Joel's Rant

A friend of mine is very well traveled and has visited almost every continent as part of his job.  He likes to tell the story about a village he visited in Namibia in which the elders decided they needed to do something to put the huge number of local unemployed men to work. 

It seems the village fresh water supply was at a well, about 5 miles from the village center, and each day the women-folk had to walk back and forth at least once with huge and obviously heavy buckets for their family’s daily water supply.  The elders decided they needed to drill a new well in the village center to make life so much easier for everyone, and so they contracted with a drilling company which arrived with a hydraulic drill to make the well happen.  But instead of using the hydraulic drill, the elders decided to have the company mount a huge wheel placed on its side, with each spoke of the wheel being about 100 feet in length, at the top of the drill hole.  The elders then had all the unemployed men in the village take positions along the spokes to turn the wheel manually, thereby turning the drill bit in the hole, sort of the way oxen might have been used in ancient times.  That was the elder’s way of creating jobs and lowering the village unemployment rate.

 It seems Barack Obama has a lot in common with the village elders, tossing aside efficient and labor-saving technology in favor of a manual process that seems, at first glance, to employ more workers.  Unfortunately, Barack Obama is not an elder of a primitive African village but is rather the leader of the world’s foremost 21^st Century engineering and technologically driven society.  His comment that ATMs are taking jobs from bank tellers, thereby causing unemployment to be high, reveals not only his archaic and disturbing way of thinking about job creation, but his complete lack of understanding of how technology creates more jobs than it eliminates though the process of “creative destruction”. 

Yes, Mr. President, ATMs reduce the number of bank tellers required, but think of the enormous number of new workers it takes to build the ATMs, and maintain the ATMs, and service the ATMs, and develop new tasks a person can do at an ATM, and all the new companies and businesses that have been developed because of ATM technology.  ATMs now populate essentially every country on Earth and allow a person in one country to make a transaction in another country, a continent away, and automatically converts the money of one into that of the other and on and on.  Yes, the number of bank tellers is reduced, but imagine the number of new and higher paying jobs and wealth that have been created by the invention of ATMs, in precisely the same way humans benefitted from the automobile industry took over from the horse utilization industry, for crying out loud.

That’s just one example of creative destruction and the fact that the president of the United States, arguably the keeper of our economy, is so totally clueless about this process is shocking, absolutely stupefying, and jaw-dropping in its ignorance and frightening when you think of the impact that apparent dementia has on the rest of us.  It also underscores the danger our country faces with respect to the crushing official unemployment rate of over 9%, with the under-employment rate closer to 20% when the guy steering our ship of state is stupid.

If only that were the only example of incredible Obama and Democrat stupidity.   Unfortunately, it’s not. 

Just this past week Senate Democrats, led by Charles Schumer of New York, said additional stimulus spending should be included in the discussions to raise the debt ceiling even as a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report shows the public debt of the United States will double, from its present obscene level of $14 trillion, to $28 trillion by 2035 if spending policies are not changed.  Amazingly enough, on the same day the CBO released a report detailing Obama’s stimulus spending had added almost $5 trillion in public debt in just 2 ½ years, Democrats were calling for more spending.  Are they freaking kidding?  You can’t make this stuff up.

Anyone recall the $830 billion stimulus ($1.2 trillion with interest included) of February 2009 and how that failed?  Anyone recall that the Federal Reserve has now far overtaken China as the largest buyer of American debt, meaning the Federal Reserve is literally and simply printing money and devaluing your dollars after 2 rounds of quantitative easing?

None of this spending is working and the economic numbers prove it, yet the Democrats are calling for even more spending.  How completely stupid is that?  Is it actually possible these people believe their own self-serving rhetoric, that we can spend ourselves to prosperity?  Or is there something more sinister and even evil afoot?   Think about that.

And how completely stupid is it for Barack Obama and the Democrats to continue to call for more and higher taxes as a way to resolve this budget disaster.  This is all about entitlement spending and nothing about taxes or revenue. 

If you don’t believe me, take a look at this.  The expected budget deficit for this year will be $1.65 TRILLION.  Putting the higher “Clinton tax rates” into effect, just like Obama breathlessly wants to do so the so-called rich will be paying their so-called fair share, would raise only $80 billion a year.  Immediately terminating the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq would raise another $100 billion.  Immediately stripping, cutting and shredding defense spending by 20% (remembering that Obama’s own Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said just a 10% cut in defense spending would be “catastrophic”), thereby delegitimizing our defense posture to dangerous levels, would raise another $120 billion.  Eliminating all the oil industry deductions and subsidies would raise $20 billion (even though that money would be recouped by passing those costs onto the consumers at the gas pump).  Squeezing the itemized tax deductions of rich people, whoever they are, would raise another $20 billion.  All of those higher taxes and cuts to defense spending amounts to only $340 billion; but the deficit is $1.65 trillion. THE DEFICIT WOULD STILL BE OVER $1.3 TRILLION!  Do you see the problem here?

And the Obama deficits of the previous 2 years were $1.3 trillion and $1.4 trillion respectively.

No, the problem here is not raising taxes.  Taxes cannot be raised high enough on anyone or any group to significantly close the $1.65 trillion budget deficit gap.  The only way to do that is by cutting entitlement spending. 

But here’s the problem.  The Democrat Party can not cut spending; they can not cut programs.  They will not cut anything, they can never cut anything. The reason is because to cut spending or programs is to cut government.  And the Democrat Party IS the government.  The government and the Democrat Party are one in the same.  http://www.joelsrant.com/2011/04/09/the-%e2%80%9cdemocrat-party%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cthe-government%e2%80%9d-are-one-in-the-same/ 

To cut spending is to make the government smaller, and to make the government smaller is for the Democrat Party to cede influence, and that’s never going to happen as long as Democrats control the White House and the Senate.  The Democrats unwillingness to do what’s good for the country is not only stupid, it’s dangerous.  And that’s a fact.

What we have here is a Marxist/liberal ideology that’s completely out of control.  It’s an ideology that resembles a mental illness or a cult religion.  Its purveyors only care about themselves and their power.  It’s tyranny.  And it’s logarithmically and galactically stupid.

It needs to be stopped.

And that’s all there is to it.

Some weeks ago Barack Obama visited the border in Texas and gave a speech about how his administration has done everything possible, everything the Republicans demanded, to close the border and reduce the number of illegal’s streaming into our country.  In fact, he said the border is safer now than ever before.  Of course, everything Obama said was a factual and documented lie.  But a long time friend of mine of almost 50 years, a liberal from NYC, told me the reports of Barack Obama lying were just “crack pot politics”.

I mean, everything BHO said was a lie.  He said the wall was virtually completed; instead there are over 1900 miles of border and only 350 miles of fence has been built, and only about half of that was built to the correct standards.  Not even close.  BHO claimed 31% more drugs and 64% more guns were seized then before, yet the number of people crossing the border is down 40%.  Hmmm, very interesting; seizures of drugs and guns go up, yet seizures of people go down. Up or down, it matters not. Whatever the numbers, Obama vindicates himself.

He tells us that the country is creating more jobs, when it’s not. He tells us he has either “saved or created” 2 million jobs since he’s been president, but will not provide the data or formula by which those numbers were derived.  He tells us that the country is bouncing back economically or that ObamaCare is good for the citizens, when it’s not.  Everything he says is an actual lie.  But to the liberal, drawing attention to those lies is just crack pot politics.

Obama and his record should be the basis for what the 2012 presidential election is about, and the Democrats will do everything they can to not talk about the present, to not talk about the Obama record.  The truth is that the GOP nominee, no matter who that is, should have a field day beating the person who is essentially the dumbest and least capable of all the candidates running in 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.

So before we forget about the present, let’s review where we presently stand after just 2 ½ years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

• The number of people on Food Stamps has increased by 40% to the highest number of beneficiaries in the nation’s history. 
• The price of gasoline has increased by 75% to the highest in the nation’s history.
• The 33% of average home equity loss in the last 2 years is higher than that of the 31% suffered during the Great Depression.  Home prices are now at 2002 levels, wiping out 10 years of increased equity and personal wealth.  In fact, home foreclosures, recently at record levels, continue at very high and unacceptable rates.
• Two nationally recognized credit agencies are about to downgrade America’s bond rating to below triple-A  because of a $14 trillion debt that the Obama administration has done everything it can to avoid dealing with in an honest and responsible fashion and has taken absolutely no action to address other than to require higher taxes on the so-called rich.  By the way, even if taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” (who are really people grossing just $250,000 and are not millionaires or billionaires at all) are eventually taxed at the “Clinton tax levels” the additional revenue generated would amount to only $80 billion.  With a budget deficit this coming year alone of an expected $1.65 trillion, you can see the issue of taxing the “rich” to get out of our budget disaster is a complete red-herring, a canard, a lie, bullcrap.  You get the idea.
• Manufacturing in America has slacked off to its lowest level since September 2009, no matter what Obama recently said about the 2 government auto companies, which could only be showing progress due to GM and Chrysler both being relieved of their tax burdens to the tune of $47 billion and $7 billion respectively.  Only a government and union owned company could possibly get a deal like that.
• By a 3 to 2 vote (the 3 being Obama appointed union lawyers and hacks) the National Labor Relations Board is attempting to stop the Boeing Corporation from opening a manufacturing plant in South Carolina because that state is a “right to work” state.  Boeing’s only other alternative would be to take those 1,000 jobs overseas.
• The official unemployment rate is presently 9.1% and the GAO now reports that, using present government economic policies, it is likely to remain at that “European level” until at least the year 2020.  And that doesn’t even factor in the “under-employment” rate, including folks either working only part-time but want to work more or who have simply dropped out of the labor market altogether, which is closer to 20%, a number last seen during the Great Depression.
• Over 51% of the working age population pays no federal personal income tax, depending rather on the largesse provided by the remaining 49%, of which the top 1% pays 40% of the taxes and the top 10% pay over 70% of all federal personal income taxes.
• Because of the instability in the American economy, China no longer wants to buy our debt.  They figure holding $1 trillion is clearly as high as they want to go.  In fact, they’re trying to off-load some of the debt they hold.  Instead, the biggest buyer of American debt, which is required to fuel the operation of our government to the tune of 40 cents for every dollar spent, is the Federal Reserve.  Through their “quantitative easing” policies they have bought over 70% of all US debt, which effectively means they are simply printing fiat money, backed by nothing, to flood the economy.  The approximate $1 trillion recently printed through QE1 and QE2 is apparently not even enough since talk of a QE3, to print additional hundreds of billions, is already underway in the halls of the Treasury and Federal Reserve.  What are the repercussions of a government printing paper money to borrow from itself?  Remember Weimar Germany?  How about present day Zimbabwe?
• The Obama EPA has imposed such strong anti-coal policy that 5 coal-fired power plants in the Midwest have decided to shut down rather than make needless modifications that would cost literally billions to effectuate.  Interesting that the lifeblood of a technological society is cheap and abundant energy, which America has much of, yet the Obama administration is doing everything it can to halt production, force prices higher and make stockpiles scarce, even to the point of lending money we borrowed from China to Brazil and Columbia for them to develop their own energy resources instead of us developing ours.  Using exactly what kind of demented calculus do you use to believe that policy is good for America?

And there’s so much more.  And that doesn’t even include the destruction of liberty and subversion of the Constitution that we know of as ObamaCare.  And that doesn’t even include a foreign policy from Mars.

But isn’t there any good news?  BHO must have done something good, no?

Well, the limousine industry in America is doing well since the number of such government vehicles has effectively increased 100% since Obama has been president.  Now that says a lot, doesn’t it?

Oh, and if you’re a politically well connected crony-capitalist company or someone with friends high in the Democrat Party (for example, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid) or a public employee union, you could get a waiver from ObamaCare that will shield you from the costs and risks that the rest of the population may have to endure.  Of the over 1300 ObamaCare waivers already granted, over half the effected workers belong to public employee or other favored union even though less than 12% of the population are union members.  If that doesn’t show the corruption that will ensue if this law is either not repealed or defeated in the courts, nothing will.

This is what happens when you take the best society and culture in the world and attempt to replace it with something else, as Obama said, to “fundamentally change America.”  You know, “fundamentally change America” into something different, foreign and alien.  But why would you want to “fundamentally” change something that you love, anyway?  The answer is you don’t. 

You only “fundamentally” change something you hate.  That’s why you “fundamentally” want to change it.  That says a lot about Barack Obama, no?  And isn’t attempting to fundamentally change America into something else really the definition of “crack pot politics”?

And that’s all there is to it.