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Deroy Murdock compares two presidents.
President Zero.
The brand-new nickname for Barack ObamAA+ symbolizes America’s total net jobs created in August: Zippo.
So, how many jobs emerged in August 1983, the analogous point in Ronald Reagan’s presidency? 280,000. Proportional to today’s population, that equals 367,360 new hires last month.
Citizens pondering Obama’s latest jobs speech and how to get America working again should focus on today’s great Keynesian experiment. Ronald Reagan’s supply-side mixture of tax cuts, deregulation, and sound money competes directly against Obama’s big-government blend of Keynesian stimuli, rampant red tape, and promiscuous printing of money — as if dollars were wallpaper. The late Reagan trounces the leisurely Obama. …
Barton Hinkle lays out the case against Solyndra-like government loans.
… The Solyndra story encapsulates a much bigger issue than mere crony capitalism, bad as that is. Because Solyndra is not alone. The Obama administration has sunk billions into loan guarantees for dozens of other renewable-energy companies as well.
This is known as the political allocation of economic resources, and it entails all kinds of problems. The first and most basic: It’s wrong. Government should not be picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
Problem No. 2: corruption. When government puts its massive thumb on the market scale, corporations have a huge incentive to try to win government’s favor. Hence: campaign contributions and lobbyists galore. Progressives who want to keep money out of politics should help libertarians build a high wall between economy and state.
Problem No. 3: the distortion of market incentives. Although federal policy was far from the only reason for the recent housing bubble and crash, it played a significant role. And even when market intervention does not produce a crash, it can still produce a creature like the Chevy Volt—an electric vehicle for which there is zero demand despite a whopping $7,500 federal tax credit for purchase—or Cash for Clunkers. That idea, now universally derided, seemed bright at the time, at least to some. In retrospect, it seems as smart as paying people to burn down their houses to stimulate demand for new ones.
Such market distortion shifts resources from more productive to less productive purposes, which inevitably produces less prosperity—fewer jobs at lower pay. Want evidence? See last month’s New York Times story “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises,” which concluded: “Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show.” For the Times to concede that government intervention in pursuit of progressive political goals has not worked is like National Review criticizing a Republican. The proof has to be overwhelming. …
Craig Pirrong at Streetwise Professor looks at Solyndra and part of their financing.
… I want to focus on a narrower issue. Remember in 2009, when the secured creditors of Chrysler were expropriated (that’s a nice way to say “hosed”) when that company went into bankruptcy? Their purportedly senior claims were in fact subordinated to junior, unsecured creditors. The secured creditors were the subject of vitriolic criticism from Obama personally, and from the administration and its media water boys. It was an early indicator of the crony capitalism to come.
In the Solyndra case, a major Obama bundler George Kaiser–from very red-state Oklahoma, of all places–is an investor in Solyndra. More to the point, when the company was in trouble back in March, it borrowed $75 million dollars, in part from the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Crucially, this loan was made senior to most of the outstanding debts owed to the Federal government ($385 million out of the $535 million in total provided by Uncle Sucker).
So it will be quite interesting to see whether Kaiser, the Obama donor, gets the Chrysler secured creditor treatment, or whether the administration will have found a strange new respect for the virtues of strict adherence to priority rules in bankruptcy.
Speaking of Solyndra, Craig also points out the foolishness of the loan.
… The incompetence alternative gets a boost from Nobel Prize winning Secretary of Energy Chu. DOE’s Inspector General participated in the raid, but Chu apparently thinks that Solyndra is a success. Yes. You read that right. A success:
Mr. Chu’s spokesman argued that “the project that we supported succeeded. The facility was producing the product it said it would produce, and consumers were buying the product.”
Then I guess every firm filing through bankruptcy court is really a success. Chu is obviously a brilliant physicist and an economic numbskull. Which wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.
Seeing what has transpired with the spawn of the first stimulus, by all means, let’s “pass the bill” so we can watch Son of Stimulus. By Chu’s standards, it’s guaranteed to be a smashing success.
ABC News has been doing much of the heavy lifting in Solyndra-gate.
Federal agents have expanded their examination of the now-bankrupt California solar power company Solyndra, visiting the homes of the company’s CEO and two of its executives, examining computer files and documents, iWatch News and ABC News have learned.
Agents visited the homes of CEO Brian Harrison and company founder Chris Gronet and a former executive, according to a source who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the legal sensitivity of the situation.
Gronet, reached at his home Friday morning, did not dispute that his home was visited by federal agents a day earlier.
“I’m sorry,” Gronet said, “you probably understand full well that I cannot comment.” The third executive could not be immediately reached.
Solyndra spokesman David Miller confirmed agents visited Harrison’s home on the same day the FBI and Energy Department Inspector General seized boxes of records from the company’s headquarters.
“Yeah, they did go to his house and speak to him briefly,” Miller said. “I don’t know what they may have taken. I believe they took a look at his computer.” …
Peter Wehner writes on the fall.
… As Jimmy Carter can tell you, for a president to become an object of disdain and apathy is a very dangerous place to find himself.
It has been a stunning fall from grace for Obama, a man who, upon taking office, was routinely compared to Kennedy, to FDR, and even to Lincoln. One is tempted to say those comparisons were unfair to Obama, except that he did so much to invite them.
By now, the cult-like effect Obama had on his supporters is a distant, fading memory. The Greek columns built for his convention speech now look simply silly, as does Obama’s promise to heal the earth and reverse the ocean tide. His core appeal was aesthetic, and hence fleeting. It turns out Obama really was best equipped to be a community organizer and a state senator and perhaps not very much more than that. But Obama, a man of extraordinary self-regard, decided he was the world-historical person we had been waiting for. (What can one say about a person who surrounded himself with aides who referred to him as “Black Jesus” during the campaign?)
In a coincidence that calls to mind William Blake’s “fearful symmetry” phrase, it was also Dana Milbank who in July 2008, months before Obama was elected, reported that Obama attended an “adoration session” with Democratic lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, “as if for the State of the Union.”
Inside, according to a witness, Obama told the House members, “This is the moment…that the world is waiting for,” adding: “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”
Some of us warned at the time that any man who believes he is “the moment that the world is waiting for” and views himself as “the symbol of the possibility and best traditions of America” is an individual of staggering arrogance. …
Michael Barone reviews the jobs speech.
What is there to say about Barack Obama’s speech to Congress Thursday night and the so-called American Jobs Act he said Congress must pass? Several thoughts occur, all starting with P.
Projection. That’s psychologist-speak term for projecting your own faults on others. “This isn’t political grandstanding,” Obama told members of Congress, as Republicans snickered (but thankfully resisted the temptation to shout, “You lie!”). “This isn’t class warfare.” …
Instapundit, Ed Morrissey, and Legal Insurrection post on Obama’s Lincoln mistake last week.
By this time, Barack Obama should know better than to go off the TelePrompter. In the text of the speech last night given to a joint session of Congress, Obama was supposed to make a single reference to Abraham Lincoln:
We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges.
Unfortunately, Obama felt the need to take a partisan shot at his opposition, and in doing so, offered up a historic flub (via Greg Hengler):
We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.
Er, not quite. Lincoln wasn’t even the GOP’s first Presidential nominee; …