By now, you’ve probably seen several “news” stories about Obama’s first 100 days in office.  No doubt, you’ve noticed how the media keeps saying how “ambitious” and “bold” Obama’s plans are.

How are $2 trillion annual budget deficits ambitious or bold?  Wouldn’t the proper words to describe Obama’s first 100 days be more along the lines of dangerous, reckless, bankrupting, and foolish?

I still cannot believe how the media is shilling for Obama.  Obama quadruples the budget deficit, then plans to cut it in half, which is still twice as high as its highest ever level, and all the media can do is latch onto that one part and parrot it endlessly as if he’s doing something good.

What about the massive inflation that is coming down the road as a result of all the government spending?  Or the higher interest rates due to the “crowding out” effect of government borrowing?  Or the fact that 100% taxation on the “rich” won’t even come close to closing Obama’s budget deficits, meaning that all Americans will eventually endure massive tax increases?

Or what about the massive tax increases on all Americans that are coming in the form of a carbon cap-and-trade scheme which will raise the cost of all production and all goods and services sold in this country?  Or the millions of jobs that will be lost as companies flee America for countries where costs of production and taxes are lower?  Already we have seen that jobs in energy-intensive industries are being lost at the highest rates due to the carbon taxes around the corner.

Why isn’t the media reporting on the effects that Obama’s “ambitious” and “bold” policies are going to have on the average American?

This is unbelievable.  The latest plan involving failing automaker General Motors would give the auto workers union members nearly half the company in lieu of a $20 billion payment into a retiree health care trust.  The government would get ownership of 50% of the company.

Basically, this is what is happening:  the auto workers bankrupted the company with outlandish demands for wages and benefits for decades, then when the company is inevitably unable to pay those benefits, the auto workers end up owning a large chunk of the company they destroyed.

That’s extortion.

Almost as troubling is the fact that the government will be majority owner of GM.  The administration of Barack Obama will have direct control over the company.  How scary.

One of the biggest lies the Democratic Party has ever told–and they’ve told a lot–is that the American auto industry is failing because they didn’t make vehicles people wanted to buy.  This is completly false.  The auto industry built SUVs, minivans, and other non-tiny vehicles because people wanted them for the size, comfort, and utility they provide.

The fact is people don’t want tiny, deathtrap cars as Obama wants everyone to drive.  A man of six feet-three inches is not going to be comfortable in a small car.  Nevermind the fact that you can’t haul anything like tents, sports equipment, groceries, or much of anything else in the tiny trunks those vehicles have.

Not even Barack Obama wanted to drive a small, fuel-efficient car when he had the chance.  He purchased a roomy gas guzzler a few years back.

Barack Obama’s Gas Guzzler

In the end, this will serve to empower unions by showing that they can bankrupt companies and end up controlling them via their extortionary tactics.  The government will take majority ownership of a company that is failing and will fail even worse because the government will mandate they build cars nobody wants to buy.  And do you think a Democrat-controlled government is going to force their loyal union voters and political donors to take pay and benefit cuts to regain profitability?  No way.  The government will end up with a failing company and continue to subsidize the above-market union wages, benefits, and pensions at taxpayer expense.

If the executives at GM were smart, they would liquidate immediately.  Hundreds of thousands of workers at GM plants and GM dealerships around the country would find themselves out of work.  This is a better alternative than the government controlling a company they do not have the competence to run requiring never-ending subsidies of union workers.

AP GM Story

Much has been made of the role of the American “financial crisis” in the economic recession across the globe.  Democrats, and even our President, Barack Obama, have pointed their fingers at the United States as the source of world problems.  But they are conveniently ignoring the one crucial aspect that links all nations.

The first problem with the “America is to blame” argument is that the American “financial crisis” is largely myth.  There is no real crisis nor any shortage of loanable funds for individuals and businesses with good credit.  The United States Treasury releases a monthly report on bank lending.  All the major banks in the United States have been lending at strong levels, according to the report.  Banks have reported weakened demand for loans, which is what you would expect during a recession.  But the largest banks in the country are still lending to worthy borrowers.

Treasury Report

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today released results from its January monthly bank lending survey, showing that the nation’s largest banks continued to originate, refinance and renew loans in  January 2009 in the face of a worsening economic downturn.  Despite the worst financial crisis in decades, the survey of the top 21 recipients of government investment through the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) found that most institutions had higher originations across consumer lending categories than in December 2008.

Secondly, this argument is nothing more than an attempt to blame President George Bush for something that he had no part in creating.  Other nations around the world were experiencing economic contractions before the United States did.  Further, to insinuate that other nations’ economic problems were the result of investing in American mortgage-backed securities makes little sense.  That would have to ignore all the other investments around the globe, including mortgage-backed securities in other countries where subprime lending was active, such as England.

The biggest problem with this argument is that of timing.  If the United States was to blame for the global recession, shouldn’t the economy of the USA have been the first to experience a downturn?  Absolutely.  But this isn’t the case.  Economies in Europe such as Germany and Spain have been struggling for years, with much of the blame for that on high social services taxes.  In the mid-2000s when the United States economy was roaring with unemployment levels below 5%, some European countries such as Spain and Germany had unemployment levels of 8% to 9%.

What is the common factor between all nations of the world which could explain the global recession?  The answer:  oil.

As the price of oil rose around the world, money was diverted from consumption to pay for fuel.  This had a retarding effect on all economies.  If you factor in the high taxes in some countries, the cost of a gallon of gasoline at its peak was the equivalent of $10 per gallon.  Every dollar spent on fuel is a dollar that cannot be spent elsewhere in the economy to create jobs.  Naturally, this is going to harm an economy.

Only someone with a dysfunctional mind, such as a Democrat, can argue that more money spent on gasoline and less on everything else isn’t going to have a harmful impact on the economy.  But Democrats would never admit this, even if they believed it, because it would be an admission of the failures of their policies and way of thinking.  Democrats can’t accept blame any more than they can come up with good ideas.  Their answer to everything is to blame Bush.

Here’s an article from Alan Reynolds at the Cato Institute.  In the article, he points out that all but one of the recessions since World War II have come after rises in the cost of petroleum.

Article

Logically, it makes sense that a sharp increase in the cost of one factor of production lacking suitable substitutes is going to take money out of an economy and reduce economic activity.  But don’t try explaining that to a Democrat.

I was reading the news about the latest unemployment report when this nugget caught my eye.

AP Story

Many of those job cuts were in energy intensive industries…

Star Tribune Story

Workers in energy intense industries like metals or manufacturing have been hit especially hard in recent rounds of job cuts.

Why would there be lots of job cuts in energy-intensive industries when energy costs are lower now than they were one year ago?  Let me thing about this for about 1/1000th of a second…

Jobs are being slashed in energy-intensive industries because of the Democrats’ plans for a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions which is really nothing more than a carbon tax.  These carbon taxes are going to significantly raise the cost of doing business in these industries, so they are slashing jobs now in anticipation of those promised higher expenses, courtesy of the DFL.

This is unbelievably predictable; yet, Democrats are too dumb to see it.

Where are those jobs going?  Some are probably being cut for good.  As profits get pinched, either because of rising costs or declining revenues, the first thing businesses do is cut jobs.  A strong possibility is that many of these jobs are going to be outsourced overseas where the politicians are not as dumb as the American Democratic Party who are destroying their own country.

I found another interesting passage in another article.

AP Article

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 5.1 million jobs, with almost two-thirds of the losses occurring in the last five months.

What happened five months ago?  Let’s go back…March, February, January, December, November…  Five months ago Barack Obama was elected President!  Two-thirds of the job cuts since the beginning of the economic downturn came since the election of Barack Hussein Obama.

Do you think this is coincidence?  It isn’t.

A federal judge threw out all charges against former Republican Senator from Alaska Ted Stevens because of severe prosecutorial misconduct following Attorney General Eric Holder’s request last week.  Judge Emmet Sullivan was quoted as saying, “In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.”

Just before the November election, Stevens was convicted on charges that he failed to properly report gifts on his Senate disclosure forms.  As a result of the guilty conviction, Stevens barely lost the election.  Had the charges never been filed or had the case been dismissed prior to the election, Stevens would have won the election and kept his Senate seat.

Stevens will not face further prosecution.

The Democratic Party has benefited because of prosecutorial misconduct and all Americans must pay the price.

Barney Frank is out talking up the need for new legistlation to prevent future mortgage crises.  The interesting thing is, he never mentions that he was responsible for the foreclosure crisis in the first place.

AP Article

The plan, which (Barney) Frank said could be voted on by the committee during the first week of May, would also bar financial institutions from securitizing 100 percent of their loans, create a “resolving authority” to help wind down failing institutions in a more orderly way, and ensure no institution becomes so indebted that it threatens the entire national financial system.

He said part of the reason the country finds itself in its current fiscal crisis is a shift from traditional bankers, who made loans but found themselves on the hook if the loans went bad, to complex financial deals that allowed mortgages to be combined and then sold — with little financial risk to those making the loans.

“If only banks made mortgage loans, there would be no crisis,” he said.

He acknowledged that part of the problem were individuals who took out loans even though they should have known they had no reasonable expectation they could pay them back. But Frank said a large part of the blame also goes to those making the loans, who also should have taken the time to figure out if the people they were lending the money to could repay the loans.

Yes, Barney.  And if idiots like you weren’t pressuring government-backed companies into making loans to people with bad credit and low incomes, we would never have had a foreclosure crisis in the first place!

Let’s look at a few Barney Frank quotes about mortgages for low income people and Fannie Mae.

From September, 2003:

These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis.  The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.

…Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis.  The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see.  I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound, financially, and, uh, withstand some of the disaster scenarios.  And even if there were a problem, the federal government doesn’t bail them out.  But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

If Barney Frank got it so wrong the first time, why does he think he’s going to get it right the second time?  Will Barney Frank ever man-up and admit that he is responsible for the mortgage meltdown in the first place?

Barney Frank’s Role In Foreclosure Crisis
Barney Frank Denies Problems With Fannie Mae

It seems there have been a rash of mass murders across the country since President Barack Obama took office less than three months ago.  I guess you could call this the Obama effect on society.  One might expect certain high-crime segments of our society to feel empowered by someone in the White House who looks like them, but Obama seems to have drawn out murderous kooks of all stripes.

AP Mass Murders Article

Mass murder is nothing new, and the invention of repeating guns only made it easier. But even experts who study the phenomenon have been stunned by the recent rash — seven in the past month, three in the past week alone.

“Boy, this is a lot,” said Safarik, now a partner with Forensic Behavioral Services International.

I find this passage from the article particularly interesting:

Most mass murderers, like most serial killers, are middle-aged, white males…

That may be true, but America is still majority white.  Based on population metrics, most mass murderers and serial killers should be white.  However, what this article doesn’t tell you is that blacks are over-represented among serial killers, as they are in all categories of violent crime, including assault and rape.  Blacks represent 12.5% of the American population, but commit over 50% of the murders and over 20% of serial murders.

Data

Serial killings by race of perpetrator:

• White:  72.82%
• Black:  21.33%
• Hispanic:  5.13%
• Asian:  0.72%

I found it interesting that the article would go out of its way to state that most mass murderers were white without mentioning the disproportionate killing by blacks.  You know how liberals are, they’ve always got to blame everything on white people.

It looks like they broke out the race of serial killers, giving Hispanics and Asians their own categories.  When the government publishes murder statistics, they lump Latinos in with Whites so as to skew the white murder rate upward.  Here are the murder offender by race statistics from 1976 to 2005.  If you notice, there are no categories for Latinos or Asians.

United States Homicide Offenders By Race

In a majority of the years in the report, blacks have committed over 50% of the murders.  But you will rarely see that reported in the media.

Since we are on the topic of racial crime due to the biased article, I’ll take the opportunity to expose a long-standing Democrat lie.

You know how Democrats have always blamed the high rate of crime among blacks on poverty?  Well, here’s the truth:  there are more whites in America in poverty than blacks.

US Poverty Statistics

According to government census statistics, in 2006 there were 16 million non-Hispanic whites living in poverty compared to about 9 million blacks.  If poverty was responsible for crime, and violent crime like murder in particular, then there should be more murders committed by whites than by blacks.  But that is not the case.  A majority of murders are not committed by whites, which represent the largest ethnic group living in poverty.

The Democratic Party has been using the “poverty causes crime” argument for decades to excuse disproportionate levels of crime among their beloved voting base and to further their agenda for more wealth redistribution.  It’s all been one big Democrat lie!

Do you want to know something interesting?  Crime correlates to intelligence as measured by IQ.  Those with lower IQ scores are several times more likely to commit crime.  Not only are dimwits more likely to commit crime, they are more likely to end up on welfare.  If you ever take the opportunity to talk to a police officer, he or she will tell you that most criminals are criminals because they are stupid, and that is why they get caught.  Criminals also vote Democrat, which is why the DFL is so hellbent on restoring voting rights to convicted felons.

No surprises.

Crime Statistics

Has anyone else noticed that the news stories about AIG’s $163 million in retention bonuses have disappeared?

Do you think these news stories would have disappeared if Bush was still President?  I think the media is covering for Obama.  The media did reveal that the Obama administration and Senator Chris Dodd were responsible for making these bonus payments possible, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it.  Right after this revelation was made, with little mention of Obama’s direct responsibility, the eruption of Democrat anger died down.

It seems the Democrats in Congress have dropped efforts to slap a 90% tax on the AIG bonus payments.  I guess pursuing this issue further would draw more attention to the fact that Democrats were responsible for it in the first place.

I can’t say this is surprising.  It seems that a large percentage of home owners in default who get loan modifications to lower their monthly payments are going back into default shortly after renegotiating new terms.

Twenty-six percent of people who got mortgage modifications last year to reduce their monthly payments by 10% or more went back into default within nine months.  Those who didn’t get payment reductions defaulted at an even higher rate, nearly 57%.

Article 1
Article 2

There are always going to be some cases where people get behind on their house payments due to unforeseen medical problems or other circumstances beyond their control.  But in the vast majority of these cases, the reason the borrowers are going into default is because of their own shortcomings, not the least of which is character, and a lack of common sense.

So, what does this portend about Obama’s foreclosure rescue program and it’s potential $275 billion price tag?  If the past is any guide to the future, Obama’s plan will be a huge and costly failure.  Here’s a story from December 2008, before Obama took office, about loan defaulters re-defaulting.

Dec. 2008 Reuters Borrowers Re-Defaulting Article

As the old saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Judging from academic achievement in Democrat strongholds, we know that Democrats aren’t very good at learning much of anything.  Can’t read, can’t write, can’t do math, but they can turn out in droves to vote Democrat.

It looks like there will be no shortage of hypocrisy in the Obama administration.

In less than three months in office, Obama has displayed hypocrisy at every turn from signing a lucrative book deal just before taking office to cranking up the thermostat in the White House when he previously said that people wouldn’t be able to keep their homes as warm as they’d like because of the need to reduce carbon emissions.  He nominated a total of six tax cheaters to high-ranking government positions while demanding higher taxation on all Americans.  He pretended to be outraged about the AIG retention bonuses, which were later revealed to have been made possible by his administration lobbying Congress to exempt prior bonus agreements for bailout recipients.  Now, it looks like his chief economic advisor made millions of dollars last year from hedge funds and Wall Street.

Reuters Article

Lawrence Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, was paid $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year.  Not only did he make millions from a hedge fund, an industry Democrats love to demonize, but Summers also made $2.7 million in speaking fees, some of which came from troubled Wall Street investment firms.

These Democrats pretend to be opposed to “big business”, Wall Street, and inequitable wealth, but they sure like to make as much money for themselves as possible whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The Democratic Party has made its market among the unthinking.  All they have to do is to say the things their voting base wants to hear and they will get votes and campaign cash no matter how hypocritical their behavior is.