Glenn Beck explains:
Tag Archives: Economy
Bipartisanship Defined. Seriously.
Rush Limbaugh, whom many Republicans in Congress have chosen to ignore for years prior to the recent Obama remarks, makes a serious, sincere effort to reach out and work with the majority party.
The following is an excerpt from the proposed Obama-Limbaugh Bipartisan Stimulus Plan of 2009:
Mine is a genuine compromise. So let’s look at how the vote came out, shall we? Fifty-three percent of voters in this country — we’ll say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans — voted for Obama. Forty-six percent voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Let’s give the remaining 1% to President Obama, so let’s say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $540 billion of the one trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats. The remaining $460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts, as determined by me.
These tax cuts will consist primarily of capital gains tax cuts and corporate tax rate cuts. So Obama gets $540 billion to spend his way. The other people of this country who did not vote for his way get $460 billion spent the way they would like it spent. This is bipartisanship! This is how bipartisanship really works. Okay, Obama wins by a 54-46 majority, so he gets 54% of the trillion bucks. Spend it his way. We get 46% of the trillion bucks to spend our way, and then we compare. Then we see which stimulus actually works and works the fastest, and I will guarantee you that if this plan is adopted, just the announcement that $460 billion will go toward paying for tax cuts, capital gains, and corporate tax rates — we could throw in some personal income tax rate reduction in order to make sure that the voters don’t think it’s all about helping the big guys. But we need jobs, do we not?
Who hires people? Businesses! Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It’s 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. Make the capital gains rate go away for three months, and then get out of the way to see what happens on Wall Street. And once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, you watch what happens to the rest of the private sector. It will follow right along. This would ensure a bipartisan compromise bill, as Democrats have said that they’re always about. It would satisfy the American people’s wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a test, going forward, as to which approach best stimulates the growth of jobs — and it can be measured side by side. It could be determined where the new jobs are coming from.
Read the whole thing.
Cause and Effect
Cause:
“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do. [...]
“Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.”
Effect:
Spending, Bailouts, and the Economy
Fred Thompson comments on the situation we’re in, and the proposals to get us out of it:
Obama Would Bankrupt Coal Industry, Raise Energy Prices to “Change Behavior”
Audio from a speech in San Francisco confirms Barack Obama’s plans to shut down construction of new coal plants:
“I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
“That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.
“The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.
‘It’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
The above goes against the campaign’s pitch to “Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology”.
And for resolving rising consumer energy prices, kiss that goodbye too:
The problem is not technical, uh, and the problem is not mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington. The problem is, uh, can you get the American people to say, “This is really important,” and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. Uh, and climate change is a great example.
You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.
Yes, we need to develop alternative energy resources — but not in the drastic ways proposed by Obama. A balanced transition using current domestic reserves in oil, coal, shale, and natural gas will need to be considered as America’s energy developers work to build and implement the new technologies. What Obama wants us to do is to go “cold turkey” on our current energy resources — and such a sharp move will further depress our economy.
Sadly, voters will choose undefined “change” over common sense.
Update: Maverick & ‘Cuda strike back
Update 2 (11/4): Visual evidence.
It’s Now Official
Biased L.A. Times
We already know the Los Angeles Times is in the tank for Barack Obama. Patterico points out a vicious attempt to smear John McCain on the economy in a recent write-up.
“The economy is passing a kidney stone”
Bill Whittle’s newest essay is up.
Levin, Boortz on the Financial Crisis
On audio, The Great One (h/t: Hot Air).
In text, The Talkmaster (h/t: Jim Rose):
Somewhere in the back of your mind you understand that this is all tied somehow to bad mortgages. If you start reading a bit further to enhance your understanding you run into terms like Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and credit-default swaps, whatever in the world those are. Read further and you find out that a combination of falling home prices and mortgage defaults have put many investment banks and other financial institutions in deep puddin’. All this reading, all this watching the talking heads on TV, and you still don’t really know what in the world is going on here.
Listen and read.
Update: To those who think President Bush did nothing to avoid the subprime nightmare, think again.
For many years the President and his Administration have not only warned of the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at a housing government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) but also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties. President Bush publicly called for GSE reform 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted.
Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President’s repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems.