The White House Council of Economic Advisers today proudly praised the $787 billion stimulus program, claiming that it had created or saved 2.5 to 3.6 million jobs.   Without bothering to debate how the Council arrived at its estimate of jobs saved or created, lets take the average of their estimated jobs (3.05 million) and divide by the cost of the stimulus program of $787 billion.

The government cost the taxpayers $262,333 to “save or create” each job.  Putting aside the obvious nonsense that the government can “create” jobs, if the government continues to “create” jobs in this manner, the country will soon be bankrupt.

Based on the Council of Economic Advisers’ math, we could recover the 8 million jobs lost over the past 3 years at a cost of only $2.1 trillion dollars!

Some more fun facts:

The $787 billion “stimulus” program cost each of the estimated 105 million households in the US $7,495.

The average median household income in 2008 was $52,029.

One certainty is that the average American household would have spend the $7,495 much more wisely than government bureaucrats.   The other certainty is that the government’s public relations effort praising the stimulus plan is just another waste of taxpayer time and money.  According to the New York Times:

The latest CBS News poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans said the stimulus had not improved the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, at 9.5 percent, with few signs of improving in the short term. The reluctance of businesses to add jobs has weighed on other parts of the economy and there are signs that growth has begun to slow.

Aside from wasting $787 billion of the taxpayers money, the next most tragic part of this story is that the government continues to ignore the wisdom of the American people, and continues to insist that the program was a success.  Joe Biden, regarded by many as the biggest buffoon in Washington, had this to say - “I am absolutely confident we are moving in the right direction, absolutely confident”.   This statement should be more than enough to terrify most clear thinking Americans.

Statements made by an absolutely confident Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Depression:

August 11, 1928 - “Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. . . . We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a change to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with he help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

November 1929 - “Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish.”

January 21, 1930 - “Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the he temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.”

A new poll released by the Washington Post-ABC News shows that support for the president has plunged to a new all time low.   A staggering 60% of voters say that they “lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy”.

The poll results should not be a surprise to anyone based on recent state and local election results where voters have shown a resounding denunciation of Obama’s policies.   The country is clearing going in the wrong direction with living standards declining across virtually every income and social group.

The Financial Times assessed Obama’s problems regarding his recent plunge in the polls:

Astonishingly, 55 per cent of citizens think Mr Obama is a “socialist” against only 39 per cent who do not share that diagnosis.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

Big Brother directives flow out of Washington on a massive scale, attempting to micro manage and control every aspect of the economy and our personal lives.  Imbued with an arrogance beyond comprehension, the ruling elite believe they can solve any problem by simply legislating another 2,500 page bill.    The people are no longer being fooled by this nonsense and the recognition is slowly building that Congress could do more good by simply leaving town for an extended period.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

While the Obama administration has been spending trillions on unaffordable health care programs, global warming, financial reform and other matters mostly peripheral to most Americans, the issue of a floundering economy and sky high unemployment go unaddressed.  It’s always “jobs and the economy stupid”.  Without income growth, none of these other programs matter as reported by Bloomberg:

Seven of 10 Americans say reducing unemployment is the priority. At the same time, the public is skeptical of the Obama administration’s stimulus program and wary of more spending, with more than half saying the deficit is “dangerously out of control.”

The public mood is bleak, with 63 percent saying they believe the country is on the wrong track, the most negative reading of Obama’s presidency. After a year of economic growth, 71 percent say the economy is still in recession; another 13 percent say the economy is faltering and will dip back into recession.

Only 1 in 6 say they believe they are personally better off than they were 18 months ago, when President Barack Obama took office. They are more apt to see the economy today as deteriorating than improving.

Based on the direction the country is headed in, a logical mind would wonder why 40% of voters still apparently support Obama.  Here’s some rather dark thoughts on this matter by Wayne Allen Root, 2008 VP nominee for the Libertarian party, as reported by truthorfiction.

Barach Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos — thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.

Barack Obama is my college classmate ( Columbia University , class of ‘83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University . They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they’re alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival … and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

Obama doesn’t care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?

– Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama’s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama “spread the wealth around.”

– Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who’s asking for a 51st state? Who’s asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama’s plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.

– Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America . But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.

– Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions — including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country.

United State Postal Service Goes Postal On Rate Increases

Well, here they go again - another 2 cent or 4.5% increase in the cost of a first class stamp.  The recent history of postal rate increases by the USPS has been on a sharp upward trajectory (courtesy: Wikipedia.org.)

In nine years since 2001, including the newly proposed rate increase, the cost of a stamp will have risen by 35.3%.   Keep in mind that over the past nine years the inflation rate has remained subdued and personal income growth for those in the private sector has been virtually nonexistent.

In March of 2009, John Potter, head of the US Postal Service told Congress that the “Postal Service, which has served America for 234 years, is experiencing a very serious financial crisis because of the downturn in the economy.  We are facing losses of historic proportions…our situation is critical”.   Mr. Potter also noted that “the law constrains us from taking the businesslike actions necessary to fully and properly align our institutional cost base with reduced and evolving customer demand”.

Mr. Potter is correct that the Postal Service is not taking the proper “businesslike actions” but he is dead wrong in his assertion that the Postal Service financial crisis is due to the recession.  The Postal Service is floundering because of it monopolistic position, excessive price increases for mediocre service,  the relentless economics of the Internet and competition by well run private enterprises in the package delivery business.

Consider the following:

-Postal mail volume has seen a steep decline of 20% since 2000.  Continuously raising prices as demand slumps will only increase USPS losses.   Economics 101 Mr. Potter - demand falls as prices increase.  Mail can be sent and bills paid on the Internet at a fraction of the price charged by the USPS - higher stamp prices will merely serve to increase use of the lower cost option.

-USPS lost $3.8 billion last year and expects to lose $7 billion this year.  Additional rate increases to avoid losses will result in a vicious cycle of further reduction of volume for the Post Office, requiring additional rate increases.

-USPS Vice President Steve Kearney warned that the “The Postal Service faces a serious risk of financial insolvency”.  Translation - we will be needing a taxpayer bailout sooner rather than later.

-This from the Wall Street Journal:

Most employees have no-layoff clauses, the starting salaries are about 25% to 30% higher than for comparably skilled private workers, and the fringe benefits are so expensive that the Government Accountability Office says $500 million a year could be saved merely by bringing health benefits into line with those of other federal workers.

The most overdue reform is to strip away the Post Service’s monopoly on first-class mail and bulk mail. Competition is the key ingredient to innovation, low prices and good service.

No private business in America could continually raise prices, lose billions of dollars and then hope to win back customers by promising poorer service.

-As the Post Office continues to furiously raise prices, both volume and revenue continue to plunge, as can be seen by the following figures from the USPS.  The latest large proposed rate increase tells us that the Post Office has truly gone “Postal”  -  repeating the same act again and again and expecting a different result.

The Postal Service has not changed with the times, plodding along like it was still the 1950’s. Attempted organizational changes and cost cutting measures have failed.  Raising rates further is the most self destructive action that the Post Office could possible take.  The Postal Service needs to be dramatically restructured and reduced in size to reflect the basic economic reality of its core business.  Congress should cut the Post Office loose from self defeating regulations of a by gone era, let them operate as a business and close the door on taxpayer bailouts and subsidies.

More on this topic:

Obama Says We Can Do With Health Care What We Did With The Post Office

Why The Post Office Needs To Charge Us More

Government Thwarts Oil Cleanup - Incompetence or Calculated Political Decision?

It has been over two months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico on April 22, 2010.  Estimates of the amount of crude oil gushing into the Gulf range from 60,000 to 100,000 barrels a day causing an ecological disaster along the entire gulf coast.   As residents fume about the slow and nonchalant government cleanup efforts, logical minds are beginning to wonder why the government does not take some common sense efforts to facilitate the cleanup.

DEEPWATER HORIZON

A Government intent on facilitating the cleanup and mitigating the huge environmental damage of the oil spill would address the following:

1. Rather than rejecting offers of foreign government help, this assistance should have been immediately accepted.
2. Suspend EPA rules on the amount of oil allowed in discharge from skimmer boats which is preventing large amounts of oil from being recovered.  Blindly following bureaucratic rules when they do not make sense creates a general sense of incompetence.
3. Large amounts of skimmer boats are not being allowed to participate in the cleanup efforts since by law they must be stationed elsewhere.  Exactly where else would you want the skimmer boats to be when they are urgently needed today in the Gulf?
4. Federal authorities have hampered and restricted local efforts to contain and cleanup the oil spill based on mindless reams of regulations which make no sense under emergency conditions.

Speculation on why the government has reacted at a snail’s pace in addressing the Gulf oil disaster center on basic incompetence and at worst, a calculated political decision.   Consider the following from the Wall Street Journal:

As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.

One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.

Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.

Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.

To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we “embrace a clean energy future.” In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?

Thomas Jefferson, primary writer of the Declaration Of Independence, explains why the American Colonies viewed separation from England was inevitable:

Courtesy: wikipedia.org

Thomas Jefferson argued that:

Parliament was a foreign legislature that was unconstitutionally trying to extend its sovereignty into the colonies.

With American public dissatisfaction and revulsion for Congress at all time highs, would Thomas Jefferson view today’s imperially elite rulers in Washington to be the modern day equivalents of King George?

The Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,^[71] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

July 4, 1776

List of signers

Fifty-six delegates eventually signed the Declaration:

Happy Fourth of July, 2010!