B Hussein's Cabinet

I could not helped but be alarmed by some of the choices B Hussein seems to be floating around regarding Cabinet posts. Most alarming to me is Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas for Energy Secretary.

Gov. Sebelius is against coal burning power plants. In fact, she has vetoed two bills that would have allowed two new clean, coal fired plants in Western Kansas. These plants would have provide cheap, clean power for thousands of American families. The plants would have created thousands of new jobs and used abundant American coal.

Gov. Sebelius was also one of the first to jump on the bandwagon to bash big oil companies for higher gas prices. She was quoted in one meeting saying to oil executives "oh, you are one of those supply and demand people." She has yet to issue any public apology that I have seen since gas prices dropped under $2/gal here in Kansas. I guess the greedy oil companies decided to be less greedy all of a sudden.

Gov. Sebelius has absolutely no experience with energy. Her experience is in insurance, not energy. This kind of consideration is further evidence that B Hussein is not fit for executive branch service. Judgement like this will surely lead our great nation in the wrong direction.

B Hussein and Coal

NRA Video

B Hussein Creates Jobs

He keeps saying that his energy plan will create jobs. However, he fails to say how he will create 5 million new jobs. Here is how I see it:

1. The government taxes the people
2. Higher taxes mean businesses have less capital at their disposal
3. Less capital means fewer jobs created or layoffs
4. B Hussein gives favors to "green" (AKA politically connected) industries to subsidize jobs.
5. Those jobs create no real value for society (unlike #3) since private industry did not think enough of the technology to invest in it before it was subsidized (think ethanol and syn fuel)
6. We now have 5 million people that could be working in productive industries that are instead consuming precious capital that the government took from #1.
7. Technology is not cost effective so government provides more short-term (AKA long-term) subsidies.
8. Repeat #1

While there might be 5 Million new jobs, there were certainly more than 5 Million before. Government redistribution is not free as the tax machine might take in $10 but only spit out $9. That would assume government is 90% efficient, wouldn't that be nice? Government never creates jobs, only work (AKA the hole diggers and hole fillers), and consumes capital the private sector would otherwise use to produce useful products.

Lieberman Was The Right Choice

Sen. Lieberman was the right choice for McCain's VP because he is a good leader. His leadership is visible in his policy of free trade. He could not be more correct in saying that free trade helps the lowest income people in our country. It is cheap goods from all over the world that has raised the standard of living of the lowest rungs of the US economic ladder.

Here is Lieberman's editorial in IBD:

To begin with, trade supports millions of jobs in America. All told, 25% of jobs in the U.S. today are linked to world trade. And in the current economic downturn, exports are one of our few growth sectors. Demand for American exports is at the highest level ever, total exports are up 7% in the first six months of the year, and our exports to China are up 20% from a year ago.

Free trade also means that ordinary Americans pay lower prices for consumer goods. Anti-trade policies, by contrast, translate to higher prices from the grocery store to the shopping mall — an indirect tax increase that inflicts the greatest harm on those who have the least money to spend.

Forty years ago, countries in Asia like South Korea and Singapore were as impoverished as their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, hundreds of millions of people in Asia enjoy middle class prosperity, with hundreds of millions more soon following in their path. This is one of the great success stories of human history — and it was made possible by trade.

Sadly, today's Democratic Party, including Sen. Obama, has largely turned its back on this proud legacy. Sen. Obama, for instance, voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement, has threatened to renegotiate NAFTA — calling it a "bad deal" — and opposes pending free-trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia.

This anti-trade posture is ironic, given Sen. Obama's pledge to restore America's reputation around the world. In fact, free trade is the embodiment of international cooperation. By pledging to backtrack on longstanding agreements, throw up protectionist barriers, and abandon our closest allies, Sen. Obama has charted a course that will undermine our global leadership and risk putting our country into a deep recession.

Green Jobs, The Policy Utopia

The fact that B Hussein keeps talking about a $150B strategic investment in green energy that will create 5 million new jobs is ridiculous. First off all, that represents over $30,000 for each "created" job. That is money taken from taxpayers that is no longer available for private sector investment. If B Hussein is going to "give" $150B out in the form of grants, that means the government will have to confiscate even more money since the cost of government is not free. So is this new Green Bureaucracy going to cost another couple billion to operate? After all, it is strategic investment meaning that is will require some thought.

So the next question is who will decide who gets these grants? Al Gore perhaps? There will be a gold rush reaction to this hand out with everyone with a inkling of a green idea seeking the "free" money. We tried this before with Carter's synthetic fuel initiative. What did we get, nothing. What did it cost, billions.

Let's assume some of these projects do not pan out or work. I doubt these projects will be 100% successful. So who is going to decide to cut-off these dysfunctional projects? Will it be the same bureaucrats that decided to fund them in the first place? Or will the Green Initiative just keep throwing more money at these worthless projects?

B Hussein's initiative is utterly preposterous. Only the market can effectively allocate funds. Venture capitalists and investors take risk based on the potential pay off in future profits. When those profits prove illusive, they stop funding these investments. They also more carefully scrutinize these investments before investing a dime. Therefore, only the best projects get funding.

Government cannot replicated the venture capitalist. There is no profit incentive or loss penalty for poor decisions in government. You can bet this will be a hugely unsuccessful program.

Stossel writes a great piece this week in Townhall.com.

The B Hussein Tax Plan

He says lower taxes for the "middle class" but that is just more rhetoric. From The American:

Sowell Must Read

Sowell puts the B Hussein rhetoric to task.

Barack Obama's "change" is a recycling of the kinds of policies and rhetoric of the New Deal that prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s far beyond the duration of any depression before or since.

These are the same kinds of liberal policies that led to double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and rising unemployment during the Carter administration. These are "back to the future" changes to economic disasters that need repeating.

Where are the people to vouch for B Hussein?

Charles Krauthammer makes a great point in his Townhall.com piece this week. Just where are the people that can say they have accomplished something with B Hussein or can vouch for his character? No one is coming forward except his wife? The woman that just recently was proud of her country?

So where are the colleagues? The buddies? The political or spiritual soul mates? His most important spiritual adviser and mentor was Jeremiah Wright. But he's out. Then there's William Ayers, with whom he served on a board. He's out. Where are the others?

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

B Hussein Nonsense

George Will has a great column in the Washington Post today.

Obama, who might be the last person to learn that schools' cognitive outputs are not simply functions of financial inputs, promises more money for teachers, who, as usual, are about 10 percent of the Democrats' convention delegates and alternates. He waxes indignant about approximately 150,000 jobs sent overseas each year -- less than 1 percent of the number of jobs normally lost and gained in the creative destruction of America's dynamic economy. U.S. exports are fending off a recession while he complains about free trade. He deplores NAFTA, although since it was implemented in 1994, the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies have grown 50 percent, 46 percent and 54 percent, respectively.

Obama's rhetorical extravagances are inversely proportional to his details, as when he promises "nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy" in order to "end the age of oil." The diminished enthusiasm of some voters hitherto receptive to his appeals might have something to do with the seepage of reality from his rhetoric. Voters understand that neither the "transformation" nor the "end" will or should occur. His dreamy certitude that "alternative" fuels will quickly become real alternatives is an energy policy akin to an old vaudeville joke: "If we had some eggs, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham."

I Pledge Allegiance.....

This really says it all.

Biden

From David Letterman tonight:

"Nothing says change like 35 years in the Senate."

The Laughter Is The Result of Obamanomics

George Will writes a great column on Townhall.com today. Some snippets:

By 2012 he would "require" the economy's huge energy sector to -- here things become comic -- supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America's energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

Obama is (this is part of liberalism's catechism) leery of nuclear power. He also says -- and might say so even if Nevada were not a swing state -- he distrusts the safety of Nevada's Yucca Mountain for storage of radioactive waste. Evidently he prefers today's situation -- nuclear waste stored at 126 inherently insecure above-ground sites in 39 states, within 75 miles of where more than 161 million Americans live.

But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: "I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming -- an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

No he won't. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans -- 40 million more households. So Obama's cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those "in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood."

Obamanomics and Taxes

Hard to believe you can preserve entitlement benefits for all and only raise taxes on 3% of the population.

Then again, he thinks he can raise Capital Gains taxes 5% and pay for $600B in new spending he is proposing in the campaign. This guy must really be the second coming if he can pull of a miracle like that. It would surely be the biggest miracle since Christ fed the multitudes with a basket of fish and bread.

This editorial in today's WSJ gives some good background on the B Hussein tax plan.

Then again, B Hussein could be a giant fraud and liar....

In a June 26 interview on the Fox Business channel, Mr. Obama said he wanted to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5% of incomes -- that is, about $145,000 per year. He also voted for the Democrats' fiscal year 2009 Budget Resolution, which would raise taxes on individuals earning $42,000 or more.

B Hussein's Tax Plan

As I suspected, the tax plan proposed by B Hussein is really just a new form of Welfare. Tax credits for people that do not even pay taxes is absolutely unbelieveable.

From the WSJ today.

Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer pays nothing in federal income taxes, the government would pay him the whole $1,000.

The latest Congressional Budget Office data shows the bottom 40% of income earners already pays no income taxes. Indeed, they receive a net payment from the federal income tax system -- meaning from the taxpayers -- equal to 3.8% of all federal income taxes, because of the refundable tax credits under current law. The middle 20% of income earners, the true middle class, pays 4.4% of federal income taxes.

Overall, the bottom 60% of income earners pay less than 1% of federal income taxes on net. When "tax credits" primarily go to this group in the form of checks from the government (rather than a reduction in their tax burden) it is simply an abuse of the language to call the spending a tax cut.

Consequently, to say, as the campaign does say, that the candidate's tax plan is a tax cut on net -- and that it would limit taxes to 18.2% of GDP -- is grossly misleading. The Obama tax plan would sharply increase real taxes. It also would come nowhere near to paying for the massive increases in federal spending he has proposed, including the spending that is disguised in the form of refundable tax credits.

B Hussein's Investment Advice...More Government

Good reading from ibd today...

Mr. Obama says that he is going to make you better off by increasing taxes. But taxes are like a gigantic pay cut, and it is hard to see the benefit in that.

Or perhaps Mr. Obama is saying he will increase someone else's taxes and give you some of the loot. Well, maybe so, but you had better make sure you get an extra big share — paid up front.
Economics 101 tells us that Mr. Obama's tax increase would over the next five years damage the economy to the tune of about $2.5 trillion. In doing so, it would reduce incomes by at least 3% and on average each month cost 25,000 jobs. (Perhaps yours.)

A job is too precious a thing for the economy to lose and, once gone, is expensive to recreate. Economywide, the re-creation of a new full-time job on average requires about $500,000 of additional gross domestic product, which in turn typically entails about twice that amount of business capital investment.

Mr. Obama would make job creation even harder by hiking marginal tax rates on capital investment by 35% and greatly expanding the regulatory burden on employers.
Be careful not to trade your job for a "mess of pottage" (Genesis 25:29-34.) Though Mr. Obama may promise you an extra big share from one of his new government spending programs, experience says that things never really work out quite that way.

According to the government's own studies, only about 50% of the promised benefit from government spending ever materializes. The rest seems to disappear "down the drain," as A.P. Herbert predicted.

Investing your money in the government is a sure loser — so bad, in fact, that selling shares in such a bunko operation to the public ought to be against the law. But Mr. Obama is by no means the first politician to do so, and many have gotten themselves elected.

Obamanomics

Not sure where B Hussein's economic advisors got their education, but his tax policy is a wreck. Now he wants to give Seniors a free ride? How is he going to pay for all those programs once those making over $250,000 are tapped out?

When AARP thinks its a bad idea, it must really be a bad idea....

"The proposal would exempt comparatively well off, though not affluent, senior citizens from tax and give them a benefit not generally available to working Americans," said the Tax Policy Center paper. It "helps only those low-income seniors who currently pay income taxes. Those too poor to owe any tax _ arguably those most in need _ would get no benefit."

Even the powerful seniors' lobby AARP doesn't seem excited about Obama's idea. An AARP bulletin on the presidential candidates' tax plans barely mentions it, saying that Obama's proposal could partly offset additional taxes that Obama would impose on seniors through higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains.

From Townhall.com

Another Sowell Classic On B Hussein

Thomas Sowell writes another great column that uncovers what B Hussein is really about.

Sowell on Townhall.com

Obamanomics

Not that we needed any more evidence that B Hussein learned economics from a bubble gum wrapper....

From Cafe Hayek:

Obamanomics

Don Boudreaux

Here's a letter that I sent to the Aurora (Illinois) Beacon News:

Barack Obama proposes to deal with rising gasoline prices by giving a $1,000 "emergency rebate" to consumers - a rebate to be paid for by taxing the so-called "windfall profits" of oil producers ("Obama pitches $1,000 energy rebate checks," August 2).

In other words, a critical part of Sen. Obama's strategy for reigning in high gasoline prices is to subsidize gasoline consumption and more heavily tax its production. This plan - which increases the demand for gasoline and reduces its supply - makes as much sense as trying to put out a fire by dowsing it with jet fuel.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Don't Fall For B Hussein's Move To The Middle

From Jennifer Rubin at the American Spectator:

Obama has been talking a very a good game in the last few months. On taxes, for example, at the Philadelphia Democratic debate in April he swore off tax increases for the middle class, declaring, "Well, I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes, I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes." On The View he likewise announced, "First of all, I don't want higher taxes, I have to pay taxes, and it's no fun. You know I think sometimes there's this presumption that Democrats, we just love taxing people. No, I would prefer to keep taxes as low as possible."

That sounds fairly promising. But the reality is different and McCain will need to bolster his communications effort to make sure voters understand that Obama voted to raise taxes 94 times and specifically to raise income taxes on those making as little as $31,850. Has Obama had a change or heart or is his voting record a reliable indicator of how he would govern if elected president?

Likewise on trade, Obama recently told a CNBC interviewer, "And on trade deals, I believe in free trade. And as somebody who lived overseas, who has family overseas, I've seen what's happened in terms of rising living standards around the globe. And that's a good thing for America, it's good for our national security." That is a far cry from what Obama now admits was "overheated and amplified" protectionist rhetoric he employed to beat Hillary Clinton in the primary.

And on fiscal restraint, Obama again sounds downright responsible when he declares "We account for every single dollar that we propose." However, independent fact checkers point out that Obama hasn't come close to specifying the revenues he wants to raise and the amounts he plans to spend. David Brooks explained that there is just not enough money to pay for all his domestic wish list by simply soaking the rich.

Obama has even been softening his language on corporate taxes. He told the Wall Street Journal in June that he would be open to reducing corporate tax rates. But it is unclear whether he really means it. Just a couple of months ago he told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that planned reductions for corporate taxes were "the exact wrong prescription for America."

Liberal politics wins you a Democrat nomination, not a general election. It should really be no surprise that B Hussein is on the move to the middle. The real question will be what will he actually do if he actually wins? My guess is he will move back to left where his voting record clearly shows his position on issues. However, now that he is a rich man......?