Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Democrats Are Killing Jobs

When President Obama proposed “son of stimulus”, any remaining doubt about his intentions was removed. He doesn’t care about jobs; his overriding concern is to massively increase government spending and raise taxes to pay for it. One member of Obama’s staff famously said a crisis should never go to waste. That’s what this is all about - Obama using the economic situation as an opportunity to further his agenda. He doesn’t want to solve the problem; he wants to exploit it. He and his enablers are statists who want most of all to increase government control of every aspect of our lives. To them, only the elite ruling class is competent enough to know what’s good for the masses.

If Obama wants jobs, why does he prevent more off-shore drilling and the thousands of high paying jobs that would go with it? Why does he want to bankrupt the coal industry (as he was caught on tape saying)? Why has he delayed the Keystone pipeline project that would create more thousands of jobs? Why is he letting the EPA put forth even stricter standards that will cause AEP to have to close six power plants (including Glen Lyn). Why is he pushing cap-and-trade that will send thousands of jobs overseas? Why is his administration going after Gibson Guitar? Why did he let his NLRB sue Boeing to keep them from building a new factory in South Carolina? Why is he continually talking about higher taxes? Why is Obama doing so much to kill jobs if he wants jobs?

The facts show that the first stimulus was an abject failure. Unemployment is stuck at 9%, and the real unemployment rate that covers the underemployed and those who have given up is estimated to be at 16%. The economy is still on life support and the housing market is not recovering at all. These are the results that Obama and crew have achieved with all of their massive government spending.

What is their response to the failure of the first stimulus and all the other government spending? Spend more!

The government has no money of its own. It only has money that it takes from us as taxes, or it can borrow.

How can the government stimulate the economy by taking money from one citizen (as taxes) and giving it to another citizen? There is no net gain in that.

Or even worse, as is now happening, how can the government stimulate the economy by spending borrowed money. The national debt is now close to $14 trillion, which will all have to be paid back with interest. This will be a burden to the federal budget and the economy for generations. You can’t continually borrow your way to prosperity.

The Republicans tried to provide some adult supervision in the recent debt ceiling issue, but the Democrats fought it tooth and toenail. The Democrats don’t care about trillions of debt and all of the bad effects of that; they demand more of it.

If you want to look back at the Great Depression, it is actually very instructive. President Roosevelt and all of his massive government spending and government make-work jobs did not solve the unemployment problem. What got us out of the Great Depression was World War II and the real jobs in the private sector that came from that.

If Obama wants to create jobs, he needs to learn how to do it.

Steve Jobs literally started Apple Computer in his garage, with his high school buddy. After some initial success with his fledgling company, Steve Jobs was fired from the company he founded by the person he himself had recruited to take over as President so that Steve could focus on the technical innovation side of things. He then founded another company, sold it to Apple, returned to Apple again as part of the deal, and the rest is history, as they say. Today, Apple Computer is wildly successful, has revolutionized the way we get and use information, employs 46,000 people, has created thousand of other jobs in suppliers, has made millionaires of hundreds of its employees through stock option grants, and has more cash on hand than the U.S. government!

This all happened without one penny of government stimulus money. There are untold more such examples. That is how you create jobs - provide an environment where companies large and small can flourish, grow, and hire people because they need them. Obama does the exact opposite; he punishes companies and incites class warfare.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Liberals Feel; Conservatives Think

During my decades of observing and commenting on political and social issues, I have slowly come to the conclusion that liberals apparently live in a parallel universe where reality is not defined by past history, logic, reason, hard data, common sense, and factual observations but rather by how one feels. Reality to a liberal is determined by their feelings and their dogma. This is why you can’t have a legitimate debate of the issues with liberals; what they feel must be true even though past history and hard data show the contrary.

Let’s go on a journey through the parallel universe in which liberals live.

Liberals’ parallel universe: The “rich” don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
Real universe of facts: The top 1% of income earners paid 38% of all federal incomes taxes, the top 5% paid 59%, and the top 10% paid 70%, according to IRS data from 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. On the other end of the income scale, 49% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax whatsoever.
Liberal response: The rich have too much money and need to pay more, no matter what IRS statistics one can come up with.

Liberals’ parallel universe: The current federal budget deficit could be fixed if the “rich” paid only a little more in taxes.
Real universe of hard data: If Congress tried to pay off the deficit by raising taxes on small businesses, investors, and individuals making more than $250,000 per year, the top two tax rates would have to be raised to 132% and 142%, i.e., more than the affected people make. If Washington took all of the income of the top 1% , it would yield $938 billion, compared to a $14 trillion national debt.
Liberal response: Well, no matter, the rich need to pay more.

Liberal’s parallel universe: The economy can be jump-started by government spending.
Real universe of historical experience: After TARP, the stimulus, bailouts of Wall Street, bailouts of Detroit, cash-for-clunkers, bailouts of the states, bailouts of teachers, huge government deficit spending, etc. the economy has not recovered, the housing market is still in the tank, and unemployment has not gone down.
Liberal response: The government didn’t spend enough; we need another stimulus.

Liberals’ parallel universe: The temperature of the earth’s atmosphere is rising due to the effects of mankind’s energy usage.
Real universe of actual events: Leaked emails from East Anglia University, one of the major climate research institutions, show that climate research scientists who support man-made global warming fudged the numbers to get the answer they wanted, ignored evidence to the contrary, ostracized and persecuted scientists who disagreed with them, and raked in millions of dollars in research grants in the process.
Real world of common sense: Meteorologists can’t accurately and consistently predict the weather for next week, the Farmer’s Almanac can’t reliably tell us what the weather will be this coming year, but global warming scientists can predict the earth’s temperature fifty years from now to within a hundredth of a degree, with surety.
Liberal response: It doesn’t matter, because man-made global warming just must be true.

Liberals’ parallel universe: Public schools are failing, in general, because they are underfunded.
Real universe of observable, factual results: The Washington, D.C. schools get more money per capita than any school system in the country, but achieve some of the worst results. Catholic schools spend much less than public schools per student and get some of the highest results.
Liberal response: It’s all about the children! Schools need more money!

Liberals’ parallel universe: Unemployment benefits are good for the economy.
Real world of common sense: So why don’t we just all quit our jobs (or get fired) and go on unemployment? The economy would boom.
Liberal response: Umm, umm, well ------.

Liberals’ parallel universe: We live in a racist society. People of color are held back.
Real universe of actual people: Condoleeza Rich, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Barack Obama, Alan West, Marco Rubio, Michael Steele, Herman Cain, E. W. Jackson, the NFL, the NBA, Francis Rice, Thomas Sowell, college faculties, Nikki Haley, Jesse Lee Peterson, etc.
Liberal response: They don’t count.

Liberals’ parallel universe: People should wash their jeans less and do all sorts of other things in order to save water, because if we don’t, the planet will run out.
Real universe of science: The water cycle: Water evaporates from the oceans, goes into the atmosphere as water vapor, condenses and falls back down to Earth as rain or snow or ice, and the cycle repeats itself over and over. The water does not leave the planet. Local shortages can occur, but the planet will not run out of water, barring some cosmic event.
Liberal response: Huh?

Liberals’ parallel universe: Bill Clinton is a respectable person.
Real world of actual people and events: Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and Juanita Broderick all accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse of the worst sort. Ms. Broderick actually accused Clinton of raping her. Clinton settled with Ms. Jones for $850,000. And then there was Monica.
Liberal response: Well, Clinton supports abortion and other liberal causes, so he must be a good guy. We need more people like him.

Liberals’ parallel universe: Cigarette smoke is so dangerous that smokers must be banished to 25 feet from an office building because just a whiff of second-hand smoke or even coming into contact with third-hand smoke (yes, we’re up to third hand smoke now), such as touching the steering wheel of a car in which someone has smoked a lot, can kill you.
Real world of common sense: Touching the steering wheel of a smoker’s car can kill you?
Liberal response: You want people to die, don’t you?

The list goes on: Barack Obama has been a good President; The “occupy” movement is a peaceful uprising of ordinary citizens; Ted Kennedy was a great human being; “Cash for clunkers” was a worthwhile program; The H1N1 scare warranted a massive government response; Eating red meat is bad for you; CO2 is a pollutant; Passing out condoms to ninth graders is a good idea; Polar bears are dying off; The sub-prime mortgage collapse was caused by greedy banks; etc. ad nauseum. All of these notions are demonstrably false in the real world of rational fact-based thought, but they and many others live on and thrive in the parallel liberal universe of “feelings”.

The next time you try to have a discussion of some issue with a liberal, notice how quickly they resort to name calling and the questioning of your character. That’s because if they debate the issue, whatever it is, using facts, hard data, actual experience, logic, and reason, they lose every time. So they call you names instead and retreat to the safety of their parallel universe where all that matters is how they feel.