Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Why There Is No Jobs Growth

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Regulatory uncertainty:

Boehner points to an even scarier fact about this Obama-inspired avalanche of new federal regulation: By the government’s own estimates, at least one of the multiple new major rules being proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could cost as much as $90 billion. Some independent analysts put the cost of new EPA regulations at more than $1 trillion. Boehner last year asked Obama to provide Congress with a list of all proposed regulations with estimated costs of $1 billion or more. Obama never produced the requested list, so Boehner is again asking the president to provide it to Congress. We hope the speaker isn’t holding his breath waiting.

The economy will recover after one or the other of two events: Barack Obama is no longer in the White House and is replaced by someone who will undo this madness by executive order, or the Republicans get veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress, so they can fix all of this atrocious law. Both options will be available fourteen months from now.

[Update a while later]

I’m glad that the White House doesn’t listen to Mickey Kaus. He could probably come up with more than ten things that Obama should have done differently. Of course, the president has put himself in a political pincher — he can’t support a real jobs program any more, because it will cost him his base, which is all that he has left after all the ineptness of the past two and a half years:

Obama cannot propose a real jobs program. His constituents would rebel. A real jobs program attacks too many of the core beliefs of his party, such as minimum wages and higher taxes on the better off. Even if his presidency rested on it, Obama couldn’t emulate Bill Clinton’s 1996 Welfare Reform Act that triangulated him from his own party. There is no way for Obama to enunciate the equivalent of Clinton’s “We must end welfare as we know it.” His core beliefs rule out such a dramatic move to the center.

…This laundry list suggests why President Obama will not announce a real jobs program. His constituents would launch a primary challenge. Some might even call for his impeachment. For these reasons, we can expect pabulum and platitudes in his jobs speech, despite projections that high unemployment is about to become our “new normal.”

But if some other president did them, the economy would start to recover almost immediately. In fact, make that immediately. Just announcing that these acts were going to be taken would kick start the economy, if the announcement was credible.

Speaking of losing his base, he’s in big trouble in must-win states:

Now, Democrats’ strongholds in states such as Pennsylvania and Virginia are quietly walking away from him.

Out here, the sting of dissatisfaction pulls people away from Obama. Yet it doesn’t exactly pull them to the far right; many have settled comfortably at center-right.

Washington’s blame-rhetoric could push Middle America further right, however.

Late last week, the president hit a new low in Gallup’s tracking poll, with 38 percent approval. He blamed “certain” members of Congress for that slide in popularity.

“I have to say, I am tired of the constant blame on everyone but himself,” said John Dattilio, strolling here on a summer evening with his wife and children as they balanced melting ice cream cones.

Obama took to pointing fingers when his poll numbers started to slip last fall.

So far, he has blamed the stagnant economy on ATMs, ditches, Slurpees, corporate-jet owners, the Tea Party, Republicans, Japan’s earthquake, the Arab Spring, the Arab Summer, George Bush, and “fat-cat” Wall Street something-or-others. The kitchen sink may be next.

His numbers are tumbling in the critical battleground states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and New Hampshire – states he must win in 2012.

Jeff Greenfield has a good question: “Will anyone vote for Obama in ’12 who did NOT in ’08. For GWB in ’04: women, (a few) more Jews, and evangelicals who stayed home in ’00.”

Hard to imagine who it would be. I imagine if the Republicans put up a candidate that some people find too odious, they’ll just stay home.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Prescient

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Others have noted today how prophetic Gerald Warner was on inauguration day:

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

Maybe they’ll listen to us the next time around. But probably not.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary

Wisconsin Waterloo

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…for “liberals”:

Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.

Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.

Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible. Progressives, eager to discern a victory hidden in their recent failures, suggest that a chastened Walker will not risk further conservatism. Actually, however, his agenda includes another clash with teachers unions over accountability and school choice, and combat over tort reform with another cohort parasitic off bad public policies — trial lawyers.

Here’s hoping he wins those fights, too.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Critical Texas Jewboy Vote

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Kinky Friedman endorses Rick Perry:

These days, of course, I would support Charlie Sheen over Obama. Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay. Obama has been perpetually behind the curve. If the issue of the day is jobs and the economy, Rick Perry is certainly the nuts-and-bolts kind of guy you want in there. Even though my pal and fellow Texan Paul Begala has pointed out that no self-respecting Mexican would sneak across the border for one of Rick Perry’s low-level jobs, the stats don’t entirely lie. Compared with the rest of the country, Texas is kicking major ass in terms of jobs and the economy, and Rick should get credit for that, just as Obama should get credit for saying “No comment” to the young people of the Iranian revolution.

…So would I support Rick Perry for president? Hell, yes! As the last nail that hasn’t been hammered down in this country, I agree with Rick that there are already too damn many laws, taxes, regulations, panels, committees, and bureaucrats. While Obama is busy putting the hyphen between “anal” and “retentive” Rick will be rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.

I’m still ambivalent. I’m sure that there will be things he’ll do that infuriate me, but at least he’ll end the ongoing wreckage of the economy. Oh, and on the subject of science and politicians? Given a choice between a politician who understands how the economy works and one who believes in evolution, I’ll take a young earther. I need to write a longer essay about this.

[Update a few minutes later]

The rubes continue to come out of the closet:

It is no surprise that many have begun to doubt the president’s leadership qualities. J.P. Morgan calls it the “competency crisis.” The president is not seen fighting for his own concrete goals, nor finding the right allies, especially leaders of business big or small. Instead, his latent hostility to the business community has provoked a mutual response of disrespect. This is lamentable given the unique role that small business especially plays in creating jobs.

The president appears to consider himself immune from error and asserts the fault always lies elsewhere—be it in the opposition in Congress or the Japanese tsunami or in the failure of his audience to fully understand the wisdom and benefits of his proposals. But in politics, the failure of communication is invariably the fault of the communicator.

Many voters who supported him are no longer elated by the historic novelty of his candidacy and presidency. They hoped for a president who would be effective. Remember “Yes We Can”? Now many of his sharpest critics are his former supporters. Witness Bill Broyles, a one-time admirer who recently wrote in Newsweek that “Americans aren’t inspired by well-meaning weakness.” The president who first inspired with great speeches on red and blue America now seems to lack the ability to communicate any sense of resolve for a program, or any realization of the urgency of what might befall us. The teleprompter he almost always uses symbolizes and compounds his emotional distance from his audience.

We lack a coherent and muscular economic strategy, as Mr. Obama and his staff seem almost completely focused on his re-election. He should be spending most of his time on the nitty-gritty of the job instead of on fund raisers, bus tours and visits to diners, which essentially are in service of his political interests. Increasingly his solutions seem to boil down to Vote for Me.

That’s all they ever were.

Is it immature to say “I told you so”? OK, call me immature. You were fools to vote for him the first time and I said so at the time.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“Obama is no Steve Jobs.” You can say that again:

It’s dawning on many Americans that they made a bad hire. Obama was slick and seductive in the interview that stretched from early 2007 to November 2008; the competition was unexciting and, to be blunt, old. But it turned out he had no real job skills, didn’t get along with others, failed to translate rhetoric into action and became blinded by his own ego.

The lesson here is an existential one: Leaders are what they do. They become revered because they perform, understand their market, show creativity, deliver unexpected gains and beat the competition. The star quality follows accomplishments and performance.

Of course, it dawned on many long ago, and some of us (as noted above) predicted it.

[Update later morning]

Fox, meet chickens:

Shapiro goes on to list the things about Perry that most drive liberals nuts, including “anti-intellectualism,” the “God card,” the “living Constitution” (“Perry stands out for his creative cut-and-paste approach to the Constitution”), the “pistol-packing president,” and “daring to call it treason.”

His point, of course, is not only to whack Perry for his (by liberal standards) “extreme” positions, but to gore the Left as well for, among other things, its education fetish, its mortal fear of genuine religious belief, and its abject terror in the face of the inanimate objects we like to call firearms.

Of course, what most liberals don’t realize is, to us these things aren’t bugs — they’re features of a possible Perry presidency. Any prez who would pack heat while jogging with his dog and blow away a varmint or two is okay in our book. Sure beats cowering before a killer rabbit, Carter-style.

Walter obliquely makes an even more important point: that the coming election is likely to be a stark choice between Ivy League credentialism and a form of prairie populism. And that, of course, is precisely what the next election must be about.

Many of my lefty buddies simply cannot conceive of a world in which an Aggie can whup up on a Harvard lad, and merrily call global warming a crock (but . . . it’s settled science!). People like Perry and Palin and Bachmann — hillbillies from flyover country or Outer Slobbovia — send them into towering rages of wounded and unappreciated virtue; never mind that their “virtues” are generally invisible to those of us in the reality-based community. After nearly three years of their pet policy prescriptions, we’ve had a belly full.

I know I have.