Foolishness
Posted by Ray on January 27, 2010 under Main | 
Be the First to Comment
Here we are on the eve of the Presidents ‘State of the Union’ address, which should prove mind numbing as I will explain later, along with a host of other exciting events on Capitol Hill. We will see testimony from a few important figures from 2008 regarding the credit crisis, how they cannot figure out the cause is really beyond me as my 9 year old can recite the causes, but that is your government at work. While I fully expect to hear, during the Congressional hearings, ‘we did everything right and we would do it again ,‘ like they would admit that they screwed up. The President will give the usual speech tonight, the state of the union is strong, but we need to do work, a complete contradiction of reality I can assure you.
We will also hear the President talk about fiscal responsibility, which is a complete joke, as he talks about the massive $250B 10 year spending freeze in government, after he increased spending in those same departments 40% last year. Basically, the President is saying we will save $250B over 10 years, but those spending increases from last year will cost $1.3T, or so. With numbers like those I can assure you the media will not talk about the total hypocrisy of the spending freeze. I am sure we will hear about how well things have ‘improved’ from last year when he inherited this mess, the public is getting tired of that line Mr. President, and keep this in mind, ‘improved’ is a relative term and more politically correct than true for the average American.
A twist will be the indication that Mr. Obama ‘heard’ the public with the MA Brown victory, but he is still not listening. Like him or hate him there is one fact that cannot be ignored, Obama is tone deaf to the public and his arrogance is overwhelming, dare I say more than Bush’s? The point is that he may have ‘heard’ Americans, but he still will not listen to them which will cost him in the upcoming elections. Let’s face the facts, Obama campaigned for 3 Democrats and all 3 Democrats lost and he thinks it is not a repudiation of his policies? Sorry Mr. President, but 3 strikes and you are out. Like most Americans I like Obama on a personal level, but that is not the same thing as endorsing his policies or being blind to the fact that his policies are not working. Hell, Ted Bundy by all accounts was a likeable guy, but few people would want to be roommates with the guy.
No matter what the rhetoric is from tonight’s speech I can assure you that it is going to be meaningless and tone deaf to what is really needed for the country. What is also clear, to me at least, is that fiscal responsibility does not exist and the only things to cut are social programs, labeled ‘entitlement programs.’ It is only a matter of time that Social Security and Medicare benefits are reduced or altered, it needs to be done, but I do have a problem with that. The thing about entitlement programs is that every time you get paid a piece of your money goes into those entitlement programs. In other words, you already paid for these programs through years of work.
The irony is this, we know that these programs were not funded properly and they are broke, even though we put such a large portion of our checks into them every week, but Obama seems to think national or single payer health care is viable. How can any single payer or national health care be viable is Medicare and Social Security are bust and why would any trust the government after 2 large examples of, essentially, failed programs? I am not saying get rid of the 2 programs, the opposite is true, as these programs helped millions of Americans survive, literally, retirement. What I am saying is that these two programs are broke and if these programs, which pays benefits out to those 60 and older, cannot support that segment of the population how in the world can over 300M people get insurance from the government and not have that program blow up? It is not possible, sorry.
Regardless, the President is showing zero sign of fiscal responsibility as his $1.35T budget shows. What I found interesting is that the CBO came out with a damning report on the deficits which got a little air time, but not as much as it should have. However, even the CBO has the projects rosier than what is likely to happen. They actually predict that the deficits will shrink as the Bush tax cuts expire, this is true, for year 1 after the cuts expire. However, we know from history that as taxes go up revenues go down because the ‘wealthy,’ who are the enemy of the state now, decide to earn less because it will eventually be equally as profitable for them to earn less so they can keep more, this is why tax hikes never work long-term. However, that logic is lost on people who care to ignore both history and economics.
The good news is that real tax hikes will not take place until this fall, after the mid-term elections. Now, as far as the whole repayment of TARP tax proposed by Obama, that is a joke because TARP was paid back by most major banks. However, Detroit will likely never payback what they owe, how can they when unions now have board seats? Unions are the ones who killed Detroit to begin with, that is another argument though. The fact is that TARP, a Bush solution, worked, as much as I hate it, and if Obama stuck with only banks receiving it then it would have been profitable. However, now banks have to pay for Detroit which is about par for the administration, blame everyone else but themselves and make others pay for their pet project failures.
I am not sure how the President can claim everything is fine when all the economic data, bad data I mean, is coming home to roost. Unemployment is going to move higher as initial claims increase and the GDP figures, minus government transfers, will show horrible organic growth. We are not out of the woods yet, but everyone is acting like we are.
Subscribe to Annuity IQ's FeedLS Blogs
