The "fiscal cliff" compromise

There are a lot of posts I see, from various liberal commentators, complaining that President Obama gave up too much. And there are a lot of posts I see on the other side, saying that the Republicans gave up too much. The fact that we see both of these means it's probably a good sign. There is still a necessary vote in the House of Representatives, of course, so it's not a done deal. But it's quite obvious that neither side can get all it wants. And I think that when both sides start off as far apart as they were, it can only be a good sign that both sides are unhappy.

There were a lot of issues, of course, that were not settled — kicking the can down the road a while. But with less of a time crunch, perhaps some compromise can be attained on these too — but even if not, the worst of the “fiscal cliff” crisis has been averted.

The only way a better solution could have been reached was if Mitt Romney had been elected to the Presidency. So under the circumstances, this was the best that could have been hoped for. And thanks to Vice-President Joseph Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for negotiating it.

More on the "fiscal cliff" controversy

I recently had an exchange of e-mails with my brother, who is politically somewhat more conservative than myself, though we are closer to each other in our views than either of us is to those our parents held. Some interesting points were made, which I will make public here. First, after I referred him to my post:

Actually, I read similar ideas to yours recently, soak the really, really rich, but leave the really rich alone. Well said on neither side being willing to compromise, when you wrote it, but there is breaking news. Joe Biden, the Clown Prince of Buffoonery, was quoted yesterday as saying that it doesn't have to be exactly 37 percent for the top bracket, it could be less, it's just the principle that the rich have to pay more.

To which my response was:

I suspect that some compromise like this will be attained in the end. What we really don't know is what is going on behind closed doors in secret negotiations, where Boehner's lieutenants and Obama's can make deals that neither can endorse in public because of the socialistic elements in the Administration and the TEA Party contingent within the House GOP.

He continued:

The Republicans were willing to compromise by expanding revenue, 800 billion worth, but that wasn't enough for the Dems, and is too much for the TEA Party.

What we have here are two opposed sides ON PRINCIPLE. (Old Yiddish saying: "Corrupt officials can be bribed into doing the right thing, but men of principle are much more expensive.")

To the Socialists, the high-earners are anathema. They contradict the very foundation of Marxism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. They get paid more than (the Marxists think that) they need.

To the Republicans, high-earners provide the life-blood and impetus of life's flows, without their spark of energy, the society would fail and wither. Everyone else (and that includes you and me) are hangers on, who should just shut up and follow, unless we want to become entrepreneurs and get some skin in the game. This is best represented by the works of Ayn Rand.

I had to agree with his comment that “[w]hat we have here are two opposed sides ON PRINCIPLE.” But my main point is that:

All that you say is true. BUT, sometimes it is necessary to make some concessions even from one's principles. The socialistic Democrats control the White House and (except for the filibuster rule) the Senate. The Republicans control the House. Nothing can be done at all unless all three can find agreement — the Madisonian principle enshrined in the Constitution. If neither one gives an inch, a result occurs that neither side wants to happen — it's like Prisoner's Dilemma: you have to make what seems to be the worse choice, or the net result is the worst possible alternative.

I'm willing to say as much publicly, and so this post.

The blame is shared

Most of the time, I have been siding with the Republicans in their opposition to President Barack Obama's ideas. And in fact I still think that the President must be faulted in these “fiscal cliff” negotiations for his absolute refusal to make the slightest move toward a compromise. But the Republicans are not doing so well in this exchange either. I don't see much willingness to compromise on their part, and I have to give credit to at least one Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, for actually putting forth an idea: Accept that some of the highest-income taxpayers will have to see a tax rate increase — that's what any compromise must be between Obama's “raise the rates on all over $250,000” plan and the GOP's “raise no rates on anybody” plan. But set the barrier higher. Sen. Schumer proposed $1,000,000, and perhaps a GOP counterproposal would move towards that point; but setting it still higher, say $2,500,000. But I don't see anyone on the GOP side making proposals like this.

If nobody on either side is willing to move toward the other, we will surely go over the cliff. And except for Sen. Schumer, I see nobody moving an inch.

And he still won't give an inch

It looks as though President Barack Obama is still unable to compromise on the issues involved in the “fiscal cliff” — he has just made a proposal to Congress that says, in effect, “Take it or leave it: my way or the highway.” Of course, the plan won't get out of committee in the House. But he'll try to blame the Republicans — and a lot of the American people will fall for his charges, I'm afraid.

If only John McCain were in the White House.

Jay Leno on Obama's economy

Most of the media is firmly in Barack Obama's corner. I was not aware that Jay Leno was of a different stripe. But here is a quote that deserves spreading about.

One of President Obama's winning points last night was about how sanctions against Iran are crippling their economy. And believe me, if anyone knows how to cripple an economy it's President Obama.

What the Democrats are saying

I get a lot of e-mail, ostensibly from such people as Mitt Romney and John McCain, asking me to donate money to the Romney-Ryan campaign. I don't have a lot of money, so I don't donate; I figure my blog posts contribute more than I could afford, so I think I'm doing my part. My wife is an enrolled Democrat, and she gets entirely different appeals, mainly by postal mail, since her e-mail presence on the Net is not as great. And recently, one of those letters — four printed pages long — arrived in her mail. Now, they did a good job of personalizing it — her first name appears in the text of the letter several times — and it ostensibly comes from President Barack Obama himself. (In fact the return address on the back of the envelope says “Obama Victory Fund 2012,” with a Chicago address. But the upper lefthand corner of the front of the envelope, where you might, at first glance, think is the return address, says “President Barack Obama.”)

Now my wife, though (as I said) an enrolled Democrat, is not a big fan of President Barack Obama, so it is a bit of a laugh that she gets a request for campaign donations. She is not certain of what her vote will be this November, but has said that it will “probably” be for Mitt Romney, but if not, then for a third-party candidate; certainly not for Obama.

Well, I don't often see what kind of nonsense the Democrats send out in their campaign funds appeals, so it was interesting to read this letter. Since it was addressed to Democrats, it is not terribly surprising that it began:

Four years ago, you and I began a journey together.

Of course, the addressee, my wife, did not begin that journey with Pres. Obama — she voted for John McCain — but the Obama campaign headquarters had no way of knowing that. However, one thing that my wife agreed with — and, in fact, so do I — began a few short paragraphs down:

Over the next several months, this path to the 2012 elections will take many twists and many turns. Polls will go up and down. And in the coming weeks, Governor Romney and I…

(remember, this purports to be from Pres. Obama)

…will spend time debating our records and experience, Republicans and Democrats will have a frank exchange on the issues — as we should.

Though we will have many differences over the course of this election, there's one place where we stand in complete agreement with our opponents. This election is about our economic future.

Again, I will skip a few short paragraphs to another point that I cannot find objectionable:

… what is holding us back is not a lack of big ideas. It isn't a matter of finding the right technical solution. Both parties have laid out their policies on the table for all to see. What's holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views of which direction America should take.

And this election is our chance to break that stalemate.

The next sentence is the request for that monetary donation, addressed to my wife by her first name. Of course, to my mind, the best “chance to break that stalemate” is to send Pres. Obama packing, back to Chicago, and put Governor Romney in his place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

In the next few paragraphs the letter refers to Romney's promise to reduce stifling regulations and lower taxes — of course, in terms that imply that this is a bad thing — the description refers to “regulations designed to protect consumers and workers” without mentioning that these regulations have cost millions of jobs by making money that would better be spent on wages go into lawyers' pockets defending companies from frivolous suits, for example. And the letter speaks of cuts to programs such as “medical research grants for things like Alzheimer's and cancer and AIDS,” but these are mere speculations; the Romney budget has not been presented in full, so Obama is picking and choosing where the cuts will fall, not producing anything that is justified by an actual Romney proposal!

Of course, the letter presents the repeal of “the Affordable Care Act” as “eliminat[ing] health insurance for 33 million Americans.” Romney would repeal this bizarre monster of a legislative act, to be sure, but he will certainly propose new legislation which will provide for those Americans who want it to have affordable insurance — without forcing it on people who do not need or want it, and without making people violate their religious tenets. Of that I am certain.

One point that I think is interesting to read, though I suppose not unexpected, was:

The economic vision of Mr. Romney and his allies in Congress was tested just a few years ago. We tried this. Their policies did not grow the economy.

Well, the big laugh that these words brought was because the recession that we are in now began only a few months before the election that brought Pres. Obama and the Democrats in Congress to power! Pres. Obama is claiming that the 3½ years he's been in power has not been enough to grow the economy — that he needs four more. But Pres. Bush had about four months to fix the economy — not years, but, I repeat, months. So can he really say that “[w]e tried this ([t]he economic vision of Mr. Romney and his allies in Congress)” and “[t]heir policies did not grow the economy”? No, the whole point is that the country, in a scare caused by the economic drop, tried then-Senator Obama's ideas, and it was his policies which did not grow the economy. The Republican policies were not given a chance.

I'm not going to cite more of the letter; I think I have shown the kind of appeal the President is making. Yes, I agree that this election is a choice between two fundamentally different views of the way this country should go: the view of Abraham Lincoln — that I quote in the header to this blog:

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves — in their separate, individual capacities.

or the view of Karl Marx:

From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.

I know which way I want this nation to go. With Lincoln — and Mitt Romney; not Marx — and Barack Obama.

A pathetic reason Obama says people should vote for him

Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, wrote a column (dated September 17, 2012, but it’s already appeared online) entitled “Despair and Change: There’s no excuse for the Obama record.” It makes a telling point, and I will quote it in its entirety.

President Obama has had four years to fix the economy, and it’s not his fault he’s failed so far. He’s tried very hard, and he’s made some headway. But the task is so great that no one, not even FDR or Bill Clinton, could have done any better than he has. Thus, on effort and good intentions alone, Obama has earned four more years.

That’s a pathetically weak argument for reelection. But aside from attacking Mitt Romney, it’s the best Obama, Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden could come up with at last week’s Democratic convention to defend a president bent on imposing policies that have produced consistently poor results. Yet there’s a bigger problem with this tale—or narrative, in the political vernacular—of a determined president unfairly criticized. It’s simply a message that doesn’t fit the moment. Millions of voters—especially disillusioned backers of Obama in 2008—fear that neither Obama nor Romney nor anyone else can revive the economy and halt America’s decline. And their pessimism is deepening.

Just before the two conventions, a Fox News poll asked this question: “Do you think the United States is on the rise as a civilization or is it on the decline?” The response was decline 57 percent, rise 31 percent. To me, this reflects despair—well, near-despair, anyway—not just fleeting unhappiness with today’s stagnant economy and high joblessness.

Other polls buttress this. In August, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that 63 percent of adults are “not confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us.” This view is almost unanimous among unhappy 2008 Obama voters questioned in recent focus groups.

On top of all that, the federal government’s ability to solve problems has worsened, according to a Resurgent Republic poll last month of 1,000 likely voters. Only 16 percent said it has increased since Obama took office in January 2009, while 54 percent said it’s gotten worse.

Given this situation, the excuses for Obama are, as a political matter, inadequate. Take Clinton. “No president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years,” he said.

No president? I doubt Clinton believes this. With 227,000 new jobs, last February was one of Obama’s best months. But in February 1996, when Clinton was in the White House, 434,000 jobs were created. Franklin Roosevelt did better too. By 1936, the economy was growing at a 13 percent clip, while Obama presided over 1.9 percent growth in the first half of 2012. In June 1984, the Reagan economy created 363,000 jobs. The Obama economy last June? Only 80,000.

Nor was Obama encouraging in his bland convention speech. “You elected me to tell you the truth,” he said. “And the truth is it will take more than a few years for us to solve the challenges that have built up over decades.”

He invoked FDR and “the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that [he] pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.” But Obama isn’t following the FDR formula. Rather than a course correction, he’s relying on government programs as the sole stimulus and job creator, precisely what failed to stir a strong recovery in his first term. Offering incentives to private sector growth and job creation—now that would be an experiment for Obama.

“Our problems can be solved,” Obama said. True, but does anyone but Keynesian economists and partisan Democrats believe he’s likely to be the problem solver? Swing voters, the pivotal bloc in the election, don’t.

Biden wasn’t reassuring either in a speech both awful in content and poor in delivery. “America is not in decline,” he said. Why not? “Because it’s never a good bet to bet against the American people.” But it’s not the people that distressed Americans are betting against. It’s our leaders, Obama in particular.

Give Republicans credit for understanding the situation, while not responding to it satisfactorily. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has stressed that fixing the economy and averting (or reversing) national decline is doable. Five times in his acceptance speech, he declared, “We can do this.” The idea that the economy can be revived is the finishing kick in his stump speeches. He hammers it. “We can do this,” he said in Greenville, North Carolina, last week. “The point I want to make to you is it is in our control. We are Americans. We control our own destiny. We put the right policies in place, we can do this. This is something we can get done… Let’s get this done because we can do this.”

Hard to miss the message there. But it’s not sufficient. It leaves a big question unanswered: How? This is a job for Romney, but he hasn’t provided an answer yet. At the GOP convention, he first had to introduce himself to the country, since most Americans had never heard a Romney speech. “He couldn’t do everything at once,” an adviser told me.

Romney did lay out a five-step “plan” for creating 12 million jobs. The steps were more ends than means: exploit oil and gas resources, expand job training and school choice, sign trade agreements, reduce the deficit and lower taxes, streamline regulations, and reduce health care costs. And that was as specific as Romney got.

“Voters wonder whether anyone can turn the economy around, partly because they believe D.C. is so hopelessly broken,” the Romney adviser says. “Democrats are saying we have to be patient, but voters have run out of patience. They are frustrated with the pandering and the rhetoric and instead want results.”

Romney knows this, I’m told. He knows he has to explain how he will achieve his jobs agenda. He intends to do so. For what it’s worth, my advice is, the sooner the better.

The main thing is that (as I’ve already said or implied in previous posts) Barack Obama has been in office for 3½ years, and most presidents, given 3½ years to work on a problem, would have made a dent in it even if they might not have solved it. Unemployment now is higher than when Obama took over the Presidency. Probably, even if Obama had done nothing at all, the economy would have gotten better than what it was, so his presidency has been a disaster. So in fact, as Barnes says, Obama’s claim (reinforced by Bill Clinton) that he could not have fixed the problem in 3½ years is an admission of incompetence.

Yeah, blame the Republicans for everything!

There is a blog supported by MSNBC called “The Maddow Blog,”, and, as one might expect of anything named for Rachel Maddow, it spouts a hard-left propaganda line. On Friday, a post appeared on this blog by Steve Benen, which has the audacity to blame the Republicans in the House of Representatives for the poor employment figures that were released that morning.

You see, a year ago (specifically, a year ago yesterday) President Obama proposed a piece of legislation he called the American Jobs Act, supposed to create 2 million jobs. And the Republicans in the House turned it down.

So much is pathologically wrong with Mr. Benen's analysis. First of all, it took him until 2011 to put forth a jobs proposal. In January 2009, he took office. From the beginning of 2009 till the beginning of 2011, he had a Congress solidly controlled by Democrats. If he had put his “American Jobs Act” before that Congress, there was no way the Republicans could have prevented its passage. But of course, in that time he was otherwise occupied. He had to push “Obamacare” through. For this he needed every single Democrat in the Senate, and when Massachusetts voters told the world, by electing Scott Brown to the Senate, that this “Obamacare” monstrosity was not what they wanted — Massachusetts, the most Democratic state in the country! — they had to use parliamentary trickery to get it through. No time for jobs then.

Secondly, most of the time, a President with a Congress that has at least one house controlled by the opposite party will find a way to compromise and propose legislation that at least some members of both parties can accept. When the voters elected a Republican House in 2010, if Obama were like most past Presidents faced with that sort of opposition, he should have done that. But Barack Obama refuses to consider any ideas that the Republicans — or even the less radical among the Democrats! — could have signed on to. So of course, as he pushed “Obamacare” through the Congress, getting not a single Republican vote in the Senate and only one in the House, he tried to propose a “jobs” bill with no Republicans allowed any input. Could the Republicans be legitimately expected to merely roll over and play dead?

Of course, Mr. Benen claims that “Obama sought to shift the national conversation away from austerity and towards job creation, and presented a sensible plan, filled with ideas that have traditionally [emphasis mine] enjoyed bipartisan support.” But obviously, he never asked Speaker Boehner whether those ideas enjoyed bipartisan support in 2011. (Of course, this was the same President Obama who, in 2010, when he needed to call Speaker Boehner to congratulate him after the election, didn't even have his number and needed to ask someone else to dig it up! So much for inter-party consultation!) And even if some of those ideas enjoyed bipartisan support, others were probably poisonous.

When Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, he faced a legislature that had both houses controlled by the Democrats — by 85%-15% margins — so he didn't even have a veto threat! Yet he was able to get legislation through that legislature. Barack Obama has no idea what it takes to work with a Congress that he does not totally control. All he can do is lay blame — on his predecessor, on the members of the opposite party whose constituents elected them to express their views, not his, and on anyone else he can. He refuses to accept responsibility for the flawed performance of this country's economy — or anything else.

Obama and the recovery that wasn't

President Obama claims that he should not be blamed for the current weak economy. According to him, the economy was so bad when he took office that he had no chance at fixing it. But I recently saw an article in the Weekly Standard by Jeffrey H. Anderson, entitled “Was Obama Dealt a Tough Hand on the Economy? Hardly.” which points out that Pres. Obama actually should have been happy to have taken office under bad economic straits. The economy would have improved under normal conditions, and he could have taken credit even though it was really the workings of the laws of economics:

Of all the generally accepted claims that have been repeated throughout this presidential campaign, perhaps the most false is the assertion that President Obama was dealt a tough hand on the economy. In truth, Obama was dealt a winning hand; he simply had no idea how to play it.

In sports, most coaches don’t want to replace a legend. From that starting point, there’s almost nowhere to go but down. A far better situation is to take over from a losing coach, at which point there’s almost nowhere to go but up.

It’s the same with presidents and the economy. The best situation for a president is to inherit a bad economy, wait for the nearly inevitable recovery to occur, and then take credit for the predictable gains.

As Obama would be the first to tell people, he didn’t follow a legend. He inherited a bad economy, from which there was almost nowhere to go but up. Politically speaking, he was dealt beautiful cards. But if you play it poorly enough, it’s possible to lose even with a great hand.

Just compare Obama with FDR, another Democrat who fell into the envious situation of inheriting a bad economy from an unpopular Republican president. In 1936, the year in which FDR first ran for reelection, the gross domestic product (GDP) grew a whopping 13.1 percent in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars.

So far in 2012, as Obama is running for reelection, real annualized GDP growth has been a puny 1.9 percent — less than a sixth of what it was under FDR. That’s according to the federal government’s own figures (see “Percent change from preceding period”).

In other words, both FDR and Obama inherited bad economies that were poised to get better (although the economy of the Great Depression wasn’t poised to rebound as quickly). As such, both were dealt winning hands. FDR played his hand well and, on the wave of a revitalized economy, won reelection in a landslide.

But for Obama, even George W. Bush has proven to be a tough act to follow.

As Anderson says, Obama could have done nothing and things would have improved on their own. But he didn't. He messed it up, so the economy did not recover. More reason to retire Barack Obama this November.

The scene shifts

Today, the Democrats will begin their convention in Charlotte. The rhetoric will be very different from what was said in Tampa last week. They will be defending the indefensible, in my opinion, but the incredible facts are that they will, mostly, be believing what they say.

Sometimes I wonder, when I see quotes from Democrats, whether we're on the same planet. Barack Obama may boast of “Obamacare,” but the fact is that the majority of the American people want it replaced by a different plan. He talks of Romney planning to “raise taxes on the middle class” to distribute in “tax cuts for the rich,” but nowhere is that mentioned in any Mitt Romney proposal — cleaning up tax loopholes, which Romney does favor, if anything disproportionally affects the rich. And tax brackets, under Mitt Romney's proposals, would go down for everyone.

Obama does not understand one thing: when you reduce tax rates, sometimes the government gets more revenue. In such cases, letting money remain in the hands of businessmen creates jobs, the newly-employed pay taxes on their income, and revenues go up enough to compensate for those lower rates. And people spend more, so those businessmen take in more and pay taxes on those higher revenues, so even though the tax rate goes down, the total tax paid can increase. This has happened time and again. The converse is also true. When you increase taxes, revenue can actually decrease — while reducing employment.

We need new leadership in Washington, but the incredible ideas we will hear coming out of Charlotte will try to convince the American people that we don't, that four more years of the kind of “leadership” that has driven our economy into the ground the past 3½ years is the recipe to cure our problems. There was a form of quack medicine called “homeopathy” based on the idea that “like cures like.” It was nonsense, but Obama's economics are a disease that the Democrats will propose curing by homeopathic means, it seems. Just listen to what they say in Charlotte. Obama has already said, about a month or so ago, “We tried that [meaning Romney's call to cut taxes and spending] and it didn’t work … Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked,” and I say, “What planet are you on,” if you think his plan worked?

What the choice of Paul Ryan means

It is clear that Mitt Romney seriously intends to run on one issue — the economy. If this was not obvious before he chose Paul Ryan, this makes it clear — not only Romney, but also Ryan, has economic strength and is known for little else. While it might have been Romney's decision to pick someone who was strong in areas where he was weak, this was not what he decided.

On the plus side, it meant he did not kowtow to the “social conservative” wing of the GOP. Some people were trying to pull him this way. I'm very happy with that.

Where some will criticize Ryan is his suggestions to reform Medicare. He's made suggestions to turn all of Medicare into something like the way the drug part (Part D) works, where you get a subsidy but the right to choose a plan, and some people think this will ruin Medicare. But, as a retiree myself, I can say that I like the way Part D works. Some people might choose a cheaper-premium plan and pay more in co-payments, while I have chosen a plan which costs me more each month, but where I never have to pay copayments on the medicines I take. I prefer this choice. Giving people the right to choose the plan that is right for them is a good idea. So I — who am on Medicare now — have no fears about Paul Ryan's ideas.

Ryan was not my absolute first choice — but, the truth be told, neither was Romney — but the Romney-Ryan ticket is still so much better than what the other side has to offer that I am totally happy to endorse it.

A guest post by my wife

I am “Opinionator's” wife, Deb, and while I am far less conservative than he, in this election I may well vote for Mitt and company. Am I enthusiastic about this choice? No, I am a nominal Democrat but really an Independent. However, I have been looking for a permanent fulltime job in a field I have done well (retail) for over a year and have only found temp parttime work. Is this the “Change you can believe in” promised about 3½ years ago by Barack? Doesn't seem so to me, and at this point I don't think you can blame everything in this area that didn't work out on G.W. Bush!

When I heard about that speech that Obama gave saying that “You didn't build” your business, I carefully got ahold of — well, really “Opinionator” got ahold of :) — and read the complete speech. I still was left with the impression that Obama didn't seem to know much about business at all (I never ran one, but I worked for someone who did — you have to work very hard and be very smart in a stategic thinking way — and you still might not succeed). Despite my reservations about Mitt, I think that at this point he may be the best alternative available. I guess I'll be voting this time for the one who gives me less pause. Maybe we need, indeed, to give this guy a chance and see what he can do.

Why this year we really need Mitt Romney

On Sunday, I was discussing the election and the relative merits of Pres. Obama and Mitt Romney. And it dawned on me that Mitt Romney's founding of Bain Capital — something Pres. Obama has tried to use against him — is the biggest reason we need him to be elected as President in 2012. What is our greatest need? Jobs. Where will jobs come? By having America's businesses grow. And who best knows how to make businesses grow than a man who founded a company whose primary mission was to take weak companies and make them profitable.

Barack Obama has never owned a business, or managed one. His first executive position was the Presidency of the United States — talk about “on-the-job training!” Mitt Romney has been executive in charge of a business (Bain Capital), a non-profit organization (the Salt Lake City Olympic committee), and a State government. His business was specifically involved in getting other businesses to be profitable — and he had an 80% success rate at that; pretty impressive.

I can't see why anyone could support Barack Obama, whose 3½ years in the Presidency have been pretty darn awful, against Mitt Romney, who has had such a clear record of accomplishment, and even in the area we need most now — getting the businesses of this country healthy again.

Many small businesses in this country file their taxes as individuals; these include a lot of those “rich” people that Barack Obama is so eager to raise taxes on that he has threatened to veto any bill that fails to raise their taxes. But no big surprise — Obama understands nothing of business and is a Marxist by political orientation, so he looks at them with hostility. Hardly a way to encourage job creation. And more reason to retire Barack Obama in November.

What will make someone choose a candidate?

Sometimes it puzzles me what will influence someone's thinking in deciding whom to vote for. A case in point: My wife is a nominal Democrat, but more correctly described as an independent, as she has voted for candidates of both parties for the Presidency.

Four years ago, my wife voted for John McCain, primarily on the basis of character; in particular, she recalled that in 1996 she had voted for Bill Clinton over Bob Dole because Dole seemed too conservative for her, but Clinton's behavior in the Presidency had convinced her that character was important. In retrospect, she was sorry for her 1996 vote, and might possibly have (if there had been such a thing as turning the clock back) changed that vote to Dole. The 2008 election seemed even more a case of character counting, since she considered McCain an honorable man (and cited his Vietnam War experience), while Barack Obama was anything but. (I think the Alice Palmer episode was the major factor in her evaluation of Obama's character.) When the economy tanked in 2008, she briefly considered voting for Obama, but in the end, her estimates of the character of the two major candidates won her vote for McCain. (Her mother accused her of being too influenced by me; but I really had no hand in determining her vote except to bring her attention to what Obama had done to Alice Palmer in 1996.)

This year, although Obama was the same Barack Obama as he had been four years ago, and if anything carried more baggage now (she could see the effects of his Presidency: she had a job in 2008, but except for some temporary positions, has been unemployed since Borders closed her store in April 2011.), it has been hard to convince her to vote for Mitt Romney. Romney's favorable comments on Ronald Reagan's downsizing of the Federal Government have scared her. When Reagan did that, she had to compete with many ex-Federal employees for jobs, and it was a hard time for her. She has been afraid Romney might do the same.

It took a Romney television ad featuring Obama's July 13 Roanoke speech to convince her. She never owned a business herself, but she worked in some places where she could see the hard work the business owner was putting in. And she felt that if Obama could not understand this, he was the wrong person to get our economy going again. And currently she is leaning toward Romney. She still hasn't committed. But this one remark by Obama — in a prepared speech, not an off-hand remark to a reporter — has done a lot to convince her.

More on Obama's "You didn't build that" quote

It looks as though President Obama's quote is so powerful an indictment of himself that Mitt Romney's campaign is e-mailing links to a video of it to people! When you say something on the campaign trail, and the other side proudly invites people to listen, that is a pretty meaningful sign.

Look at this video.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'work' is."!

Yesterday, the following news article was posted:

Discussing his economic policies at a fundraiser in Oakland, California, last night, President Obama, told supporters that “we tried our plan — and it worked.”

“We tried that and it didn’t work,” Obama said of Mitt Romney’s proposed tax cuts and spending cuts, which he dismissed as a Bush-style “top down” economic policy. “Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked,” he added later in the speech. “That’s the difference. That’s the choice in this election. That’s why I’m running for a second term.”

Obama made these comments in Oakland, where the unemployment rate was 13.7 percent in May 2012. The national unemployment rate is 8.2 percent — up from 8.1 percent in May — for the second straight month.

I guess this is like Bill Clinton's comment, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” In this case, the word in question in “work.”

A morsel of truth

Of course, when President Obama, in that now-famous campaign speech with the “you didn’t build that” line, said:

The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

there was a morsel of truth in what he said. There are some things we don’t do on our own. The point is, every dollar the Government takes from us to do these things is a dollar we can't control, and possibly use in a way that benefits us more. So it is important to look at what Government wants to spend our money on (and yes, it's our money, not the Government's) and decide whether we feel it's high enough in priority to justify Government's taking our money to use it on these things.

Here is where Pres. Obama gets it wrong. He decides what he thinks Government needs to spend, and then decides to raise taxes enough so that Government will have enough to spend on these programs. What ought to be the process is that a President decides what he would like Government to do, and then would weigh it against what the American people would be giving up if taxes were raised enough to enable these programs, and decide whether the American people would be better served by not having all these programs and instead using their money in ways that we all, individually, would view as more beneficial. And the people must all, individually, do a comparable weighing of alternatives. I might want Government to do something (like build a transit line) that benefits me and that I cannot, by myself, accomplish. Others do not see the benefits of the transit line. It is competition between these different assessments of benefits that leads to decisions as to what programs get to be initiated. But whatever they are, we must keep in sight the fact that other things — which might have been accomplished with the same money in private hands — will not get done if the money is taxed away.

And in this economy, one of those big “other things” that will not get done if Pres. Obama raises taxes on those he deems to be “too rich” is hiring of people by the businesses that many of these people own. And this means Pres. Obama's plans work against bringing our unemployment rates down.

And this is why Obama needs to be retired in November.

Perhaps he didn't mean it?

Some of President Barack Obama's supporters seem to be implying that when he said

If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

he didn't really mean what those words seem to imply. The “that” that Obama said “you didn’t build” means (they say) the roads and bridges that he had mentioned in an earlier sentence in that speech. Well, the Christian Science Monitor points out:

In fact, the most conservative attack on Mr. Obama’s clumsy phrasing leaves the words just as they are.

Here’s a fuller reading of Obama’s statement:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

“The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

As Representative Labrador pointed out on Thursday, taking the president at his word — that he meant not that government built American businesses but instead that government built and/or fostered the roads, Internet, and public safety necessary for business to flourish — is still ripe for conservative attack.

“It’s not the government’s money!” Labrador said. “It was business people who gave the government money so we could have roads and buildings and infrastructure. That is what is fundamentally deficient in this administration… He completely and fundamentally misunderstands what creates business, what creates a thriving economy.”

Referring to his colleague, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) of South Carolina, who noted on the House floor that he drove some 60,000 miles building his business, Labrador noted that Representative Duncan “was paying for the roads that he was driving.”

“I want to know what government entity created a business that paid for those roads,” he said. “Not a single one!"

In other words, the money the government used to build the roads and develop the Internet came from somewhere. That somewhere was private enterprise — and some say that Obama’s inability to recognize that is his fatal flaw, economically speaking.

The socialist mindset of President Obama fails to see that the Government does not create wealth — it simply takes money from all of us and redistributes it to where it feels it can best be used.

And yet there is still another question. Suppose Pres. Obama didn't mean “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” to mean what those words manifestly mean. Isn't that a sign that Pres. Obama is not the great orator everyone says he is? He mangles his meaning so badly that you can't understand what he's trying to say. It is not the first time Obama has shown himself to have feet of clay. Earlier on, he said it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to rule that an act of Congress was unconstitutional — which it has been doing regularly since 1803. And way back in 2008, he said he had been to “fifty-seven states” — I wonder when all these new states joined the Union; I remember when Hawaii came in as the fiftieth, but I don't recall a single new state being admitted since then!

The President's knowledge of economics, of Constitutional law (a subject he [shudder!] taught), of United States geography, all have been shown to be flawed. And his conduct of the Presidency has brought the economy to a standstill. I just wonder why there are still people who support this manifestly unqualified man.

Let's hope that this is the case

Today I spotted a posting by James Pethokoukis on the American Enterprise Institute's blog, “AEIdeas.” It points out that there is a pretty good correlation between consumer confidence and whether a president gets reelected. And the consumer confidence index for President Barack Obama is down there in the range of where President George H. W. Bush was scoring back in 1992. (It is not as bad as Jimmy Carter's 1980 figure, but that's only a small comfort to Obama's people, I'm sure.)

"Lies, damn lies, and statistics"

Mark Twain once said, “The remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’” A blog post by Thomas Sowell reminded me of this quote, in pointing out how President Obama can actually find statistics that make his Administration's job record look good:

One of the reasons for the popularity of political rhetoric is that everybody can be right, in terms of their own rhetoric, no matter how much the rhetoric of one side contradicts the rhetoric of the other side.

President Obama constantly repeats how many millions of jobs have been created during his administration, while his critics constantly repeat how many millions of jobs have been lost during his administration. How can both of them be right — or, at least, how can they both get away with what they are saying?

There are jobs and there are net jobs. This is true not only today but has been true in years past.

Back during the 1980s, when there were huge losses of jobs in the steel industry, the government restricted the importation of foreign steel. It has been estimated that this saved 5,000 jobs in the American steel industry.

But of course restriction of competition from lower-priced imported steel made steel more expensive to American producers of products containing steel. Therefore the price of these products rose, making them less in demand at these higher prices, causing losses of sales at home and in the world market.

The bottom line is that, while 5,000 jobs were saved in the American steel industry, 26,000 jobs were lost in American industries that produced products made of steel. On net balance, the country lost jobs by restricting the importation of steel.

None of this was peculiar to the steel industry. Restrictions on the importation of sugar are estimated to have cost three times as many jobs in the confection industry as they saved in the sugar industry. The artificially high price of sugar in the United States led some American producers of confections to relocate to Mexico and Canada, where the price of sugar is lower.

There is no free lunch in the job market, any more than there is anywhere else. The government can always create particular jobs or save particular jobs, but that does not mean that it is a net creation of jobs or a net saving of jobs.

The government can create a million jobs tomorrow, just by hiring that many people. But where does the government get the money to pay those people? From the private economy — which loses the money that the government gains.

With less money in the private sector, the loss of jobs there can easily exceed the million jobs created in the government or in industries subsidized by the government. The Obama administration's creation of “green jobs” has turned out to cost far more money per job than the cost of creating a job in the private sector.

In addition to reducing jobs in the private sector by taking money out of the private sector to pay for government-subsidized jobs, the Obama administration has made businesses reluctant to hire because of the huge uncertainties it has created for businesses as regards the cost of adding employees. With thousands of regulations still being written to implement ObamaCare, no one knows how much this will add to the cost of hiring new employees.

In the face of this economic uncertainty, even businesses that have an increased demand for their products can meet that demand by working their existing employees overtime, instead of adding new employees. Many employers hire temporary workers, who are not legally entitled to benefits such as health insurance, and who will therefore not be affected by the cost of ObamaCare.

When President Obama boasts of the number of jobs created during his administration, the numbers he cites may be correct, but he doesn't count the other jobs that were lost during his administration. His critics cite the latter. Both can claim to be right because they are talking about different things.

What has been the net effect? During this administration, the proportion of the working age population that has a job has fallen to the lowest level in decades. The official unemployment rate does not count the millions of people who have simply given up looking for a job.

If everybody gave up looking for a job, the official unemployment rate would fall to zero. But that would hardly mean that the problem was solved or that the “stimulus” worked. Creating particular jobs does not mean a net increase in jobs.

Interesting. And it is a tremendous indictment of Obama's economic policies, but also a tremendous indictment of the anti-free-trade policies that many labor unions espouse as well. Thomas Sowell has hit it on the head: it is really net jobs that matter. If x-number of people are hired, but many more are laid off because the companies they work for are struggling to survive, we have not been doing well. This is clearly something Obama does not understand. But I am confident that Mitt Romney does. And this is a big reason to retire Pres. Obama this November.