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Mark Steyn on negotiating with Barack O’Bluffer.
… For the Most Gifted Orator in Human History, the president these days speaks largely in clichés, most of which he doesn’t seem to be quite on top of. “Eric, don’t call my bluff,” he sternly reprimanded the GOP’s Eric Cantor. Usually, if you’re bluffing, the trick is not to announce it upfront. But, in fact, in his threat to have Granny eating dog food by Labor Day, Obama was calling his own bluff. The giant bluff against the future that is government spending.
How many of “the wealthy” do you require to cover a one-and-a-half trillion-dollar shortfall every single year? When you need this big a fix, there aren’t enough people to stick it to. “We are not broke,” insists Van Jones, Obama’s former “green jobs” czar and bespoke communist. “We were robbed, we were robbed. And somebody has our money!”
The somebody who has our money is the government. They waste it on self-aggrandizing ideologue nitwits like Van Jones and his “green jobs” racket. How’s the “green jobs” scene in your town? Going gangbusters, is it? Every day these guys burn through so much that they can never bridge the gap. By that, I don’t mean that an American government that raises two trillion but spends four trillion has outspent America, but that it’s outspent the planet. …
UVA prof with nice things to say about the effects of the Tea Party.
With the breakdown of negotiations on a so-called grand bargain on the debt limit demanded by President Obama, liberal commentators have sought a convenient scapegoat to account for the impasse. Not surprisingly, they have begun by rounding up the usual suspect: the Tea Party. Its intransigence, so the line goes, has sunk this great deal.
For two years now, “Blame the Tea Party First” has been the Democrats’ favorite mantra. “Firsters” invoke the Tea Party to make sense–for themselves–of the otherwise inexplicable fact of large-scale public opposition to President Obama, and they hold the Tea Party responsible for many of the nation’s deeper problems, from incivility in our discourse to an inability to set aside intransigent partisanship.
Generosity in describing one’s foes is a rarity, especially among conspiracy theorists. But Firsters have carried their animus against the Tea Party to unprecedented heights by failing to credit it with what is today right before everyone’s eyes. Without the Tea Party, there would be no debt limit negotiations going on, just as there would have been no budget reduction deal last December. Without the Tea Party, President Obama would not be posing as the judicious statesman, but would be pushing –as in truth he still is–for more stimulus and further investments in high-speed rail. Whatever pressure now exists to treat the debt problem derives directly or indirectly from the explosion of energy that has been generated by the Tea Party.
In lambasting the Tea Party movement for its stubborness, Firsters have silently acknowledged what for two years they had all but denied. Instead of being in fact a front for racism or opposition to abortion, the “baggers,” as they have been derisively called, are genuinely insistent on cutting spending and containing the growth of government. Everything is less complicated than it seems. Supporters of the Tea Party are who they said they were. …
James Pethokoukis looks at Goldman’s new numbers and the effects on the administration.
Last night in a new report, Democrat-friendly Goldman Sachs dropped an economic bomb on President Obama’s chances for reelection (bold is mine):
“Following another week of weak economic data, we have cut our estimates for real GDP growth in the second and third quarter of 2011 to 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively, from 2% and 3.25%. Our forecasts for Q4 and 2012 are under review, but even excluding any further changes we now expect the unemployment rate to come down only modestly to 8¾% at the end of 2012.
The main reason for the downgrade is that the high-frequency information on overall economic activity has continued to fall substantially short of our expectations. … Some of this weakness is undoubtedly related to the disruptions to the supply chain—specifically in the auto sector—following the East Japan earthquake. By our estimates, this disruption has subtracted around ½ percentage point from second-quarter GDP growth. We expect this hit to reverse fully in the next couple of months, and this could add ½ point to third-quarter GDP growth. Moreover, some of the hit from higher energy costs is probably also temporary, as crude prices are down on net over the past three months. But the slowdown of recent months goes well beyond what can be explained with these temporary effects. … final demand growth has slowed to a pace that is typically only seen in recessions. .. Moreover, if the economy returns to recession—not our forecast, but clearly a possibility given the recent numbers …”
In Forbes, Peter Ferrara says they have tried everything in Washington except Reaganomics.
President Barack Obama, Congressional Democrats, and the Washington Establishment have now tried everything to revive America’s moribund economy…except Reaganomics. We have seen over a trillion in Keynesian stimulus spending, record shattering deficits, easy money, bank bailouts, mortgage bailouts, low interest rates, even fake, Keynesian, “tax cuts” (based on tax credits rather than reduced rates).
Yet, at no point in the last 70 years, going back to the Great Depression, has the American economy suffered unemployment this high for this long, or such extended stagnation without a rebound or recovery. The American economy does not lie flat on its back for years and years like this, except during the Depression. Even in the 1970s era, the economy persistently rebounded after four worsening recession cycles.
Moreover, the historical record in America is the deeper the downturn the stronger the recovery. Based on this history, America should be in the second year of a booming recovery by now. Instead we have yet another failure of Keynesian economics.
Last Friday’s unemployment report showed that 3.5 years after the last recession started, still virtually no new jobs were being created, and unemployment was persistently rising again. Prior to this, since the Great Depression recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously being 16 months. But in June, 42 months after the last recession began, unemployment rose again to 9.2%.
The Depression has already arrived for blacks, with unemployment at 16.2% persisting for two years now. The same is true for Hispanics, with long term double digit unemployment persisting at 11.6%, teenagers at 24.5%, black teenagers 40%. …
WSJ tells us about architecture students at Auburn with a fascinating project – a modest 500 square foot home built for $20,000. So, the cost is different, but rural Alabama residents have caught up to the life styles of those in New York City.
For many people with modest incomes, trailers are the only real option for home ownership. But trailers deteriorate quickly and depreciate over time. Six years ago, the Rural Studio, a program based in western Alabama and run by Auburn University’s architecture school, launched the $20K House Project, with the goal of producing a model home for $20,000. (At that cost, the resident’s monthly payment would be about $100 under the federal Section 502 Direct Loan program.) Last month, a team of four postgraduate students completed the latest home, the 10th one developed by the project.
The process starts each fall with research, as the students debate the pros and cons of previous designs. After months of planning, most of the construction is done within seven weeks, with $13,000 budgeted for materials and $7,000 for labor. “We’re very close to a buildable model,” says outreach instructor Danny Wicke.
The structure is a 26-by-26-foot square, with 530 interior square feet. ..