July 9, 2009
Insanity at work.
Five months after Congress approved a massive package of spending and tax cuts aimed at reviving an ailing economy, the jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery is on the right track.
Yesterday, Obama took time out of his first presidential trip to Moscow to defend the $787 billion stimulus package, arguing that the measure was the right medicine at the right time. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he told ABC News.
Back in Washington, senior Democrats on Capitol Hill were nervously contemplating whether additional government stimulus spending may be needed to pull the nation out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February. But they reported that only about $100 billion has so far been spent and that as increasingly large sums flow out of Washington, the program is on pace to save or create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.
“It is clear from the data that there needs to be more fiscal stimulus in the second half of the year than there was in the first half of the year,” White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said. “Fortunately, the stimulus program designed by the president and passed by Congress provides exactly that.”
The problem is that the stimulus was sold to America with the promise of stopping the unemployment gusher now, not a year from now. I say a year from now because what Summers says isn’t exactly the truth, the bulk of the stimulus spending isn’t due out until next year. A fact that was pointed out repeatedly by Republicans and roundly ignored.
To make matters worse, nobody in the governemnt learned their lession from TARP; lax oversight as to where the money is going is ensuring that the money is not going where it’s supposed to.
Overall, states reported using Recovery Act funds to stabilize state budgets and to cope with fiscal stresses. The funds helped them maintain staffing for existing programs and minimize or avoid tax increases as well as reductions in services.
States have implemented various internal control programs; however, federal Single Audit guidance and reporting does not fully address Recovery Act risk. The Single Audit reporting deadline is too late to provide audit results in time for the audited entity to take action on deficiencies noted in Recovery Act programs. Moreover, current guidance does not achieve the level of accountability needed to effectively respond to Recovery Act risks. Finally, state auditors need additional flexibility and funding to undertake the added Single Audit responsibilities under the Recovery Act.
Much like TARP funds are being hoarded by banks to boost their bottom lines, stimulus funds are being hoarded to boost states’ bottom lines and keep government employees employed. Lovely, except that’s not what the funds were intended for. The stimulus was created specifically to provide funds for new projects that would create jobs, not to fill anemic state coffers. So now the stimulus suffers from the same problem as TARP; since the money is not being spent in the way it was intended the projected effects are not materializing. The solution to both problems would have been oversight to make sure the funds given were spent, but it’s a bit late for that now.
So now the current solution du jour is to triple down on stimulus spending and hope it goes better than the first two times we tried it. Somehow I don’t think the third time’s gonna be the charm.
July 9, 2009
Apparently we’ve gone completely from the “dissent is patriotic” meme to the “L’etat, c’est moi” meme.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has had an eventful couple of weeks to say the least, believes House Republican opposition to climate change legislation and the stimulus indicates they’re cheering against the good ol’ US of A.
“It appears that the Republican Party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success, which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country, as well,” the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman told WAMU radio host Diane Rehm on Tuesday morning, promoting his new book, “The Waxman Report.”
There you have it folks; Barack Obama is the state. To dissent from Obama is to dissent from the USA.
And you guys thought Inauguration Day wasn’t the same as Coronation Day.
July 9, 2009
Sheesh, the last Rasmussen daily POTUS tracking poll had him at -3 and now he’s at -5. Ouch.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 32% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –5.
The number who strongly disapprove inched up another point to the highest level measured to date and the overall Approval Index is at the lowest level yet for Obama (see trends).
In the wake of last week’s disappointing report on job loss, consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level in two months. The Rasmussen Investor Index shows investor confidence falling to the lowest level in three months. The number of investors who say the economy is getting worse jumped from 43% before the jobs report to 51% today.
Ooof.
July 9, 2009
Is there a national Kool Aid shortage that I’m unaware of?
President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It’s a promise he’s already broken and will likely have to break again. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes — which disproportionately hit the poor — to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families.
Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for providing medical insurance to millions more who lack it at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next decade.
The floated proposals include increasing taxes on alcohol, which could raise $62 billion over the next decade, and a new tax on sugary drinks such as soda, which could raise $52 billion.
…
Obama made a firm tax pledge during the presidential campaign, repeating it numerous times in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day: no tax increases for individuals making less than $200,000 a year or couples making less than $250,000.
“Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes,” Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year.
But less than a month after taking office, Obama signed an expansion of child health care financed by 62-cent tax increase on each pack of cigarettes.
Obama also signed an anti-smoking bill in June that grants authority to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. To pay for the new program, a fee is being imposed on the industry — and presumably passed on to consumers — estimated to generate more than $5 billion over the next decade.
While not directly increasing taxes, a House-passed version of Obama’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for causing global warming would similarly increase American families’ home energy bills by $175 a year on average, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Damn…when even the AP catches on to the fact that the no new taxes pledge was a bunch of BS you know the tide is turning against Obama.
July 9, 2009
Gaffe or not, you decide.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.
“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.
Side note; why do Democrats always seem the find the notion of actually doing their jobs so funny?
July 8, 2009
I saw the quote when it was first reported, but I wanted to wait for the inevitable walkback that would come. I was not disappointed.
The Obama administration poured cold water Monday on any notion it is giving Israel the green light to attack Iran or that it is reconsidering plans to engage diplomatically with the Islamic republic.
Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israel in its dealings with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
But State Department spokesman Ian Kelly rebuffed suggestions from reporters that Biden could be seen as giving the Jewish state a green light to attack Iran, which it views as an existential threat.
That Joe Biden and all his foreign policy cred. Isn’t he a pistol?
PS – As much as I like Cheney, he never gave us this much good material.
July 8, 2009
Costa Rica’s president Oscar Arias has offered to mediate a meeting between Zelaya and Micheletti, and both men have agreed to attend.
Roberto Micheletti, who took over following the June 28 coup that toppled President Manuel Zelaya and has resisted international pressure to reinstate him, applauded the announcement that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has agreed to mediate efforts to end the standoff.
Arias “is a man with a lot of credibility in the world,” Micheletti told HRN radio. “We are open to dialogue. We want to be heard.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that Arias would take part after meeting privately in Washington with Zelaya, who was seized by Honduras’ army and flown out of the country after the courts and Congress accused him of violating the constitution.
Zelaya — who flies to Costa Rica on Wednesday — said he too has accepted Arias’ appointment.
…
The interim Honduran leader said he would send a delegation soon to Costa Rica — a reversal from past days, when he said he would not negotiate until “things are normal.” Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for efforts to help end Central America’s civil wars.
Well, it’s a start. Plus it gets the US off the hook for having to arrange such a meeting. Maybe, just maybe, we can quietly recede into the background now and stop meddling. Maybe.
July 8, 2009
Out of the mouth of the Goracle;
Al Gore today compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis.
The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change. …
Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment , sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II.”
He added: “We have everything we need except political will but political will is a renewable resource.”
When all else fails, invoke the Nazis. What makes this even funnier is after the quote went viral the Times of London scrubbed all the Nazi talk from the article in question. Somebody forgot to check the title bar though…
July 8, 2009
*sighs, shakes head*
Mullah Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, surrendered in Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan in 2001, and was transferred to Gitmo in 2006. He was released in late 2007 to Afghan custody.
Now as the United States is pushing ahead with the massive Operation Khanjar in the southern province of Afghanistan, Zakir is coordinating the Taliban fighters. Some 4,000 U.S. Marines and hundreds of Afghan forces have faced some resistance as they sweep across the province, reclaiming control of districts where Zakir and his comrades were running a shadow government.
Zakir was released from Afghan custody around 2008, according to the New York Post. He re-established connections with high-level Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan after his second release.
…
Explaining why Zakir was released from Gitmo, the defense official said, “We were under incredible pressure from the world to release detainees at Gitmo. You just don’t know what people are going to do.
Yeah, nobody could see this coming at all. Who would have ever thought that released Gitmo detainees would rejoin the jihad?
By the way, I don’t see any of those who were so all-fired concerned about our detaining of enemy combatants helping us now. If other countries aren’t going to help deal with the consequences of the path they wish us to take then they can STFU.
July 7, 2009
Yet he still has no plans on going anywhere. At least Palin knew when to get the hell out of the way for her state’s sake.
Fellow Republicans Censured Governor Mark Sanford Monday night for his secret trip to Argentina last month to see his mistress.
The held a long conference call Monday night.
22 members of the executive committee voted on a formal reprimand of Sanford. Another 10 voted to ask him to resign, while nine voted to support the governor.
In a statement, Sanford says he appreciates the party’s position and will continue to work to earn back its trust.
Man, between all that working to get back the trust of his wife, his state, and now of his own party whenever will he find time to be the governor of South Carolina?
