Tag: Obamanomics

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Obama veers left after red wave

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Obama , Moaist fashion statement

Obama veers left after red wave

By Justin Sink – 11/13/14 06:00 AM EST

President Obama has taken significant steps to the left since his party’s devastating losses in the midterm elections.

In a surprise, he announced a major deal on climate change with China during a trip to Beijing Tuesday. That followed another unanticipated move — a Monday statement pressuring the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new net neutrality rules for the Internet.

The moves are helping to rally a dispirited Democratic base while re-establishing Obama’s political leadership after he was sidelined during the midterms.

“He’s at his best when his back is against the wall,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum. “Jeremiah Wright in 2008, Scott Brown’s election in 2009, after the first debate in 2012 — he comes back and tends to fight pretty hard.”

“He’s a fourth-quarter player, and he’s in the fourth quarter of his presidency,” Shrum added.

The moves are also prompting questions about whether Obama is shifting to the left in his final two years in office, or if the moves are meant to cushion the blow when he moves to the center to negotiate with a Republican-controlled Congress.

The question is weighing heavily on members of both parties, particularly ahead of Obama’s decision on whether to take expansive executive actions on immigration.

https://thehill.com/news/administration/223977-obama-veers-left-after-red-wave

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Mark Cuban on Net Neutrality: “The Government Will Fuck the Internet Up”

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Mark Cuban on Net Neutrality: “The Government Will Fuck the Internet Up”

Nick Gillespie|Nov. 13, 2014 11:35 am

Entrepreneur, NBA team owner, and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban has this to say about Net Neutrality and the push to regulate the Internet under Title II of the Telecommunications Act:

“The government will fuck the the Internet up.”

He also writes in an email exchange with Business Insider (all typos in originals):

“Since when have incumbent companies been the mainstays for multiple generations?”

[Cuban] believes that startups blow up older companies despite an unregulated internet that allows internet providers to prioritize certain traffic streams.

Overall, he thinks the current debate is too narrow and short sighted.

“There will be so much competition from all the enhancements to wireless that incumbent ISPs will have to spent their time fighting cord cutting,” he said.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/11/13/markcuban-on-net-neutrality-the-governme

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Business groups brace for deluge of regs

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Business groups brace for deluge of regs

By Tim Devaney – 11/11/14 06:11 PM EST

Business groups are bracing for an onslaught of regulations, with the Obama administration bent on completing a host of the president’s unfinished policy goals and the midterm elections now in the rearview mirror.

Agencies across federal government are expected to drop a host of major rules over the next few months, with regulations running the gamut from calorie label requirements on restaurant menus to new rules for hydraulic fracturing and air pollution.

There are at roughly two dozen major rules that are scheduled to drop between now and late January, according to a review of the administration’s official regulatory agenda and rules now awaiting approval at the White House.

Groups including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute said they are most concerned by expected costs associated with a slate of rules now in the pipeline at the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The EPA’s regulatory march is very concerning to the business community,” said Matt Letourneau, spokesman for the Chamber’s energy institute. “We’re fighting these regulations,” he added. “We’re trying to encourage EPA to listen to our concerns. We’re hoping EPA backs off or changes course.”

https://thehill.com/regulation/223769-biz-groups-brace-for-deluge-of-regulation

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Professor John Gruber Comments on Obamacare amount to the political and legislative equivalent of a terrorist attack

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Professor John Gruber Comments on Obamacare amount to the political and legislative equivalent of a terrorist attack.

All village residents of every political stripe should find his behavior abhorrent, blatantly violative of multiple critical constitutional principles undergirding our small ‘r’ republican democracy. Shall he be forgiven because he is a dedicated political progressive, whose motives are therefore pure and well above reproach? Shall his demonstrably faithless acts, performed over a long period of time but seemingly unregulated by the nagging influence of conscience that constantly operates in the minds of the rest of us who have always loved this country and our fellow countrymen, go uncondemned solely because they were undertaken at the behest of a man, the color of whose skin effectively renders him immune to political criticism? Does the fact of his having been raised in Ridgewood give us his former neighbors special status, relieving us from the need to speak out because of an overriding and certainly understandable desire to avoid doing anything that might negatively impact property values? Or do we choose to remain mute because, despite being the tree from which this particular political apple has frankly not fallen very far, his parents remain our neighbors and true friends?

MIT Professor John Gruber has now clearly shown the world that modern progressive liberals in this country believe, and are ready, willing, and able to act on their belief that their supposedly noble and enlightened political ends justify any seedy, mendacious, ‘big lie’-propagating, Alinsky-inspired, Cloward-Piven strategy-driven means they may wish to employ. Look at the latest video and you will see this horribly corrosive attitude in full flower, revealing not a hint of self-consciousness, but clearly articulated in the context of an otherwise apparently normal panel discussion held before an apparently large but depressingly credulous and sympathetic professional audience. Professor Gruber puts in a performance that should make the cockiest of barnyard roosters and the proudest of peacocks start looking for new respective lines of work. The catastrophically politically destructive concepts he shamelessly propounds have absolutely no place in our culture. And yet, instead of witnessing the entertaining spectacle of his friends and colleagues in the political and professional progressive elite climbing atop and over each other in a mad rush to avoid being seen in the same intellectual zip code as Professor Gruber, which by all that is right and good in this world should be in full swing by now, we are treated to the increasingly familiar, if no less distressing, chorus of crickets.

Professor Gruber’s behavior should be recognized for what it is: naked political jihad. At this point, we cannot continue to regard it as fringe behavior that will fizzle out, a ‘la Bill Ayers and the Weathermen. No, it has significant momentum now, and will surely continue, and likely get much worse, unless and until enough of the rest of us stop taking our beautiful national heritage for granted, and start caring enough about the enormous existential threats now darkening our doorstep to become personally educated on the major issues we collectively face as a culture.

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The 70’s Generation the Generation that never made it….

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The 70’s Generation the Generation that never made it….

The 70’s Generation ,Generation Failure the how and why ...

PJ Blogger (a blast from the past)
 
PRLog – Sep. 29, 2009 – RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — like most generations coming to age in a particular time period that era has a way of effecting ones out look throughout that rest of there life. In the 1920’s it was the devil make care attitude ,in the 1930’s the great depression ,in the 1940’s it was world war two and the greatest generation ,in the 50’s it was moving to suburbia ,in the 1960’s it was the anti war counter culture ad wanting to change the world . These generational experiences have a way of effecting the majority of that generation shaping there experience and the way we think about the world . In the 1970 ‘s oil shocks ,stagflation, international terrorism ,military failure ,stagflation ,the misery index, high divorce rate ,high drug and alcohol use ,the hang over from the sixties all lead to one over riding principle for the 70’s generation FAILURE and the 70’s generation became the generation that never really made it .

With this failure came the litany of kook conspiracy theories ,and inability to see a benevolence in the universe ,a feeling that things larger then onself were working against us . That malevolent forces beyond our control were conspiring against us. That we were helpless in the face of doom .Not trusting the markets nor the government but looking to punish and spread the misery equally far and wide, the 70’s generation embrace totalitarian socialism or communism to a greater degree than anyone since the 1930’s.

As the 70’s generation grew up it brought incompetence and disaster and mostly failure in its wake , from ENRON, the mutual fund debacle ,to the current banking and finance disaster to the destruction of wall street ,the 70’s folks have unleashed a cataclysm of disaster and failure on to the rest of us. Remember these people still think good old stagflation Jimmy Carter was a good president?

So why do I keep harping on this day in and day out ,well any economist worth his salt would admit that one of the strongest cyclical driving forces in an economy are demographics and given the most economic activity is driven by business creation and house hold formation it can be noted that from time to time an economy is blessed with demographics that favor these to factors ,but what we find in the 70’s generation is a proclivity for neither. My last reunion told the whole story ,as i am told nearly half the graduating class of 1980 had never been married . I found this simply astonishing given we came from a very upper middle class place with a “first rate education”.

No don’t get me wrong every generation has its successes and failures but some generations seem to produce more of the latter .

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The Mandate: Republicans Were Elected to Stop Barack Obama, Not to Work with Him

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The Mandate: Republicans Were Elected to Stop Barack Obama, Not to Work with Him

November 05, 2014
Windows Media

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What I want to do here is cut to the chase. The result yesterday is exactly what I said it would be. The Republican Party now has one of the most important and unquestionable mandates a political party has ever had at its junction with American history, especially a political party which did not run on a national agenda. The Republican Party purposely stood mute nationally.

Now, if you go into the races, the House and Senate raises all over the country, you will find that many Republican candidates ran specifically against Obamacare, and that is an important note to make and an important thing for you to remember. Individual Republican candidates won, and they won big. They won in a wave landslide running against Obamacare. The national Republican brand or image didn’t say a word, which makes the mandate that they have all the more incredible.

It is rare that a political party running for office in a midterm election not standing for anything ends up with a mandate, and they have one, and it is the biggest and perhaps the most important mandate a political party has had in the recent era, and it is very simple what that mandate is. It is to stop Barack Obama. It is to stop the Democrats. There is no other reason why Republicans were elected yesterday. Republicans were not elected to govern.

How can you govern with a president that disobeys the Constitution? How can you govern with a president that is demonstrably lawless when he thinks he has to be? The Republican Party was not elected to fix a broken system or to make it work. The Republican Party was not elected to compromise. The Republican Party was not elected to sit down and work together with the Democrats. The Republican Party was not elected to slow down the speed the country is headed to the cliff and go over it slowly.

The Republican Party was elected to stop before we get to the cliff. And that’s the mandate: to stop Obamacare; to stop amnesty; to stop the open borders policy of Obama and the Democrats; to stop the Big Government assault on the free enterprise economy; to stop national security policies that have allowed terrorist networks all over the world to pop up and fill a vacuum created by the absence of the world’s lone superpower on the world stage. That must be stopped.

The Republican Party was elected to stop the run-up of a debt greater than all previous presidents combined have created. The Republican Party was elected to stop efforts by this administration to use the IRS and other agencies of government, in violation of manners and law, in attacking political opponents. The Republican Party was elected to put an end to this incessant and divisive lie that is the War on Women. Yesterday’s result cannot in any way mean that voters want Republicans to work with Democrats. And anybody who tells you that and anybody who thinks that could not be more dangerously wrong.

You do not have election results like we had yesterday with the intent being that the voters intend the winners to work with the losers. This election was about stopping the losers, in this case the Democrats. There can be no other correct analysis of what this election was about. They were not elected to “fix a broken system.”

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/11/05/the_mandate_republicans_were_elected_to_stop_barack_obama_not_to_work_with_him

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Government’s Free Phone Program Riddled With Abuse, Fraud

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Government’s Free Phone Program Riddled With Abuse, Fraud
November 6, 2014 11:15 PM

By Brian Maass
CBS4 Investigates

DENVER (CBS4) – A federally regulated program providing free cellphone service and phones to the poor and needy in Denver appears to be riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, according to an undercover CBS4 Investigation.

The $2 billion a year Lifeline program has handed out more than 13 million free cellphone plans across the country in the first six months of this year. In Colorado, the program handed out more than 117,000 free cellphone plans in the first half of this year, or about 20,000 cellphones every month.

The free phones and their wireless plans are paid for by a monthly tax on your cellphone, called the Universal Service Tax. Although the Lifeline wireless program has been around since 2005 and started under president George W. Bush, it has exploded under President Obama’s administration and the phones are often referred to as “Obamaphones.”

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/11/06/governments-free-phone-program-riddled-with-abuse-fraud/

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Share of First-Time Home Buyers Hits 27-Year Low

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Share of First-Time Home Buyers Hits 27-Year Low

Just 33% of primary residences sold this year were purchased by first-time buyers, down from 38% last year to the lowest level since 1987, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday.

The NAR says that the first-time-buyer share of home sales has typically hovered around 40% since 1981.

The headwinds facing young buyers are well known: higher student debt, rising rents and a weaker job market have made it harder for would-be buyers to save for a down payment and qualify for a mortgage, particularly in a lending environment where banks are much less willing to overlook credit blemishes or spotty incomes.

Separate surveys, including one by the New York Fed earlier this year, showed that  insufficient savings or incomes were the biggest headwinds keeping renters from buying homes. Many households may also be less able to get help from their parents than in the past, because their parents’ homes have fallen sharply in value.

Advocates of looser lending standards may point to the NAR’s latest survey to highlight problems on the mortgage market. But it’s worth noting that the share of first-time buyers didn’t increase during the housing bubble, when it was too easy to get a mortgage. That’s because home prices were rising. The share of first-time buyers fell to 36% in 2006, at the peak of the bubble, from 40% in the prior three years.

And even though credit was much tighter in 2009 and 2010, the share of first time buyers jumped to 47% and 50%, respectively. Lower home prices helped. So, too, did an $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time buyers, which expired in June 2010.

Home prices have been rising for the last two years—and first-time buyers have accounted for a falling share of sales in that time.

https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/11/03/share-of-first-time-home-buyers-hits-27-year-low/?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_second

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On eve of election, Obama’s image matches all time low

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even Dom Nizza said he is voting for Bernie Walsh …probably.  

On eve of election, Obama’s image matches all time low

Voters will not see “Barack Obama” on the ballot on Tuesday, and the president might count himself lucky. A record low 44 percent of Americans report a favorable impression of him in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

President Obama’s image is considerably weaker than during the past two election cycles, along of course with his job approval ratings. Half the public now see Obama unfavorably, two points shy of his record high from last November amid the botched Healthcare.gov rollout. Today’s six-point unfavorable-favorable margin matches the worst since Obama rose to the national stage.

Tuesday’s electorate is likely to be even less fond of the president: 53 percent of likely voters see Obama unfavorably, while 43 percent give him favorable marks. The poll finds those with strongly held views of Obama are most likely to turn out to vote. Strongly unfavorable ratings for Obama outnumber strongly favorable by 36 percent to 24 percent. Roughly three-quarters of those who have strong impressions of the president — positive or negative — say they are certain to vote, compared with half of those who have “somewhat” favorable or unfavorable views of the president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/11/02/on-eve-of-2014-election-obamas-image-matches-all-time-low/?hpid=z2

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Obama’s Midterm Loss Record Could Make History

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Obama’s Midterm Loss Record Could Make History

By Stuart Rothenberg Posted at 4:12 p.m. on Oct. 30

President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row.

In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.

Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms.

Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are expected to lose another 5 to possibly 12 House seats (or more), taking the sitting president’s total midterm House loses to the 68 seat to 75 seat range.

https://www3.blogs.rollcall.com/rothenblog/obama-poised-to-set-new-midterm-loss-record/

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The 7 Scariest Uses of Your Tax Dollars in 2014

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The 7 Scariest Uses of Your Tax Dollars in 2014

Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual “Wastebook” chronicles the most outrageous government waste—spending that is so frightening that it taxpayers ought to be scared.

Halloween is upon us, so what better way to document some of the wackiest examples than with the short horror flick above. https://dailysign.al/1sMxeNT

“Only someone with too much of someone else’s money and not enough accountability for how it was being spent could come up some of these projects,” the Oklahoma Republican said when releasing the book earlier this month.

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Obama Could Replace Aides Bruised by a Cascade of Crises

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Obama Could Replace Aides Bruised by a Cascade of Crises

By MARK LANDLEROCT. 29, 2014

WASHINGTON — One day this month, as the nation shuddered with fears of an Ebola outbreak and American warplanes pounded Sunni militants in Syria, President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, invited a group of foreign policy experts to the White House to hear their views of how the administration was performing.

She was peppered with critiques of the president’s Syria and China policies, as well as the White House’s delays in releasing a national security strategy, a congressionally mandated document that sets out foreign policy goals. On that last point, Ms. Rice had a sardonic reply.

“If we had put it out in February or April or July,” she said, according to two people who were in the room, “it would have been overtaken by events two weeks later, in any one of those months.”

At a time when the Obama administration is lurching from crisis to crisis — a looming Cold War in Europe, a brutal Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and a deadly epidemic in West Africa — it is not surprising that long-term strategy would take a back seat. But it raises inevitable questions about the ability of the president and his hard-pressed national security team to manage and somehow get ahead of the daily onslaught of events.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/mounting-crises-raise-questions-on-capacity-of-obamas-team.html?_r=0

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Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

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Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

By SHAILA DEWANOCT. 25, 2014

ARNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.

The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The federal government does.

Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html?_r=0

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Meanwhile, as Gov. Christie tries to protect New Jerseyans from Ebola…

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Meanwhile, as Gov. Christie tries to protect New Jerseyans from Ebola…

Ebola Czar: “Overpopulation” is #1 Concern

Oct. 26 Disease, National, National Security no comments

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

And I suppose Ebola is the result of global warming?

I’m losing my patience with these morons, Save Jerseyans! While Gov. Chris Christie is trying to keep us all alive, we’re learning that Obama-appointed Ebola Czar Ron Klain has different priorities (from 2008):

https://savejersey.com/2014/10/ebola-czar-overpopulation-ron-klain/

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Insanity Defined: Feds Unveil Plan to Help High-Risk Homebuyers Take On Massive Debt. Again.

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file photo Boyd Loving

Insanity Defined: Feds Unveil Plan to Help High-Risk Homebuyers Take On Massive Debt. Again.

Stephanie Slade|Oct. 22, 2014 4:28 pm

“Low Down Payments Are Coming Back,” screams a headline from The Wall Street Journal today. The story details two steps federal regulators apparently have in the works:

On Monday, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt announced that mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would start backing loans with down payments as low as 3%.

And on Tuesday, three federal agencies approved a loosened set of mortgage-lending rules, removing a requirement for a 20% down payment for a class of high-quality loan known as a “qualified residential mortgage.”

Loans with little to no down payment were a common feature of the lax lending practices that were prevalent during the housing market’s bubble years.

Of course, those bubble years eventually came to an end, causing an economic meltdown of jawdropping magnitude. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama responded by running up the national debt from $10 trillion before the recession to more than $17.5 trillion today. And “experts” everywhere laid the blame at Wall Street’s feet, lambasting the banks for making reckless loans they should have known were destined to go bad.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/10/22/feds-unveil-plan-to-help-high-risk-ameri