Obamacare Adds Employees To The IRS
Feb 16, 2011 Political
Obamacare will cost a lot of money instead of saving money like we were told (lied to) when it was introduced. We are already seeing this as the IRS will need thousands of new agents to implement the law. The IRS will effectively become an enforcer of a health care law that has been ruled unconstitutional.
The IRS will need 81 new agents just to keep track of the new tax on tanning salons and 76 will keep track on those who make and import drugs to make sure they pay the new fees imposed on them. Does anyone with a brain actually think these taxes and fees will NOT be passed on to the consumer?
This increase on consumers will add to the misery being felt by consumers who are paying a lot more for things since Obama took office. Dick Morris has a very sobering chart posted at his website. This chart shows how bad things have gotten under Obama.
The law will not create private sector jobs but it will certainly add to an already inflated federal payroll.
And it will add more costs to consumers.
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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What A Difference A Year Makes
Dec 11, 2009 Political
It has been a year since Barack Obama won the national election by a pretty good margin by running on his I am not Bush and Hope and Change platform. People were thrilled with him. Blacks were able to ignore his shortcomings and vote for him because he is a Democrat and he is black and the youth were able to vote for him because he promised to give them everything.
The shininess has worn off Obama and now that the newness has worn off people are able to see that he is nothing more than a typical politician. He promised transparency but has not been transparent about very much. Health care is debated behind closed doors and not on CSPAN as he promised. His personal records are locked up tighter than a gnat’s behind and he has followed many of the things that George W. Bush did, much to the displeasure of his base.
Obama is a man child who is trying to do a job for which he is unqualified and lacks experience to do. He is doing that job the Chicago way and turning DC into a bigger thug infested rat’s nest than it was before he arrived.
Any wonder why some folks are beginning to express displeasure and wishing that Bush were still president? A new poll shows that 44% of respondents wish Bush were still president.
Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore, which is good news generally for Republicans and especially ones like Rob Portman who are running for office and have close ties to the former President.
Given that the Democrats were in charge of the nation when it went to hell (don’t fall for the “Republicans were in charge when things went bad” meme) and that they were responsible for ignoring the warning signs it is no wonder that people long for the days when the adults were in charge.
This number will get larger once inflation arrives and the economy fails to make any real improvement. The elections of 2010 are 11 months away but it is not looking good for the party that has been in power for the last three years.
Stubborn Facts has posters of who we really miss.
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Tags: Bush, Democrats, economy, inflation, miss me yet, Obama
The Inflation Will Come
Jun 10, 2009 Political
Arthur B. Laffer has an article up at the Wall Street Journal (one of the only papers with increased circulation) where he discusses the inflation and high interest rates that will most assuredly come as a result of the out of control spending and the printing of more and more money. Laffer does a great job of going through the issues and the consequences. He has this bit of frightening information:
It’s difficult to estimate the magnitude of the inflationary and interest-rate consequences of the Fed’s actions because, frankly, we haven’t ever seen anything like this in the U.S. To date what’s happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits. Gold prices went from $35 per ounce to $850 per ounce, and the dollar collapsed on the foreign exchanges. It wasn’t a pretty picture. WSJ
There are quite a few people who say that there will be little or no inflation and some of them comment here. They seem to have a problem grasping the concept that actions have consequences and the consequences of out of control spending will be grave indeed.
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Tags: arthur laffer, inflation, interest rates
Germany Was Right About Stimulus
Jun 9, 2009 Political
Barack Obama said we needed to pass the stimulus package or things could worsen. He said we could go into a tailspin, a spiral from which we might not recover. The very fear tactics he criticized Bush for were front and center. Obama said that if we did not pass the stimulus that unemployment would be over 9% but if we did pass it unemployment would be around 8%. He got it passed and unemployment is now at 9.4%. My liberal friends dismiss this and say that these are just estimates and predictions. If this is the case and he was this wrong, why should we pay attention to any of his other predictions?
Obama tried to get Angela Merkel of Germany to pass a huge stimulus and she said NO. The Keynesian economists were not happy. Merkel took the same approach that I wanted us to take, and that was not to spend the money.
Looks like she was correct. According to the AP (via Forbes) The unemployment rate in Germany is dropping and jobs are being created or or filled (or are they being saved).
The number of jobless dropped 127,000 in May to 3.458 million for a 0.4 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent, the Nuremberg-based agency said. Forbes
The article does indicate that some of these are seasonal jobs and that there might not be a lasting recovery. The important thing to take away is that Germany did not spend huge sums of money for a stimulus and the country did not go into a tailspin and into a spiral from which it might not recover.
In other words, they are seeing some improvement that might not be sustained but that is better than ours and they did not spend a trillion dollars. As I said, the economy moves in cycles and there will be recessions. Our biggest mistake is to intervene and manipulate the economy because it eventually adds up. All the interventions of the past exploded in 2008 (along with Democratic housing market antics). If we let the economy move in its normal cycles things will get better faster.
The US will lag behind Germany in recovery because we made the same mistakes that FDR did during the Great Depression.
What makes anyone think that government can fix the problem it created? If spending were the solution we would not have a problem because government has been on a spending spree for years.
Unemployment will be in the double digits along with inflation right after we suffer the deflationary cycle. All the stimulus in the world will not help.
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Tags: depression, germany, inflation, merkel, Obama, stimulus