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What are the
results from the highest Paying School District in the Country?
Just
15 percent of fourth graders are
proficient in reading and only 56
percent of students who enter their freshman year of high school wind up
graduating. The turned down a 16%
pay raise over the next four years and teachers only pay 3 percent of their
health-care costs. And of every dollar
set aside for education in Illinois over the past five years, 71 cents has gone
to teacher retirement costs. And the
teachers are on strike. This is Chicago,
Obama’s kind of town.
Were
Chicago Teachers simply not letting a crisis go to waste?
In
a strike that reeks with irony, Rahm
Emmanuel loses control.
So
is the Chicago Teachers strike only Rahm’s problem?
In fiscal 2009, according to the White
House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S.Department of Education spent $53.389 billion. In 2010, that climbed to $92.858 billion, then in 2011, it dropped
to $65.484 billion. This year, according
to OMB, Department of Education spending will hit an historical high of $98.467
billion.
So what is the Department of Education
spending all that money on?
Over the past four years, the Chicago public schools have churned
through total revenues of approximately $20.27 billion and about $4.26 billion of that revenue—or almost 21 percent of it—has come
from the federal government.
Government
Motors uses government economics
It
seems that on the new Volt from GM,
the company the taxpayers bailed out is
losing $49,000 per vehicle. I remember an old joke to the effect, “we lose money on every sale, but our volume
keeps us in business.” Of course
that only works in government and only for so long.
Bin Laden is
dead and GM is the walking dead
Admirers of the GM bailout should
bear in mind that it was the Bush
administration that first decided to intervene at the firm, offering a
bridge loan on the condition that it draw up a deeply revised business plan. President Obama’s unique contribution was
effectively to nationalize the company, seeing to it that the federal government violated normal
bankruptcy processes and legal precedent to protect the defective element at
the heart of GM’s troubles: the financial interests of the UAW. It did this
by strong-arming GM’s bondholders into
taking haircuts in order to sweeten the pot for the UAW. The Obama
administration also creatively construed tax law to relieve GM of tens of
billions of dollars in obligations — at
the same time that Barack Obama & Co. were caterwauling about the supposed
lack of patriotism of firms that used legal means rather than political
favoritism to reduce their tax bills.
Mitt Romney’s proposal
for a structured bankruptcy would have necessitated considerable federal
involvement, too, but with a key difference: The UAW contracts would have been renegotiated, and GM’s executive
suites would have been cleaned out, placing the company on a path toward
innovation and self-sufficiency rather
than permanent life support. Which is to say, Obama did for GM what he is
doing by un-reforming welfare: creating
a dependent constituency.
The Do Nothing Government Economic
Plan
Having spent over $5 trillion
stimulating the economy one wonders why it isn’t working? Would
we be better off if Obama had done nothing?
One of the last of the "do
nothing" presidents was Warren G. Harding. In 1921, under President Harding, unemployment hit 11.7 percent --
higher than it has been under President Obama. Harding did nothing to get the economy stimulated.
Far from spending more money to try
to "jump start" the economy, President
Harding actually reduced government spending, as the tax revenues declined
during the economic downturn.
This was not a matter of
absent-mindedly neglecting the economy. President
Harding deliberately rejected the urging of his own Secretary of Commerce,
Herbert Hoover, to intervene.
The 11.7 percent unemployment rate in 1921 fell to 6.7
percent in 1922, and then to 2.4 percent in 1923. It is hard to think of any government intervention in the
economy that produced such a sharp and swift reduction in unemployment as was
produced by just staying out of the way and letting the economy rebound on its
own.
Bill Clinton loudly proclaimed to the delegates to the
Democratic National Convention that no president could have gotten us out of
the recession in just one term.
But history shows that the economy rebounded out of a worse unemployment
situation in just two years under Harding, who simply let the market revive
on its own, as it had done before, time and time again for more than a century.
Deficit to top $1 trillion for the fourth
time—what does that headline and Obama have in common?
Obama’s Plans for a second term
I thought Obama’s making fun of Romney and the Republicans was actually quite
clever. “Budget surplus we need a
tax cut.” “Budget deficit, calls for a
tax cut.”
So let look at Obama’s
prescriptions. “Budget Surplus? Raise taxes and
spend more money.” “Budget deficit? Raise taxes and spend more money.” “Unemployment
too high? Raise taxes and spend more
money.” “The Fed can’t lower rates any more to stimulate the economy so Raise
taxes and spend more money.”
Hey this works pretty good. It certainly beats thinking.
What caused the economic crisis of
2008?
It wasn’t Wall Street, but rather government. Government decided that racial quotas should replace credit qualifications in qualifying
for a home loan. And the rest as they
say was history.
Obama’s
Convention bounce is mainly among registered voters
It
turns out the bounce President Obama got after the DNC is among registered
voters, not likely voters. Among likely voters the race is tied.
Gallup
Poll Oversamples Democrats again
The
Gallup Poll oversamples Democrats again but this time it is even worse than
normal. The sample for the CNN/ORC poll includes 50.4 percent
Democrats and 45.4 percent Republicans and appears to have only 4.2 percent
independents. This means independents are under-sampled 25 percent while
Democrats are over-sampled 12.1 percent.
With the weightings of independents,
Democrats and Republicans conducted by the Rasmussen numbers, this poll's data
would indicate a Romney lead over Obama
of 53 percent to 45 percent.
Another
sign of Obama’s coming Defeat
This
year there are over 30 books out that are
hostile to President Obama. Compare
that to 2008 and you have another sign of Obama’s weakness in the coming
election
Even Obama calls it Obamacare
President Obama autographed a Lab coat of a University of Iowa Medical Student “Go Obamacare.” I think everyone can agree with that. We’re looking for Romney to make Obamacare go
away.
Obamacare shows everyone what bureaucracy
means
One of the most-anticipated
new federal regulations governing which
companies will be required to
provide health insurance under Obamacare has finally landed--with a thud.
In the latest indication of
how complicated putting the Affordable Care Act into action will be, the
Department of Health and Human Services and Internal Revenue Service issued 18 pages of regulations just to
describe what a "full-time employee" is. Of note, to the Feds a full-time employee works an average of
just 30 hours a week, not the normally accepted 40 hours.
Liberalism and stupidity
Some notes from an academician who attended
a conference on “Perspectives on Evil
and Human Wickedness,”
To begin with, I was struck by the conference
call for papers on the Internet. It listed people
commonly regarded as evil, including Torquemada, Hitler, Ivan the Terrible,
Genghis Khan, and...Ronald Reagan. Of course, who can forget Ronald Reagan
and his Republican hordes sweeping down from the steppes, leaving nothing but
devastation in their wake? Few figures from recent history evoke such terror
and loathing—at least, among leftist academics. What do you think these people think of the Tea Party? You guessed
it. One French participant informed me that Hamas winning an election among the Palestinians is like “the Tea Party
winning the American presidency.” It is hard to fathom how anyone could
compare the Tea Party with the genocidal terrorists of Hamas—except, of course,
that this is academia, an alternate reality if there ever was one.
I’m convinced that “being liberal means
never having to say you are sorry.”
