cap & Tax” bill: the largest and most massive single tax increase passed ever by our politicians. The average American family of four will now get to pay anywhere from $1000 to $4000, depending at whom is talking and how they come up with their umbers, in extra costs and fees tied to their energy use every year. Since they are “costs and fees” I guess we could all tongue in cheek try to defend Obama’s blatant lie that he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250K. Don’t worry this going back on his promises, especially about taxes and who will pay them, is going to happen so often we will soon be numb to it. It is all going to work out well!
Every one of these moves was intended to bring in some huge section of the private sector, and more importantly the money in it, under control of the federal government. But no plan was as ambitious, or deceptive, as the healthcare insurance
The only place that these leftists have felt spending needs to be cut is in defense. I am sure that it will be these same people telling us the next time that we need to send our troops into harms way that we should not because they lack equipment. Kind of like when we had to go deal with Iraq and they tried to blame Bush for the defense cuts of the Clinton years. Defense jobs I guess are the types of jobs collectivists think are bad, I guess. How long before the democrats undo the sacrifices of the last 7 years and guarantee us a future war in the ME that will cost us 10 times as much as what we already paid? That’s coming. That’s coming, and I can’t wait to see how well it works for us.
There are many more examples of this. It has not been more than what, 9 months, since they have taken over, and foreign and economic policy decisions have all been disastrous. While the rest of the world looks to be moving out of the recession, we are going deeper into it. Don’t believe the constant MSM propaganda saying otherwise. These people are covering for the incompetent ideologues in DC because they have a vested interest. About the only thing that the Obama people have gotten right is the Bush GWoT policies the left used – notice I say used to – get totally crazy about. Funny that huh? I think Obama’s actions are working well to vindicate Bush.
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Saturday, August 22, 2009
Here is what happens when government helps you..
One of the big things the collectivists in power did when they got control of all three branches of government after the last election cycle, was to pass new and sweeping credit card legislation to prevent the greedy credit card companies from screwing irresponsible and stupid people that spent beyond their means and got themselves in deep debt. As usual government meddling has had the exact opposite effect as they wanted, and it is hurting those of us that are not complete and total idiots.
If your credit is good, or your credit card balance is low, you may soon pay more on every credit card bill. Why? Congress passed a misguided new credit card law, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009. As a result of it, you may end up paying an annual fee. And you may end up losing your percentage rebates, your cash back, or your rewards program.
The new law arbitrarily limits credit card companies’ ability to increase rates on credit card balances, even when a cardholder’s balance has been rapidly increasing —meaning that a sensible bank might raise the interest rate, because a rising balance drives up the risk that the credit card company won’t get paid what it’s owed. (Increasing numbers of credit cardholders have run up big balances in recent years, then failed to pay them off).
In response to the new law, some credit card companies are starting to charge annual fees on their credit cards to protect themselves against potential losses. Others will likely drop their rewards programs, or stop giving customers’ percentage rebates on credit card purchases. For example, I and my wife get 3% to 5% back on most of our credit card purchases.
One of my co-workers just emailed me that since the new law, he will now be charged an annual fee on what he calls “the best reward card I ever found.” It’s the same card I use for many of my purchases. The new law is supposed to “protect” cardholders. But what it really does is transfer wealth from people who pay off their credit card bills at the end of every month, (or have good enough credit that the credit card company would not likely have increased their interest rate anyway) to people with bad credit who have run up big balances.
So again, government is subsidizing bad behavior at the expense of those of us that avoid it. That’s collectivism in a nut shell for you: in the name of helping those that chronically do stupid things and hence find themselves in “the sh*t”, politicians help those idiots by creating programs that punish those that do the right things. And then people wonder why destructive behavior becomes the norm. Yeah, I am one of those idiots that pays my credit card every month and never spends more than I can afford or pay off. So now I get to help pay for those other people. I am ecstatic as you can tell.
But this stuff with the credit cards isn’t the worse government has done for us yet. That honor goes, for now, and until they pass healthcare insurance reform and basically have these collectivist government bureaucrats take over 1/5th of our annual economy – trillions of more dollars and life & death decisions in the hands of uncaring unionized government thugs - to the stimulus patronage bill. Mark Steyn as usual has an awesome piece showing how well that $800 billion of our tax payer cash that the democrats in power have funneled to their operatives, partners, lobbyists, and donors so they could flood their campaign coffers with slush funds for the 2010 elections has worked for us: it has kept our economy down.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan, and much of continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain, and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
Actually, when I say “to less effect,” that’s not strictly true: Thanks to Obama, one of the least indebted developed nations is now one of the most indebted — and getting ever more so. We’ve become the third most debt-ridden country after Japan and Italy. According to last month’s IMF report, general government debt as a percentage of GDP will rise from 63 percent in 2007 to 88.8 percent this year and to 99.8 percent of GDP next year.
There you have it in a nutshell. Obama whom ran on the exaggerated lie of lack of fiscal responsibility by republicans, whom had been far from fiscally responsible, but nowhere as irresponsible as democrats had been those last 2 years they had control of congress during the Bush years, is now literally destroying our future and projected – and I think this number is way on the low side – to add another $9 trillion to our deficit in the next few years. This collectivist government has crippled our private sector and all but guaranteed no chance for an economic recovery here when other countries are already making moves in the right direction. And it is not even close to being done screwing us. Now under the guise of fixing a crisis of their own making, they are trying to get their hands of 1/5th of our economy by taking over healthcare. We are getting screwed by everything this government is doing.
That’s why the “stimulus” flopped. It didn’t just fail to stimulate, it actively deterred stimulation, because it was the first explicit signal to America and the world that the Democrats’ political priorities overrode everything else. If you’re a business owner, why take on extra employees when cap’n’trade is promising increased regulatory costs and health “reform” wants to stick you with an 8 percent tax for not having a company insurance plan? Obama’s leviathan sends a consistent message to business and consumers alike: When he’s spending this crazy, maybe the smart thing for you to do is hunker down until the dust’s settled and you get a better sense of just how broke he’s going to make you. For this level of “community organization,” there aren’t enough of “the rich” to pay for it. That leaves you.
For Obama, government health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture in which all elections and most public discourse will be conducted on Democratic terms. It’s no surprise that the president can’t make a coherent economic or medical argument for Obamacare, because that’s not what it’s about — and for all his cool, he can’t quite disguise that. Apropos a new poll, the Associated Press reports that Americans “are losing faith in Barack Obama.”
Yeah, again those of us that did not make the bad choices or actually did the smart things, are going to be left paying for those that chronically make bad choices and decisions. And that’s why in a nutshell I believe collectivism’s goodness is simply paving the road to hell for us. These people are doing what no enemy has ever been able to do: bring America down. And they are doing it from within, and under the guise of doing it for noble and good reasons. Those dumb Islamists should have just waited another decade or two for the left to truly and totally emasculate us before they had made their move, and they would have crushed us by now.
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The effects of the “Cap and Tax” bill the democrats pushed through..
The Heritage Foundation has a great piece dealing with the impact of the Waxman-Markley bill on Americans, which was passed in a hurry and with minimal if any debate or scrutiny, and it is not pretty. In fact it is scary. The 1427 page bill portents to regulate and limit green house gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas, but when explored is really nothing but a shell game intended to allow the usual collectivists in government to collect some pretty hefty hidden fees and taxes on the average American family, while doing absolutely nothing helpful to the environment. In fact the idiotic AGW premise the bill is based on is pure and unadulterated myth anyway, and the fact that the bill, like every other such bill passed world wide, really makes absolutely no difference at all. That is unless you are one of the watermelons hoping to collect some big cash from the scams.
Waxman-Markey extracts trillions of dollars from the energy-using public and delivers this wealth to various groups--some of whom may be more deserving than others, and some who are simply better at lobbying. That could mean low-income households in an attempt to compensate them for sharply higher energy costs, or regulated industries that have effectively lobbied for compliance assistance. In any event, cap-and-trade allowances are a tax and would be the largest tax increase in recent history.
This collectivist centralized government stuff has never worked out. In fact it has always been disastrous. We keep getting told we should not worry because of all the “green jobs” this bill portends to generate, but even if any jobs are generated, the numbers will be meaningless compared to the jobs that will be otherwise lost. Here are some of the numbers:
Implementing the Waxman-Markey legislation will be very costly, even given the rather optimistic assumptions about how effective it will be in reducing CO2 emissions and how accommodating the economy will be to the added energy costs. The Heritage Foundation’s dynamic analysis of these economic costs are summarized as follows (adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollars):
•Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
•Single-year GDP losses reach $400 billion by 2025 and will ultimately exceed $700 billion;
•Net job losses approach 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing loses 1.4 million jobs in 2035;
•The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035;
•A typical family of four will pay, on average, an additional $829 each year for energy-based utility costs; and
•Gasoline prices will rise by 58 percent ($1.38 more per gallon) and average household electric rates will increase by 90 percent.
This CDA analysis extends only to 2035, as this is the forecasting horizon for the macroeconomic model used to prepare these estimates. But it should be noted that the emissions reductions continue to tighten through 2050 and that model-based analysis by other groups whose models extend beyond 2035 shows increasing harm to the U.S. economy.
That’s a ton of money and a lot of jobs. And that gasoline price hike is going to hurt the economy big time too. I guess the left found a way to raise gasoline taxes without admitting they are raising gasoline taxes. And this doesn’t even deal with the impact on industry where this boondoggle will likely do a lot more damage. Everything will be impacted by this bill. Some industries, the energy intensive ones, will get hammered. That means jobs losses in scary and large numbers.
The Waxman-Markey bill affects the economy directly through higher prices for carbon-based energy, which reduces quantity demanded and, thus, the quantity supplied of energy from carbon fuels. Energy prices rise because energy producers must pay a fee for each ton of carbon they emit. The fee structure is intended to create an incentive for producers to invest in technologies that reduce carbon emissions during energy production. The bill’s sponsors and supporters hope that the fees are sufficiently high to create a strong incentive and demand for cleaner energy production and for the widespread adoption of carbon capture and sequestration technology.
The economic model that CDA analysts used to estimate the bill’s broad economic effects treats the fees as a tax on energy producers. Thus, energy prices increase by the amount of the fee or tax. The demand for energy, which largely determines the consumption and, thus, the taxes collected, responds to higher energy prices both directly and indirectly. The direct effect is a reduction in the consumption of carbon-based energy.
The indirect effects are more complex. Generally speaking, the carbon fees reduce the amount of energy used in producing goods and services, which slows the demand for labor and capital and reduces the rate of return on productive capital. This “supply-side” impact exerts the predictable secondary effects on labor and capital income, which depresses consumption.[7]
This will lead to economic output declines, contraction of GDP, and even though the damned collectivists can’t see it yet, a decrease in the total tax income as things slow down economically. Taxes work to slow economic growth, and this tax, a massive and all reaching one, will hit the economy hard. One is left to wonder why the left would do something like this in the middle of a recession. Think the deficit spending now is bad? What do you think about an economy that stays in a slump and results in decades of massive deficit spending? Well, at least until we end up like Zimbabwe.
Even if we manage to stop the healthcare takeover by government, Americans are going to be straddled with a disastrous and stupid bill that does nothing to help the environment, will negatively impact the economy, deficit, employment, energy, and all Americans, but especially the middle and lower classes, and be ruinous all so collectivists can get more power over us. Now wonder our competition across the globe was ecstatic to see these people elected to power. They are going to dismantle America from within. Lets hope we can get rid of these bums and this idiotic bill ASAP, before nothing is left to save.
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Friday, July 24, 2009
I guess the Indians must be in the pocket of the oil companies?
Well it seems that the Indian government doesn’t agree with the AGW consensus thing. After all, as a country trying real hard to grow economically and get out of poverty, this idiotic AGW stuff will hurt them the most and really provide nobody but the politicians hoping to gain power from this scam power. Of course, the usual suspects will soon be claiming that the Indians are against the harsh changes that the church of AGW tells them they must implement - changes that would cost a fortune, slow down their growth, keep millions in poverty, and frankly return nothing to them for the sacrifice, unless a global collectivist government telling everyone how to live every aspect of their life is a big boon – and chastise them for their words.
India rejected key scientific findings on global warming, while the European Union called for more action by developing states on greenhouse gas emissions. He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. “We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,” he said. “Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience.” Mr Ramesh was also clear that India would not take on targets to cut its emissions, even though developed countries are asking only for curbs in the growth of emissions, rather than absolute cuts.
I am with the Indians on this. These westerners demanding we return back to the days of the horse & buggy and give them absolute control over our lives deserve nothing but scorn. If we really believed any of this man made climate change crap these people would be demanding we build nuclear reactors, not just for ourselves but especially for these poorer countries, so our energy needs would be met. Not simply calling for people to hand them power, money, and limit both their choices and freedoms. Especially when trends are going exactly the opposite way of what the church of AGW claims they are.
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Why I think the second patronage bill will die a horrible death..
I have a little detail I want to add to HeartlessLibertarian’s excellent post on how the democrats are already talking about how a second stimulus package is needed, because the first one was an epic fail. Now most of us sane people that understand how collectivist economics work, or more importantly why this stuff never works, and understand how the real world works, predicted, and did so correctly, that we were about to throw a trillion dollars – add all the associated costs of printing up all this cash and the number is closer to $1.3 trillion – down a hole, and get no stimulus at all out of it. Forget the fact that this was simply a patronage bill, loaded with massive pork and a ton of cash for lobbyists, operatives, and past and future donors, and focus on what government has been doing. The amount of money that was actually going to do anything to stimulate the economy – by creating new jobs – was such a pittance that it might as well also have been given away to the friends of the democrats.
A little history to explain things is needed. Remember that democrats ran on how fiscally irresponsible the Bush years were. But they always fail to mention that the two worst years, the last two, they held power in congress and allocated the spending dollars. Also notice that now that they also have the WH, and an even bigger hold on congress, that the deficit spending projected makes the Bush years look tame – yes, even the two years that democrats owned congress – and if we are lucky will only triple our existing debt. This year alone deficit spending by these democrats will surpass 8 years under Bush – it is always Bush’s fault, no matter what the problem – with staggering projections of even more of the same as massive spending program after massive economy killing program is tacked on. And we have not even included the cost of the new healthcare boondoggle and this second stimulus, or the massive economic impact of that unread “Cap and Tax” bill and other taxes that will have to be added if the democrats do not want the dollar, and our economy, to implode, in these projected deficit numbers.
The left loves to blame defense spending for the Bush year deficits. But while defense spending did go up during those years – we are still fighting those wars the enemy started – the reality is that the real growth in spending was again in the entitlement sector. Bush, a “compassionate conservative”, is to blame for that catastrophic Medicare Part D monster and a slew of other socialist crap – if Bush had a (D) by his name I am certain the left would have elevated him above Clinton, Kennedy, and FDR for his actions, but his crime was that (R) – which was responsible for the bulk of the deficit spending. To put things into perspective realize that the patronage stimulus bill is going to cost us more than the extra defense spending cost of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (unless you use the left’s usual accounting methods which lump in all defense dollars spend each year so they can claim the number is outrageous) so far. And at least defense spending is constitutionally mandated. But I digress.
Couple all this wasteful spending with a fascist power grab by our government the likes have not been seen since Mussolini and Hitler did the same back when and you see where I am going. Democrats nationalized two of America’s biggest companies – GM and Chrysler - and handed the reigns of power for both to one of their biggest power blocks: the union leadership of these two companies. But they did not stop there. Using the very crisis that idiotic collectivist PC policies tied to forcing lending and security trading institutions to make astronomically risky and destructive financial decisions led to, the democrats – never ones to miss the opportunity proffered by a crisis according to Rham Emmanuel - so drastically increased government’s involvement in the financial industry that we might as well state that they nationalized that as well. And don’t forget that these morons have not changed any of the underlying problems that led to our housing implosion and the subsequent economic disaster we find ourselves in either, but are telling us that they will “fix” things. And it doesn’t seem to end there. They have now set their sights on using the power of government to force winners and losers in the energy sector as well as the healthcare sector. And we would be lucky if there was not more to come. In short, government has become inimical to our capitalist economic system, and their moves and the insecurities they are causing are virtually guaranteeing that the private sector will not recover. In fact, expect things to get much, much worse. Did I say much, much worse? I mean much, much, MUCH worse.
I am starting to believe that the people doing these stupid things know damn well that what they are doing will not improve anything, in fact they are counting on that, and that’s why there is such a rush to push all these idiotic, costly, and economically devastating policies, without allowing anyone to read them, mind you, through too. They are hoping that by the time people catch on, it will be too late. But now it is obvious that
not all of them think they can get away with this.
July 8 (Bloomberg)—Democrats who control the levers of power in Washington are divided over whether to push for more deficit spending to end the recession and stem job losses, complicating the possibility of a second stimulus bill.
“We need to be open to whether or not we need further action,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters yesterday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada countered that “there is no showing to me that another stimulus is needed.”
President Barack Obama underscored the dilemma by addressing both sides of the argument. In an interview with ABC News yesterday, he said unemployment approaching 10 percent is something “we wrestle with constantly.” He added that spending more borrowed money is “potentially counterproductive.”
The split reflects two major challenges facing the Democrats: Record budget deficits that make additional spending much tougher to pass and a 26-year-high unemployment rate of 9.5 percent that is expected to rise to double digits.
“They’re between a rock and a hard place,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report in Washington.
Basically the house of cards is imploding faster than they were expecting it to, and they are getting worried about the 2010 elections. At this point it is sinking in that no amount of media sugar coating or positive spinning is able to hide the fact that things are heading the wrong way. Even with all the distractions that have allowed the media to avoid seriously covering the disastrous policy coming from these leftists. Basically they fear that they can not use the “hurry up” approach again to speed through this second attempt at robbing the American tax payers. Even worse, people are realizing that the fist patronagestimulus bill is only shoring up bloated social spending shortfalls and never going to create, or for that matter prevent the disappearance of, the drastically needed private sector jobs that would trigger the economic recovery. In short the Federal Government is racing at breakneck speed to recreate the California effect for us all. And we all know how well that’s going for the Californicators.
I am hoping that this second stimulus dies fast. In fact I hope that it is followed by a quick death of the “Healthcare” and the “Cap and Tax” proposals at well. The icing on the cake would be if they then reversed the first patronagestimulus bill as well. Maybe then we would actually see some confidence return to the private sector and we might get some anemic economic growth, but growth never the less. Of course I do not expect collectivists to ever give up on their failed ideology. With over a century of proof that collectivism indubitably fails and leads to tyrannical, oppressive, and overreaching government – over 100 million dead and billions imprisoned in their own states can vouch for that – which can not deliver anything but equal misery, and they still have not abandoned it, so you get my drift. No, I do not believe that the democrats will be able to convince enough people a second time that stealing even more tax payer money to pay off their peeps will fix the economy. Of course, I expect the usual idiot cultists to go along, but their numbers are dwindling fast.
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Monday, July 06, 2009
Get ready for the “Cali-Style” federal IOUs
There has been a ton of meaningless drivel going around by the usual lefty propaganda outlets about how conservatives, and in particular Rush Limbaugh whom mentioned it back when, want Obama to fail. The meme is that conservatives are going to do things to make that so. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, unlike democrats/leftists, who do actually undermine things they do not like - see Iraq war 2003 to present for undisputable proof – as a matter of recourse, conservatives, notice I did not say republicans BTW, in general do not need to do anything to make the current Obamanomics policy fail. For proof, just look at California where Obamanomics has been the de facto policy for the last 2 decades.
July 6 (Bloomberg)—Last week, we discovered that the state of California will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper. The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.
It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors. California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.
Bleak Picture
Bleak is an understatement. Remember that Obama and democrats ran and won big on picking at how horribly fiscally irresponsible the republicans had been during the Bush years. Well, Obamanomics is about to outdo those years and deficit spend in one year what it took Bush and the republicans 8 years to do. Have a look at how much money the Obamanomics plan is going to put us in the red by.
By the time Obama is done we will have tripled if not outright quadrupled our current deficit! And it is a guaranteed thing we will see nothing of the growth promised, unless you think a bigger government is equal to an economic boost, for all this spending.
The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. Ronald Reagan ran up big deficits in part because he believed that his tax cuts would produce economic growth, and ultimately pay for themselves. He may well have been excessively optimistic about the merits of tax cuts, but at least he had a story.
Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.
Character Deficit
And I should remind everyone that the above projections does not yet contain the massive, and drastically underestimated, costs of the Obama “Cap and Tax” and “Healthcare” plans. The first one is a massive new tax burden that serves but to enrich some politicians and their elected entourage of sell-out companies at the people’s expense. The second is a plan that I should add will do nothing but eventually make government the sole provider of healthcare, drastically reduce its quality and availability – to cut costs – and guarantee a level of intrusion and suppression of our personal freedoms that would be on par with the very tyrannical forms of government so many Americans died fighting off.
Can’t wait for the IOUs to be given to all these old Baby Boomer idiots that voted for this guy. Be it as their primary form of income as the economy continues to tank, as they find themselves looking for energy to meet their needs, or their critical healthcare needs as Obamacare becomes the law of the land. Hope and Change, indeed!
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
How bad are things getting?
Well they are getting real, real bad. Revenue is way down compared to what was collected same time last year. And remember how last year, according to the MSM, we were in a horrible recession and doomed - also Bush was in the WH, and the media had a vested interest in getting a democrat elected - but are we hearing anything about how much worse things are now from them? Heh, don’t bother. They would likely blame Bush for it still. But the numbers don’t lie:
And as they project these numbers for the rest of the year, it gets even worse! The government is going to come up short. Way short.
The short story is that things are getting worse. Much worse. And while I am sure the moonbats will blame Bush, the fact is this is happening because of them. Do not forget to put this revenue shortfall into perspective either. We have borrowed $4 trillion, plan to borrow as much as $10 trillion - so far, there is room for a lot more according to the left - over the next 10 years, and that doesn’t include the healthcare takeover by government. The housing market is also still heading south, despite, or perhaps exactly because of, all the government meddling and hocus pocus. Couple that with the massive new “Cap and Tax” hike, and you are now looking at horrible economic killers. The stock market is showing that. And energy prices are coming back up. Inflation is inevitable, and when it comes it will hurt. I should mention that my credit card company yesterday sent me a notice that they were moving away from a fixed annual rate to a varying monthly interest rate that would be tied to a fixed number plus prime. This is the stuff you expect to see when people are worried about rampant inflation.
Welcome to a repeat of the Carter years!
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Where are we headed?
You know America is heading in the wrong direction when the Germans figure out they need tax cuts to create economic growth, the one and only indisputable proven way to do it BTW, while in America, the nanny state where the WH regulates lighting, the new spending and taxes keep on piling on and are already seen as game changers for the 2010 elections. Seriously. Our economy is imploding, government is doing its best to make it keep heading south, people are losing work left and right, and Obama’s priority, well other than having government grab control of healthcare for everyone but democrats and politicians, is lighting efficiency standards?
WASHINGTON—Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy. “I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.
Obama said the new efficiency standards he was announcing for lamps would result in substantial savings between 2012 and 2042, saving consumers up to $4 billion annually, conserving enough energy to power every U.S. home for 10 months, reducing emissions equal to the amount produced by 166 million cars a year, and eliminating the need for as many as 14 coal-fired power plants.
Yeah, this sure makes me believe this is about stopping AGW. My bet is GE, or some other big democrat donor, has a new light bulb that nobody really wants and the WH is going to help them sell a lot of them. In return for a nice large donation, indirectly and well hidden, to the donkey’s campaign coffers, of course. This is not the first payback for services rendered, anyway. We Americans are now subsidizing “big and greedy” corporations, the ones democrats love to demonize but then cozy up with, and making them rich. All courtesy of that massive 1500 page bill, most of it still unwritten and definitely unread, that will stick US taxpayers with a $161 billion dollar annual tax hike, the largest single tax ever levied in our history, that was passed by the house, in the dark of night and by the hairs on Pelosi’s ugly mug, while the MSM had everyone focused on Michael Jackson’s freak death. Let’s hope the bill crashes and burns in the Senate. Today it’s California, a not too distant tomorrow considering where the collectivists are taking us, it will be the U.S. of A.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Getting paid for serivces rendered…
So we now find out that GE is making out like a bandit from the government rescue programs, even though they were not one of the original recipients.
General Electric, the world’s largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government’s key rescue programs for banks. At the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial giants getting help from the government.
The company did not initially qualify for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.
And I hesitate to say so, but I believe that the reason GE isn’t facing the same restrictions that the other financial giants are, is because GE is a first rate democrat donor and already pushes many of the left’s agendas. In fact GE is a big believer in AGW and stands to make a major killing from the whole AGW scam through a vast array of services and equipment sales.
GE’s finance arm is not classified as a bank. Rather, it worked its way into the rescue program by owning two relatively small Utah banking institutions, illustrating how the loopholes in the U.S. regulatory system are manifest in the government’s historic intervention in the financial crisis.
The Obama administration now wants to close such loopholes as it works to overhaul the financial system. The plan would reaffirm and strengthen the wall between banking and commerce, forcing companies like GE to essentially choose one or the other.
Bleh, this is just smoke and mirrors. I am not falling for that crap. Remember that these are the same people that rushed through the stimulus bill without reading it and now also passed a massive “Cap and Tax” bill that is not even written yet, now saying they worry about GE! Obama’s people already showed they had very little regard for either the constitution or the rule of law with Chrysler and GM, anyway. If they really wanted to go after GE they would have. And my guess is that GE is not the only company making out ,and making out well, because of their close relationship with the political left. I guess corporate America is only evil when they don’t know which politicians’ campaign chest to keep full. Immelt and the rest of those good old boys don’t have to worry about their payday as long as the donkeys are in charge.
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