I’ve got a friend whom I’m in the process of “flipping”—I hope!—to free-market values. This evening, he asked if I could catalog the ways that the President has turned the Housing Crash of 2008 into the Lost Half Decade [at least] that we appear to be facing now.
I realized then that I don’t keep a running list, but for those of you who live in purple states this may be a fruitful exercise. We need to be ready to defend our points of view in a really clear way, and even be pleasant about it on occasion.
I realize that we like to bitch among ourselves on most of these threads and on the discussion board, but . . . most of us are likely to encounter a handful of True Independent Voters over the next 15 months—and there will be many more than that for those of us who like to go to swing states and campaign before a big election—so it might be time to start expressing some of these concepts in persuasive, semi-detached language that, ahem, doesn’t judge (at least out loud) those who were taken in by voted for the President in 2008. So I’m going to try to do that, and even follow my “no cussin’ on the home page” rule.
What is, in your mind, the most destructive thing that this President has done with respect to the economy in general, and job-creation in particular? For each action, what would have been the correct course? Let me know.
I’m personally of the opinion that most Presidents can’t fix a bad economy; they can only make things worse. And I’m convinced that at nearly every turn, this President has done so over the past two and a half years.
Here is how I started the ball rolling with my friend. I’m afraid it’s my best attempt at passionless language. It is not a particularly good one.
1) The President has created a pervasive climate of regulatory uncertainty that has led to the phenomenon of businesses “not knowing which way to turn.” When businesses don’t know what to invest in, they keep their money to themselves. He should have signalled that he’d try to be fair to entrepreneurs and corporations.
2) He has engaged in the language of class warfare, which has contributed to the difficulties above, appearing to “signal” that he would try to punish any success that occurred on his watch. He should have assured businesspeople that he would give them a fair shake, and then done so.
3) The President’s “Affordable Care Act” has drastically exacerbated the element of regime uncertainty, and a huge bureaucratic system like that, scheduled to be phased in over a process of some years, cannot help but increase regulatory uncertainty, with companies not sure how it will affect them once fully implemented, but afraid to hire until they know what the new landscape will look like. He should have abandoned that effort once it became clear that most Americans did not want it, and concentrated instead on bringing employment numbers up.
4) Mr. Obama may not have reacted very well to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf last summer, but he certainly overreacted when he rescinded his previous decision to open parts of the East Coast to offshore drilling. The proper response to that disaster was to find the problems in the inspections regimens that led to its occurrence, not to punish companies that had nothing to do with that incident by prohibiting exploration off of the East Coast.
He should have tightened enforcement, but allowed this research to proceed (we don’t even really have any accurate idea of what resources might be off the East Coast; the exploration will allow us to find out—and the people doing that will be figuring it out on the energy companies’ dime, earning good money while ferreting out information that the country needs to know). He should have stayed the course.
5) The President should not have started the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, and once a judge told him to knock it off, he should have complied. As I’ve said before, the region was hit by Katrina, and then the oil spill, and now is subject to this “hurry up and wait” slow-death of a permit process that it cannot afford.
I don’t know how many economic body blows the Gulf states are expected to absorb, but that is the last part of the country that he should be punching in the gut this way. Offshore drilling is an established industry there, and the Gulf economy is dependent on it. The Gulf “permitorium” is a shameful chapter in this Presidency, and it is still going on.
6) It was a mistake to allow the unions such a huge role in the reorganization of GM, and to cheat the shareholders bond holders out of their earnings. That contributed to the air of uncertainty, and in addition it gave people pause about the rule of law: if bankruptcies will be structured so as to change where people stood in line legally, how does anyone else know when the government might step in again and change the rules in the middle of the game? Mr. Obama should have followed bankruptcy law and precedent in the GM restructuring.
7) The EPA is greatly expanding its reach in multiple ways right now that are scaring multiple industries. Once more, this increases uncertainty, and makes businesses of all size unclear about whether compliance with environmental regulations will even be posssible in the future. The President should be humane in dealing with industry, particularly if he wants it to look like he would like to see more Americans in actual jobs; he should call off the dogs at the EPA.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I hope you’ll take a look around here before you depart. The Conservatory is less than two months old, but we like to think we’re Going Places.
Check out our main page, if you’re in the mood, and then bookmark it!
Also, we’ve got Dan Collins’s capable fisking of Tim Geithner, Peter Da TechGuy’s morale builder for depressed Tea Partiers, David Zincavage (of Never Yet Melted) on why the left didn’t see the Obama failures coming, the EPA’s latest way to kill jobs, and Bruce McQuain (of Q&O) discussing how bizarrely disconnected the President is from Americans’ plight right now.
Mike G. on August 3, 2011 at 7:48 am said:
The President could assure himself of re-election next term if he were to rescind the EPA’s charter and do away with that agency.all together. It’s been nothing but a pimple on the ass of progress since it’s inception. It has now become an inflamed boil.
NWBill on August 4, 2011 at 2:03 am said:
Nothing can save this President. He’s toast. He’s the guy on the mound when your team is losing 20-1, and the manager runs him out there just to get the game over with. Forget the polls, as bad as they are for him – when the next election rolls around, all people will remember is that they couldn’t find work, their friends were living on each other’s couches, and they couldn’t drive far, because gasoline is so expensive.
People aren’t going to blame Boehner, or Ryan, or even Pelosi; they’re going to blame Obama, who’s seemed clueless almost from day one.
It doesn’t matter what he does between now and 2013; he’s finished.
I just hope that Michelle is deciding where her family’s going to live next, and what they’re going to do after January 20th, 2013. Because, it’s not going to be the White House, and it’s not going to be the Presidency.
The only question now is when historians will start labelling his presidency as the worst of all time. Jimmy Carter will die happy now, knowing it’s no longer HIS presidency that fills that bill.
Alisa on August 4, 2011 at 1:28 pm said:
Never say “never” because never often happens. To think that Obama is toast is to underestimate the utter stupidity of masses of bleating voters.
We have a flock of idiots voting, and a flock of idiots running our country. MANY republicans fall into that category, too. They’ve been weak.
If I ran my finances the way our government runs theirs…well, my house would be repossessed in short order. On the other hand – maybe I’d have a few years of fun first.
We cannot let down our guard and think that Obama is history – for he most certainly could be re-elected and then the rest of us would need to go off-grid and get a plot of land, several guns, a water source and a mule.
Dan Collins on August 3, 2011 at 9:53 am said:
I doubt that that would be enough to get him re-elected, Mike, but it would send a huge signal to business that, as Joy has chronicled nicely here, is needed desperately. As I’ve mentioned before, the EPA never since its inception had a charter. To grow an agency without a charter (thanks, Nixon) into the monstrosity that it’s become is pure fascism.
Dan Collins on August 3, 2011 at 10:02 am said:
I guess that it could be seen as a subset of item 1), but . . . CZARS.
To that, I’d add Obama’s own bizarre inability to keep his conspicuous consumption under wraps. I don’t really understand it, either, from a guy who was all about the optics during his campaign, but this demagoguing of fat cats while having pizza flown in from Chicago, snarfing wagyu, golfing frequently, decking out his wife (and her insanely large entourage) in designer crap, eschewing Camp David for expensive vacation destinations, and all the rest of it sends the message that this guy doesn’t give a gangster’s ass about consistency. It’s hard to read a guy like that, and clearly his advisers have no influence over any belt-tightening he mistakenly may regard as lese majeste.
dana on August 3, 2011 at 11:35 am said:
The President should stop waging war on individual states like Arizona. The federal government selectively enforces and ignores laws that fit it’s leftist agenda and when the individual states try to act in their own best interest to enforce those laws, they are sued by the feds and Obama’s justice department.
The President could start enforcing all laws on the books.
Foxfier on August 3, 2011 at 2:18 pm said:
I know it’s over-broad and a subproblem for a lot of the specific ones you listed, but the near-constant indications that he thinks he’s above the law are REALLY bad for business.
For the stimulus, the way that the funds up here in the Seattle area were targeted so that the power point they gave to possible contractors flatly stated that no white male owned companies would be considered was a real kick in the vulnerables.
Mike G. on August 3, 2011 at 2:28 pm said:
Kind of gives you that sick queasy feeling doesn’t it?
Foxfier on August 3, 2011 at 5:15 pm said:
Especially coupled with the “zero tolerance for discrimination” slides? Yeah.
Steven Den Beste on August 4, 2011 at 12:05 am said:
The NLRB’s lawsuit against Boeing is yet another blunder.
Joy McCann on August 4, 2011 at 12:24 am said:
Yes! I knew there were a handful that I was missing–that was a hefty one.
muon on August 4, 2011 at 7:45 am said:
As Instapundit said, it’s like the administration is using Atlas Shrugged as an instruction manual.
F on August 4, 2011 at 12:15 am said:
This guy set a bad tone from the beginning with his “teachable moment.” Remember when he sided with an inebriated black professor against the policeman who runs the Boston Police Department’s EEO training? That was a real eye-opener for a lot of people, showing us that the high-minded platitudes in the campaign were all untrue.
But for clearly signalling how anti-business his administration really is, you’d be hard pressed to have a better example than the EPA.
PacRim Jim on August 4, 2011 at 12:36 am said:
The list is but a good start.
Duke on August 4, 2011 at 12:37 am said:
Lack of leadership in the administration facilitates the uncertainty businesses and individuals feel for where the country is heading.
Examples:Paulson (under Bush) and Geithner/Bernanke under Obama shepherded the various bank bailouts; Pelosi’s Congress led on Obamacare; and Boehner and Reid led on the debt ceiling for which Obama has never offered an actual budget. Hillary leads on everything foreign policy after Obama balked for nearly a year before splitting the difference of competing visions for Afghanistan, he’s made no decision on Iraq other than to tread water from what he inherited, and has stood idle while various revolutions sweep the middle east.
Leading from behind=no plan. We are not well served by a president who is controlled by events rather than vice versa.
Shocked on August 4, 2011 at 12:42 am said:
Kid: “Mr. Banker, I need an increase in my credit limit.”
Banker: “Why?”
K: “Because if I don’t get one, I’ll default on my payments on other debt. I’m running on fumes.”
B: “You misunderstand my question: WHY do you need an increase in the credit limit? Because… you spent too much, you weren’t careful. You need an increase in credit limit because you are borrowing too much already. Let’s, instead, look at where you can cut back, and then we can avoid increasing the credit limit. Why increase the amount you can borrow when you can just borrow less? No, let’s be sensible and not just keep borrowing more.”
K: “You are a TERRORIST!!”
___
Listen, when you’re talking about tax increases, you’re talking about taking money from those with uncertain retirements, to transfer to those with pensions for life. The average bureacratic pencil-pusher in DC gets higher pay than the average productive citizen, and they get a guaranteed check for life when they retire. THAT is why we’re broke. The poor, the elderly, are all transferring their nickels and dimes either in direct taxes, or through higher food and fuel prices, all of which are higher because of the longterm liabilities of these overpaid wastrels.
liz on August 4, 2011 at 12:46 am said:
Re point 6: I think that it was the bond holders who were really messed with, not shareholders.
Shareholders are the owners in the company and share in the both the risks and the rewards. Bondholders lent money to the company and have a priority in repayment of the loans, just like a vendor who sold supplies.
The arangement stiffed the bond holder,which impacted the overall bond market since there was that uncertainity.
Joy McCann on August 4, 2011 at 12:58 am said:
Liz, you’re right. What was I thinking? Fixed.
geek49203 on August 4, 2011 at 1:00 am said:
1. The President had a political payback pork bill ready to go in June, 2008. This bill’s existence and contents was well-known to most Dem operatives — indeed, it was a tool to secure the nomination. When the bottom dropped out of the economy, it was retitled “stimulus” and sold as such. This created two problems that have since doomed this Presidency since its first week — First, Americans were shocked that $1 trillion in expenditures were passed without even giving time for the press (or GOP Congressmen) to read the thing, and Second, it was full of items that in no way could be justified or thought of as “stimulus”. By the time the Obamacare debates came around, the Tea Party was already a strong force, and the GOP base was more motivated than any time since the Civil War. This first week doomed the Presidency. The President and Congress should’ve moved a couple of weeks slower on this legislation, and at least given the appearance of bipartisan support, and taken time to sell the bill before it was passed.
2. Obama claimed that he had a “my plan” to every woe in the world. Unfortunately, he had no plan for most of things, especially medical care. It no doubt chagrined the Congress that they had to craft a plan out of parts that had been kicked around (and largely discarded) since the Carter administration, setting them up for rabid opposition and large election losses in 2008. In the end, the Democrats in Congress will have walked the plank for this plan, since very little of what was passed will survive implementation in 2013. There is no hope for a President that promises that they have the ability to fly and do time travel, but in reality can’t do more than tie his shoes.
3. Once the Democrats knew that Obama could not help them in an election — and was actually a detriment — the enthusiastic support among Dem leadership went to tepid tolerance. Obama’s power in his own party has gone to zero, as we saw in the Budget Cap debate last week. Obama needs to find a way to be a credible force to help Dems get elected, or face the certainty that he will be abandoned in droves in the next election himself.
Ginny on August 4, 2011 at 1:06 am said:
It is true these are separate points, but a lot could be put under the importance of the “rule of law.” Instead we have seen arbitrary regulation, special rights for czars, and erratic enforcement. You aptly and repeatedly use words like “fair” and “fair shake”; staying the course is also a commitment to one’s word as would not going after Arizona for a law that tracks with the natuonal (if unenforced) one. One good thing about Obama’s reign is that we are seeing how important property rights, rule of law, predictable enforcement, etc,. are necessary for a healthy business climate. (And for the citizen’s mental health.)
We may have been taking that for granted – people will always blur the enforcement, hard cases will lead to bad laws, etc. We were told repeatedly that we had a president who was an expert on constitutional law. I’d take the previous administration’s understanding of it any day of the week. What did Obama teach his students? Does he understand what the thinking was that inspired the constitution?
David H Dennis on August 4, 2011 at 1:23 am said:
Let’s add one of his favorite techniques, which became apparent very early on in his term.
Our President wants to make sweeping, grandiose changes. He determines what these changes are through two simple tests:
1. Does it ensure my place in History?
2. Can it pass Congress?
You will note that questions such as, “does the plan make sense?”, “is it a good idea?”, or “will it actually , well, work?” are irrelevant and are never asked.
Simply put, our President is not interested in the content of his proposals. He simply does not care what is in them.
Two examples:
The Stimulus. His initial idea was to fix our roads and bridges. He let Congress fill in the details. What Congress actually came up with was a local government bailout bill that had pathetically little to do with highway maintenance. To this day, however, most people think the stimulus was about roads and bridges, even though very little work has actually been completed. Thus, a bill that was a lie, propagandized by our President as doing something entirely different from what was originally suggested.
Obamacare. Who can forget Obama continuously repeating the message, in various forms “You will be able to keep your existing plan.” As he was saying this on every platform and TV program he could find, Congress was busy passing the actual bill, which on page 19 says that you cannot, actually, keep your plan. After a transitional period, you must get a conforming plan. In short, Obama lied, about the most basic possible fact about the bill.
So you can see that Obama lies about bills he’s allegedly responsible for, without caring that the actual content glaringly contradicts every word he says. It appears that he is either a pathological liar or has no clue what Congress is doing, and in my opinion both possibilities are equally scary.
This is amazingly consistent, up to and including the current debt ceiling mess. His deliberate strategy is not to create a plan. That way he can’t be blamed for what comes up.
I think left and right can unite to agree that this is a horrible way to create any legislation. It should have been clear as early as post-stimulus that this was an exceedingly bad idea. It creates bills that pass, but they are guaranteed to be unworkable 2000 page monstrosities nobody understands.
Obama wanted a health care law. He didn’t care what was in it, just that it would exist and define his legacy.
Well, I think we can say it did in fact define his legacy. Probably not as he wanted it, though.
D
PS You have a mistake in point six – it was the bondholders who were cheated, not shareholders. Shareholders quite rightly lost their entire investment, but that’s how bankruptcy works. The problem was that the unions were given priority over the bondholders, which is contrary to established bankruptcy law.
PPS My thanks to the Rush Limbaugh show for the reference of what the health care plan says. I don’t remember if it was exactly at page 19 but it was very close. Rush’s show transcripts are filled with chapter and verse references to the plan – yes, he read it or at least his staff did. In the mean time, liberal magazine The Nation held its nose and supported the plan, while telling their readers as little as possible about what it contained. Who is the better reporter, Rush Limbaugh or The Nation’s staff, who scorns Rush as an idiot? You tell me.
Porkov on August 4, 2011 at 1:25 am said:
The aircraft manufacturing industry cannot be happy about the comments regarding corporate and private jets (and by extension, all of general aviation) as expensive toys for loaded boys. “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.” Obviously true. But if you CAN afford luxuries that employ people, should you be held up as a bad example for doing so? The next time he is criticized for some form of conspicuous consumption in the current economic environment he should either
a. explain how he is setting an example and point out the jobs that he is saving, or
b. tell his critic to shut his pie hole, or
c. quote Marie Antoinette regarding the plight of the poor.
wGraves on August 4, 2011 at 1:26 am said:
The President should stop treating us like seven year old children. Hell, seven year olds are just uneducated, not stupid. Some of us are actually educated, either formally or by self-teaching. Many of us have children we love and would like to see achieve prosperous lives. A few of us are even smarter than turnips, whose vegetative state the President assumes we languish in. So how about it Mr. President, could you possibly level with us and cease the BS? Just five minutes of actual truthful conversation would be quite a comfort at this point in time.
Georgiaboy61 on August 4, 2011 at 1:27 am said:
Sorry, folks, but none of what you are proposing for resuscitating Obama’s “administration” is enough. It is trying to put lipstick on a pig. Obama can’t be salvaged… he is too corrupt, has committed too mant criminal acts, usurped the constitution and the law too many times to be forgiven. Somethings, all you can do is damage control. In this case, the first priority is admitting the depth of our problem, and then moving to clean up the mess follows. We the people must signal that the criminal cabal controlling Washington either gets itself under control and polices its own, or the people will do it for them. People are still in denial that our govt. no longer represents us, and has in effect been hijacked by our criminal political class. Well, time to wake up – if we do not face reality and act upon it, our freedoms will be lost and we will enter a dark age the likes of which we have never seen before. Obama and his AG Eric Holder, plus top Democratic Party (and GOP if necessary) operatives belong in prison for their conduct… not looting the public treasury. As long as we continue to act like sheep, we’ll continue to get sheared. Simple as that.
huxley on August 4, 2011 at 1:35 am said:
Plus Obama has been making big speeches about his laser-like focus on jobs for two years now, but he never seems to be doing anything directly about jobs.
Instead his energies go to passing ObamaCare, fighting Fox News, intervening in Libya, killing Bin Laden, raising taxes, playing golf and joking about shovel-ready projects.
His only direct approach to jobs was the “green economy” but so far none of that has panned out.
jetty on August 4, 2011 at 1:52 am said:
7 deadly sins? More like the 7 steps to success. Obama’s goal has always been to destroy the American economy and transform America into Europe. He has succeeded.
Mark on August 4, 2011 at 2:28 am said:
He can fix things with one step:
Resign effective 1200 4 August.
vb on August 4, 2011 at 4:48 am said:
Your list of sins, plus the commenter’s addition of the NLRB fiasco, are spot on. These are things that can be fixed without a dime of new taxes. I recommend that when talking about one of the sins with potential Obama desertees, we shake our heads in a puzzled fashion and ask the following: Why is he doing this? He could fix this problem without a tax change. Doesn’t he realize that he is losing voters who are hurt by these regulations? What is he thinking?
Don’t make Obama supporters defend him against your attack. Make them look at his actions to answer your questions. They will probably find they share those questions.
carrstone on August 4, 2011 at 5:31 am said:
The Man will get re-elected because the voter knows that, under The Man’s aegis, free stuff will continue to be made available and maybe a slice of someone else’s wealth as well. Against this, sober reality has no chance and the fear of having to make a personal sacrifice will predetermine the outcome of the next election. My hope is, that by 2016, the voters will recognize the error of their way….. but I’m not holding my breath.
@jetty
What’s this fixation Americans have about Europe being a beacon of socialism? Do you even know what Europe is? Or its socialism? You are aware, I trust, that, among others, Germany and the Netherlands, in spite of their “socialism”, have left the furore of the financial fiasco far behind them and have booming economies – how’s that going for you?
The Europe I think you’re referring to has even less history than the USA and suffers, like the USA from federalist/centrist ideologies. See, geographically the place has been populated for a long time and tribal memories and strongly differentiated regional cultures have existed for more than 2000 years and still linger. The assumption that a Greek thinks and acts like a Dane is stultifyingly obtuse: only the European Commissioners have a common definition of the Union and its function, citizens define it by parameters relevant to them and by what it’s brought/cost them. They also resent the hell out of any federal authority taking what they consider theirs. Sound familiar?
Here’s a thought! Maybe you should send a delegation to, say, Germany to learn – by “best practice” observation- how socialism works in Europe and, while you’re about it, you might be interested to see how effectively trades unions are integrated in the workings of corporations and become forces for good.
You might also learn, I fervently hope, that your interpretation of socialism isn’t the same as European socialism.
BrendaK on August 4, 2011 at 7:14 am said:
Oh, please. The ‘effective integration of trade unions’ has worked out so well for France. Oh, wait…
someguy on August 4, 2011 at 6:46 am said:
You forgot a HUGE one:
8) The Department of Labor has issued regulations prohibiting Boeing from moving jobs to a state that has a large, educated non-union workforce. THis is unprecedented and new and unique to this administration. This “regulation” (not law) has created enormous uncertainty for businesses. Businesses would like to expand, and they’d like to expand in places that have less severe regulatory environments … and the bureaucrats are moving to prevent that, even if it means fewer jobs for Americans. Businesses have responded by doing NOTHING until this regime is out of power.
Akiva on August 4, 2011 at 6:55 am said:
Stifling future innovation by promoting or supporting legislation and regulations for controlling and increasing control of the Internet (net neutrality), intellectual property (protect IP), cloud computing (cloud act of 2011), etc. The pattern is clear…first figure out how to control it, then maybe we’ll allow it (if we can tax it).
In that environment innovation stops or moves away.
Oedipus Rex on August 4, 2011 at 7:17 am said:
Education. Not credentials. If he was ever forced to learn something that approached classic liberal thought…here is the exam that could have saved the world from this disaster. If they taught this in Indonesia…or Columbia …or Yale..or Harvard.
1.What is hubris?
2. What is the role of hubris in Greek tragedies?
3. Give modern examples of a Greek tragedy.
bandit on August 4, 2011 at 7:36 am said:
Appointed and continues to support Eric Holder who believes in racializing law enforcement.
SwampWoman on August 4, 2011 at 7:58 am said:
Don’t forget all the GM dealerships that were arbitrarily shut down by an Obama appointee because they were an “expense” per Obama when they were independent businesses that were customers. Lots of jobs lost there. Financial ruin for people whose livelihoods were suddenly and arbitrarily removed. Loss of tax revenue for towns and cities where the formerly productive car lots are sitting there empty. Lots of people that used to be GM loyal swore to never buy another one because of the way people at their neighborhood dealership were treated.
Reformed Trombonist on August 4, 2011 at 7:58 am said:
All of your points are good, Joy. A couple of years ago, as this continuing hope & change train wreck was just starting, I wrote the following post:
http://reformedtrombonist.blogspot.com/search?q=mel+blount
At the time (March 2009), all I really knew was that the rules governing the economics game in America had seriously changed, and that when you change the rules, you change the game, and nobody knows how it will play out. Economists are no better off than the rest of us regarding their knowledge of the situation; they were trained in economics as it used to be, back when the efficient producer was rewarded, the inefficient producer suffered, and the government saw itself as more referee than participant.
I think the uncertainty is the real job killer. I remember telling my liberal friends that I was less afraid of the housing bust than of what the government was going to do in response. Things were worse, I’m sure, in the emergent Soviet Union circa 1917, where you had bunches of little politically-connected commissars running around telling business folks what could and couldn’t be done, plus hordes of peasants denouncing their neighbors to the Party. But it’s a difference of degree, not of type. The bull in your china shop may have materialized or he may be just a threat, but either way you’ll consider ways to close up shop.
An underlying problem is the growth industry of government — the analogy that strikes me is that it is a cancer on the economy. It just sucks the life out of everything. If anything, it’s worse than that — the government imagines it’s helping. I don’t imagine that a cancerous tumor really believes it’s helping the lungs breathe more efficiently.
But there’s a spiritual problem underlying even that: a displacement of faith, away from the things that reward faith, toward the things that punish it. Secular liberalism cannot deliver on its promises; a foundation consisting of man’s wisdom is like sinking sand.
Man in the Middle on August 4, 2011 at 8:06 am said:
I’d have added Libya to the list. It’s always a bad idea to start an unnecessary war, and even worse to do so without planning to do what it takes to win that war. Beyond even that, Congress wasn’t even consulted.
P. Aaron on August 4, 2011 at 8:46 am said:
Libya? Oh yeah! That!
liz953 on August 4, 2011 at 8:59 am said:
His shameful attitude toward Israel.
His ignorance of the concept of power density.
Brad on August 4, 2011 at 9:02 am said:
A great blog, glad I found it. In additional to the piece and all comments, except the pro Euro socialist guy, Obama is an arrogance SOB, which compounds all his other offensive failures.
WordBearer on August 4, 2011 at 9:16 am said:
The uncertainty argument goes a long way to explaining the problems we curently face. Business simply does not know what future costs will look like and what future regulations will require. Therefore they are sitting on cash as a precautionary measure. Look, we have no idea what the regulations surounding Obamacare will look like in their finished form. We still do not know the rules from Dodd-Frank. How can you invest with any confidence that you are making a reasonably informed decision?
Really, everything could be fixed with a stable currency, the rule of law, and a smaller regulatory footprint.
I think there is about a 40% chance that Obama gets re-elected. If he gets a second round it will be due to the fact that the Republican candidate is a scrub. Still, if he is defeated in 2012, things will get interesting. The day after, the stock market will jump like it never has before. I expect many businesses will start rehiring.
Carolus on August 4, 2011 at 9:37 am said:
Obama’s greatest sin is his hubris. He is convinced he is the smartest person around. This causes his two biggest problems: he never listens, and he always lectures. He is stone deaf, hears nothing; and he is tone deaf too, with no clue as to how arrogant and self-centered his rhetoric is. No great orator he, for he fools no one — not even those who agree with him.
B Dubya on August 4, 2011 at 9:41 am said:
1. He believes himself to be perfect, incapable of error in judgment or action. He believes that we, who are merely human, can be socially re-engineered to approach his awesome state of wonderfulness. He believes this because, even though his mentor’s favorite regime murdered more of it’s citizenry than did the Nazis, their failure was due to poor technique, which his wonderfulness will overcome.
2. He honestly believes that the United States of America is evil, that we have an unfair share of wealth. He does not understand that the accumulation of wealth here in this island of freedom in a sea of despotism is a byproduct of being able to make personal choices. He believes his redistributive policies will make the poor wealthy, but he will in fact deliver only poverty when he kills the freedoms that make wealth accumulation possible.
3. Like another, European leader who banked on charisma to govern, he does not know how to work, or actually hates the day to day grinds of the myriad details that the POTUS must face. Rather than slip away to retreat in the Alps, he spends every possible moment playing a game, golf. That means that, in the end, our leadership and governance is not provided by the One we elected, but by his hardened party operatives who He has appointed to rule us while he tees off.
4. Being vocally anti-war, he kills wholesale through others. He especially likes the impersonal death dealing capabilities of the Predator drone. Never having served in uniform, he has an abiding dislike of the military and the mission the military undertakes. Remotely killed, anonymous dead in Libya or Pakistan, for instance, mean nothing to him except numbers. Warfare, to Obama, is a video game.
5. He caters to regimes that hate us, and despise him, while snubbing nations that have a long history of friendship backed up with shared blood. He has weakened America, in our perceived position in the world, while advancing nothing that could lead to real peace. He has destabilized the world in ways that will cost millions of lives to set right.
6. He has led a group of his apparatchiks in ATF, DOJ, and State, in an illegal arms sales program to criminal elements of Mexico in order to make a propaganda case for abrogation of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. For this alone, he deserves impeachment, but his covert anti-liberty program has cost the lives of American and Mexican citizens. Those are homicides for which he must someday give accounting.
7. His greatest sin is that he has not grown into the office, but has instead become smaller and less worthy of it as his term progresses. Reality has been hard on Obama and he reacts with venom, petulance and avoidance. The teleprompter President is a massive fail.
prairie wind on August 4, 2011 at 9:57 am said:
You said, He should have abandoned that effort once it became clear that most Americans did not want it, and concentrated instead on bringing employment numbers up.
You were forgetting something else you said, Presidents can’t fix a bad economy; they can only make things worse.
Obama concentrating on bringing employment numbers up will most certainly make things worse. Everything he does makes things worse. Has he done anything that has resulted in improvement anywhere? That would be a very short list.
People who clamor for him to begin leading are not thinking. I don’t want him to lead; I want him to get out of the way.
Joy McCann on August 4, 2011 at 11:35 am said:
No, I didn’t forget it. Let’s just say that if he wanted to obsess about some worthless project, it ought to have been one that wouldn’t cost the nation jobs in the middle of a deep recession.
tom swift on August 4, 2011 at 10:06 am said:
It may seem trivial, but he’s got to stop jutting his jaw out in news photos. They make him look like Mussolini was his childhood hero.
HeatherRadish on August 4, 2011 at 6:11 pm said:
I’m pretty sure that’s not far from the truth!
Charlie on August 4, 2011 at 10:21 am said:
This addresses a problem that has been going on beyond Obama, since Kennedy, but in my experience liberals have no answer for it. Don’t be surprised if it comes across as threatening though as many a liberal is individually positioned to benefit from it. In fact, I believe this is why libs are howling at the Tea Party that wants to correct this structural defect (and it is correctable); when it ceases to be an existential threat to all of us, it becomes an existential threat to the left.
Here it is sized to fit on the back of a napkin.
Corporations and public-sector workers do not pay taxes in any real sense. Corporations pass their taxes along to customers as a cost of doing business. Public sector workers are paid from tax revenues. After the first year, the some taxes of public sector workers pretty much just recycle, but all other costs of employing public workers has to be paid in anew continuously by earners, workers in the private sector, the ultimate payers of all taxes.
With that background, let’s look fifty years back when just over five percent of jobs were in the public sector–local, state or federal govt, school systems, public universities, research, etc. That equates to 1 in 19 workers. Back then, public workers made less than average, and it took the taxes of roughly 2 earners to cover their salaries, taxes and benefits. That left 16 out of every 19 taxpayers to pay for all the other stuff–Social Security, aircraft carriers, satellites, schools and libraries, highways and pothole filling.
Fast forward to today and the public sector, our one non-productive sector, has grown four-fold as a percentage of GDP. (In Management 101 you learn DO NOT GROW COST UNITS!) Finance and electronics have grown marginally; all other sectors have declined as a pctg of GDP.
That leaves us with 22 million govt workers at all levels and 8 million teachers, university workers and so on also paid out of tax revenues as against full-time-equiv job numbers hovering around 150 million (having lost a coupla million over the last three years). In other words, the non-productive sector now is home to 1 worker out of every 5. And their salaries and esp benefits have gone up. It now takes 3 earners to pay for 1 public worker. That leaves 1 worker in 5 to pay for everything else!
And that is a formula for catastrophic debt generation after generation. It means that killing jobs and smothering ourselves with debt is built right into our scale of government. If we do not stop runaway govt now and drive the public sector back to where it was in the 1960s as a percentage of the economy, we are flat doomed.
WordBearer on August 4, 2011 at 10:27 am said:
The bad mouthing of private initiative is one of his sins. Obama has annointed himself with the right to decide how much everyone needs and what is excessive. Examples of this are his constant attacks on the wealthy and his own pronouncement that our tax code allows him to keep “money he does not need.” He is allowed to pay that money to the federal treaury, or barring that, give it to any private group he wishes. The problem is that he believes he is qualified to make that decision for everyone.
His rigid adherance to liberal economic ideology is another problem. It has been shown again and again that we can not tax our way out of our fiscal mess, but he keeps insisting on tax increases. Heck, the break for private jets will add very little to the Treasury, but will curtail orders and costs jobs yet he continues to lambast those who get the deduction.
I think the hubris idea has some legs as well. Remember the 2004 debates where Bush was asked to name his mistakes? Could you imagine anyone asking that of this president? This is aguy who jokes about his shovel ready failures. If that has been a Republican president NBC would have had a line of the unemployed on their newscast telling us how it was not funny.
Peter Wood on August 4, 2011 at 10:48 am said:
I would add to this list that president Obama launched an initiative in February 2009 aimed at making the United States the nation with the highest percentage of college graduate in the world by 2020. He promoted this as a step towards “national competitiveness” as well as individual prosperity, but it is neither. Bear in mind that the nation that currently has the highest percentage of college graduates is Russia. Instead, what this initiative does is divert national resources to a pursuit that has few positive economic consequences. To reach the president’s goal, college enrollments will need to more than double by 2020. It means millions of young people will emerge heavily in debt.
Moreover they will owe that debt to the federal government since as a little-remarked part of the Health Care bill, Congress placed all federally subsidized student loans in the hands of the Department of Education as part of a “Direct Lending” program. This supposed cost-saving measure effectively will make most college graduates clients of the state, dependent on government polices for favorable treatment and various loan-forgiveness provisions.
Higher education costs way too much and delivers way too little in actual education for a large majority of students. Diverting many young people from the workforce during the period in which they could be developing productive skills and workplace experience, while earning a real income may help keep the official unemployment numbers down, but it is not a recipe for national prosperity. President Obama should have said that the nation will focus on forms of post-secondary training that can be pursued concurrent with gainful employment, which would have the added benefit of lowering the inflationary pressure on college tuition.
Peter Wood
President, National Association of Scholars
Dan Collins on August 4, 2011 at 11:11 am said:
Agreed. It really amounts to the subsidy of another unsustainable bubble, just as the public employee bailouts to the states and the housing market subsidies/renegotiating mortgages debacle did.
WordBearer on August 4, 2011 at 11:20 am said:
Good point. We need to stop subsidizing people coming out of colleges with degrees in ethnic studies and calligraphy.
anon on August 4, 2011 at 11:20 am said:
Please add back “shareholders” to point 6. I was a shareholder and my shares were declared void while the same people making the same product in the same place for the same pay were allowed to sell the same company again and reissue stock. How was this different than what Bernie Madoff did? I am retired and the loss of my investment was heartbreaking. I have paid for GM twice, as a stockholder and as a taxpayer, and I have NOTHING!
Dan Collins on August 4, 2011 at 11:22 am said:
Would you care to write a guest post on this?
Vader on August 4, 2011 at 1:45 pm said:
Obama started with hubris. We are now seeing the ate, the madness, setting in. Soon will follow nemesis and the tragic circle will be complete.
richard40 on August 4, 2011 at 6:18 pm said:
I’d mention the NLRB decision on the new Boeing plant. It basically told all US manufacturers that they could not build any new plants, especially in any right to work state, unless they first got permission from Obamas union cronies.
Also mention the EPA decision on cross border emissions for TX, that changed years of sound TX energy regulatory precedent to an anti coal plant position that would satisfy Obamas global warming cronies, and could result in a crippling of TX power generation. This in one of the few states in the union that WAS producing jobs, and this one decision could kill that growth.
I think the concept of your article is great. The main repub thrust for now should not be to ask what Obama is doing to CREATE jobs, or even how they could create jobs better, because gov can’t really do that anyway. What repubs should be criticising is the many Obama regulatory decisions that DESTROY jobs, and demand that he STOP doing those actions. Before gov tries to help, they should follow the hipocratic oath, first do no harm. Right now the best thing the Obama administration could do to help the economy, would be to do absolutely nothing in the area of new regulatory initiatives, since what he is doing is destroying jobs rather than creating them.
serr8d on August 5, 2011 at 12:05 am said:
My original political launch point was, of course, the NRA. Now, finally, we’ve found Mr. Obama’s flaw; in the person of Eric Holder, in the Project GunRunner – Operation Fast & Furious scandal, a scandal that’s cost the lives of an American Federal agent, and the lives of numerous Mexican civilians and agents, all because the Administration approved an ‘operation’ designed to snare gun dealers and therefore promote and move forward Obama’s and LeftLibProgg Democrat’s stalled anti-gun agendas.
We are ready to stick it to him, but for the competition. It’s a damned shame that the economy chose this same moment to tank and is sucking up all the political oxygen. We finally have a scandal to pin on BHO, one that leads all the way to the Oval Office.
We’ll wait our turn. Save us some scraps, m’kay? )
DogMan on January 20, 2013 at 9:52 am said:
I am tired and weary of the same old lies the idots in Washington from one admiastraition to the other nothing but lies. No one cares who is poisened with all the gas getting into the ground water it don't take a rocket scientist to know the cracks will seep into the water and ignite and ppl are drinking the polluted water. What man won't do for money sell his soul to the devil just make an easy buck @ the cost of other people's lifes. Money is there God but it won't help them where the are going to end up poor fools. Money the root of all evil. Do on to others as you would have them do unto thee.I could care less This is not my home I am just passing thru.
Dearest DogMan