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Feb. 8, 2013
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Jewish World Review
July 5, 2011/ 3 Tamuz, 5771
Stimulating Disaster
By
Arnold Ahlert
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
What happens when the utter fraudulence of Keynesian economics can no longer be denied? You release the information to the public on the Friday of a holiday weekend, and trust your accomplices in the mainstream media will let it slip into the ether by the time Tuesday rolls around. Last Friday is when White House's Council of Economic Advisors, as in three people handpicked by the president himself, released their Seventh Quarterly Report. Why keep it on the down low? Because its a bombshell of a stinker regarding the impact of the economic stimulus package: each job the Obama administration "created or saved" cost $278,000 apiece.
Again, this isn't "hate-filled, right-wing" talk radio putting out the numbers. It's not the cruel, uncaring Republican party, the people who want to ride around in corporate jets while grandma and junior starve. It's the home team, the hope and change cheerleaders, the stimu-holics who promised us that the largest jump start ever given to the nation's economic battery would keep unemployment under 8 percent. It's the folks who told us about "green shoots" of recovery a year and a half ago, and promised us a Recovery Summer last summer.
The numbers? Even they are subject to debate because the council bases their figures on "mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus." For those Americans unfamiliar with econ-speak, that's like saying we're guessing that if we saved some public sector employee's job, and he eats at Joe's Diner, we've also saved the jobs of the waitress who served him, the cook who fried his eggs and the busboy who cleaned his table after the meal. Hence the "saved" part of the immortal phrase "jobs created or saved." The one administration is using to convince Americans that things are better than that which they perceive with their own eyes.
But for the sake of leaving politics out of the equation here, let's just take the council's numbers as the Gospel truth. According to them, the stimulus has added or saving 2.4 million jobs at a cost of $666 billion so far. That's 278K per job, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
If one has a capacity for irony, it should be noted that the president spent most of last week vilifying "rich" Americans, which this administration characterizes as any individual making more than $200K a year and businesses making more than $250K. They're the folks who aren't paying their "fair share" of America's upkeep, according to the Redistributor-in-Chief and his Democrat henchmen. Thus, it becomes rather puzzling that the administration would be bragging about how many more of those evil rich people they've created. Of course, the $278K per job isn't really what each "stimulated" employee got. It's merely the average amount the government spent creating each job.
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Stop and think about that for a minute. Imagine the gargantuan level of government waste and inefficiency (dare I say fraud) in which federal bureaucrats take $666 billion in money we don't have, and manage to mangle its distribution to the point that it costs substantially more than a quarter of a million dollars to create or save a single job. If the government had literally cut a check of $100,000 to each of the ostensible 2.4 million recipients of stimulus funding itself the apotheosis of Barack Obama's desire to "spread the wealth around" the stimulus would have cost $240 billion instead of $666 billion. In other words, he could have purchased the loyalty of 2.4 million Americans for $426 billion less than they've already spent so far.
Perhaps this is the time to bring up the national debt. An irresponsible Bush administration ratcheted it up from $5.6 trillion in 2000, to $9.9 trillion by 2008, an increase of $4.7 trillion in eight years. The debt has now been further ratcheted up to $14.4 trillion by the Obama administration. That's a bump of $4.5 trillion in just over two years. Thus, the level of fiscal irresponsibility perpetrated by an administration relative to it years in office has more than tripled.
And this writer would be remiss if he failed to remind his readers that Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during the last two years of the Bush administration, and that both Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden unfailingly voted for additional spending before they were handed the keys to the national car in 2008.
Remember that the next time Barack Obama talks about how Republicans drove that car into a ditch. Also remember it this week, when once again the president, Congressional Democrats, and their media accomplices attempt to terrify the public and demonize Republicans into accepting a raise in the debt ceiling without significant spending reductions. Trust me when I tell you that grandma and junior will be dying a thousand metaphorical deaths at the hands of private jet owners and other "rapacious" Americans who ought be ashamed of themselves for succeeding beyond what Democrats consider the proper level of compensation in a "socially just" world.
Or at least the proper level of compensation for those fat cats who don't contribute to Democrat campaign coffers. I'm sure when Mr. Obama rails about the rich who don't pay their fair share of taxes, Jobs Czar and GE Chief Executive Jeffery Immelt gets an exemption, even though GE didn't pay a dime of corporate taxes on $14 billion worth of profits in 2010.
Will the colossal failure of the Keynesian-inspired stimulus package be fairly reported? Not a chance. Just as most Americans will never know that the top 5 percent of wage-earners pay 57 percent of federal income taxes, which completely destroys the "rich don't pay their fair share" myth, they will never know the level of ideological and economic bankruptcy to which the "true believers" cling, even when three of their own economic advisors declare their "solutions" to America's economic crisis a bust.
And therein lies the true depravity. Reasonable people make changes when that in which they believe is proved demonstrably false. Hard-core ideologues do not. How hard core are Democrat progressives? Last week they and their media minions were floating trial balloons about how the president could "Constitutionally ignore" budget restraints and raise the debt ceiling without Congressional input. Let me save you from their semantical arguments.
That would be nothing more than gangster government on steroids.
Unfortunately, for a government which is suing an airline for daring to produce planes in a right-to-work state, has sold guns to Mexican cartel members, grants waivers from its own healthcare bill, parades illegal aliens through the Senate to pressure members to pass the DREAM Act, and ignores the War Powers Act of 1973 to fight in Libya, it is business as usual.
If we don't put this bunch out of business in 2012, we're nuts.
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Comment on JWR Contributor Arnold Ahlert's column, by clicking here.
Previously:
06/30/11: Progressivism Masquerading as Education
06/27/11: America: Greece With Better PR
06/23/11: NBC-ya Later
06/19/11: One Man's Conversation About Race
06/10/11: An Exhibitionist in an Exhibitionist Age
06/07/11: NAACP Betrays Black American Schoolchildren
06/02/11: For the First Time in My Adult Life . . .
05/31/11: If I Were President
05/25/11: California Dreamin'
05/23/11: On Wisconsin!
05/20/11: Obama's Farewell to Israel Speech
05/16/11: Krauthammering Amnesty
05/11/11: Bounce, My Backside
05/09/11: The Epicenter of Progressive Contempt for the Rule of Law
05/03/11: SEALing Osama's Fate
05/02/11: The Education plantation
04/24/11: The Bell May Toll for Jersey Toll Collectors
04/19/11: From Medical Dependency to Dependency on the Welfare State
04/14/11: Trumping the Debate
04/06/11: It Takes a Bigot to Expose a Death Cult
04/04/11: Charlie and Snookie --- and Barack
03/30/11: Disabling America, One Lawsuit at a Time
03/28/11: The MSM Kills the Kill Team Story
03/23/11: Another Military Scandal
03/21/11: Barry, Joe, Helen and Wisconsin Teachers
03/16/11: The Inevitable Viability of Conservatism
03/14/11: Progressives in Their Own Words
03/09/11: $61 Billion in Cuts --- Vs. $223 Billion in One Month of Spending
03/07/11: Bean Bag B.S.
03/02/11: A Green Catastrophe in the Making
02/28/11: Ain't Noting Like the Real Thing
02/23/11: Progressive Rot vs. the ROTC
02/21/11: Wisconsin: Progressivism in All its Ugly Glory
02/18/11: News reporters --- or Narrative Shapers?
02/16/11: The Presidents Budget Proposal: An Obamination of Progressive Profligacy
02/14/11: Only Another 9/11 Will Alter the Illegal Immigration Status Quo
02/10/11: Is O'Reilly losing his touch or is he just irresponsible?
02/07/11: Tossing Britain Under the Bus
02/03/11: Starving the World In Order to Save It
01/31/11: Walking the Middle East Tightrope
01/27/11: Small-scale Terrorist Attacks: Big Strategy?
01/24/11: Jeffery Immelt: A Crony Capitalist In Charge of Job Creation
01/20/11: An Intimate Prime-time Interview
01/17/11: Progressives: Always Angry, Newly Desperate
01/12/11: Twain vs. the Totalitarians
01/10/11: Politically Correct Passports?
01/05/11: Showdown at the Fiscal Corral
01/03/11: Reading the Constitution Aloud is a Good Start
12/30/10: Getting Our Moral Mojo Back
12/27/10: PC Airport Safety is an Oxymoron
12/23/10: Getting America Back On Track
12/20/10: A Collectivist Coalition of Convenience
12/15/10: The President Who Wasn't There
12/13/10: Tech-No!
12/08/10: A Lethal Military, Inclusive or Not
12/06/10: The Unexpected Consequences of Progressivism
12/01/10: Leakers and Losers
11/29/10: We Won, Part One
11/22/10: Keep Your Hands Off My Constitution
11/17/10: Grope and Change
11/14/10: Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time
11/11/10: Checks (and Balances), Please
11/08/10: Curtain Up, Progressives Down
11/04/10: Last Chance, Republicans
11/01/10: By Their Own Words Shall Ye Know Them
10/28/10: Progressive Determination to Undermine American Elections
10/25/10: Shock, but more importantly, action: De-Unionize Public Schools now
10/20/10: Multiculturalism? Check, Please
10/18/10: Healthcare: Alice in Wonderland vs. The Constitution
10/11/10: Vote for Restoring the Rule of Law in November
10/11/10: Dems: Running From Clarity
10/07/10: Hypersensitive Hogwash
10/04/10: Comprehensive Con Artists
09/29/10: Why Dems Are Going Down in November
09/27/10: The Unholiest of Unholy Alliances
09/22/10: Two Words for Republicans to Remember: I Won
09/20/10: Purging Me First Politicians
09/17/10: No More Lesser of Two Evils
09/15/10: Recovery Arms Race
09/13/10: Bigots in the Majority --- Again?
09/09/10: Giving Voters Something to Vote For
09/07/10: Irresponsible Dems, Incomprehensible Bills
09/02/10: War Weary Americans vs. Implacable Islamists
08/31/10: A Dream Debased
08/25/10: American Bigots Versus Media Propagandists
08/23/10: Recovery Bummer
08/19/10: An Unholy Alliance of Radicals
08/16/10: You've Lost America, Mr. President
08/13/10: The Twin Towers of Progressive Disconnect
08/11/10: A Far Better National Discussion
08/09/10: It's Only One Dead Nun
08/06/10: Incremental Tyranny
08/04/10: Ground Zero Mosque: Context Counts
08/02/10: The Arizona Ruling: a Gift for November
07/29/10: The United Cities of America
07/26/10: JournoList: Coordinated Ideological Bankruptcy
07/20/10: Go For Broke Or Get Out of the Way
07/14/10: You're a Liberal/Progressive if You Believe…
07/12/10: $33-an-hour--For Sleeping On the Job
07/08/10: Extortionist Government
07/06/10: Commerce Clause Totalitarians
07/01/10: Another Public School Travesty in MA
06/30/10: Calling YOUR Bluff, Mr. President
06/28/10: A Trifecta of Progressive Corruption
06/23/10: Plug the Darn Hole --- In Our Border
06/21/10: Our Empty-Suit-in-Chief
06/16/10: Betraying Our Children
06/14/10: Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt?
06/07/10: Politically Correct Warfare
06/01/10: Bill Maher's Black President
05/25/10: A Mosque At Ground Zero
05/23/10: Libs Stand Tall --- For Mexico
05/19/10: The 'Unintended Consequences' of Liberalism
05/17/10: 'Los' Suns: Stuck on Stupido
05/12/10: Union Audacity: Yes We Will!
05/10/10: Greeks, Leaks and and Double-Speak
05/05/10: Twelve Million Illegals --- or Thirty?
05/02/10: Republicans: Playing Not to Lose Doesn't Cut It
04/28/10: Arizona: Progressivism's Waterloo?
04/26/10: Son of Amnesty
04/22/10: Mortgages and Moral Meltdowns
04/20/10: Bashing Christians Or Gays?
04/15/10: Personal Integri-tea
04/12/10: Fools, Tools and Ghouls
04/08/10: (Tea) Party On
04/05/10: The Triumph of Mediocrity
04/02/10: Two For the Road
03/29/10: The Innate Immorality of Liberalism
03/24/10: The Art of War
03/22/10: I Want My Country Back
03/18/10: A Perpetual Process
03/17/10: American Exhibitionists
03/15/10: A Light Bulb Moment of Clarity
03/10/10: Little Things Mean A Lot
02/03/10: Budgetary Fork in the Road
02/01/10: Liberal Economic Illiteracy
01/27/10: Roe-ing and Wade-ing Back to Reason
01/25/10: Arrogance When Up, Denial When Down
01/20/10: Connecting the Educational Dots
01/19/10: The Next Tea Party?
01/15/10: The Myth That Keeps on Giving
01/13/10: Airport Security Begins Away From the Airport
01/11/10: Secrets and Lies
01/08/10: Embracing Bigotry or Rejecting Bullying?
01/06/10: Hanging by an Ideological Thread
01/04/10: Our Wonderama Bureaucracy
12/30/09: A Day Off
12/28/09: Dangerous Myths
12/25/09: I, Me, Mine
12/23/09: A Very Harry Christmas
12/21/09: My Opinon
12/18/09: The Party of Repeal
12/15/09: Privileged Exemption
11/30/09: Settled Science and Unsettled Children
11/30/09: American Sharia Law
11/23/09:The Trial (Travesty) of the Century
11/04/09: American Vampires and Their Political Enablers
11/01/09: Opting Out of Insanity?
10/28/09: Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer. Brain Required
10/26/09: Communism: Nazism With Better PR
10/21/09: Just Asking
10/16/09: Cost Projections vs. Actual Costs, or Hope and Change vs. Reality
10/14/09: News you can use …
10/07/09: Incremental Insidiousness
10/05/09: MIA: Common Sense and Common Decency
09/30/09: Iran: Bad Options and Unpreparedness
09/21/09: Crying Racism: the Last Refuge of Scoundrels
09/11/09: 9/11 Cannot Be Sanitized
09/08/09: Truthers and Consequences
09/01/09: A Paper Trail Challenge for the Mainstream Media
08/31/09: Drowning in Amorality
08/26/09: The Republican Recovery Program
© 2011, Arnold Ahlert
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