An old saying goes as follows: “Don’t tell me how rocky the sea is, just bring the darn ship in.” I really do not care how bad the situation was when Obama took office. No one forced him to run for President. Rather than focus on how much he improved our lives, he fixates on blaming others for his administration's abysmal performance.
Which got me thinking, who really is to blame for all the troubles the nation currently faces? Consider some top line economic results we have suffered through over the past few years:
- Unemployment and underemployment has left more than 15 million Americans looking for adequate employment.
- Our national debt is skyrocketing, now well over $15 TRILLION, over $130,000 for every American household.
- There is no long term plan to fix the fast approaching fiscal insolvency of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
- Government bailouts of the financial and auto sector has resulted in the American taxpayer being out over $130 billion.
- There are still no national plans to effectively, efficiently, and coherently address the our lost war on drugs, our failing public schools, our lack of a national energy policy, our escalating health care costs, and the illegal immigration/leaky borders situation.
#1 Median household income in the United States is down 7.8% since December 2007 after adjusting for inflation.
#2 There are 5.6 million less jobs than there were when the last recession began back in late 2007.
#3 The U.S. government says that the number of Americans “not in the labor force” rose by 17.9 million between 2000 and 2011. During the entire decade of the 1980s, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” rose by only 1.7 million.
#4 In 2007, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 29 age bracket was about 6.5%. Today, the unemployment rate for that same age group is about 13%.
#5 In 2007, 73.2% of all young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 that were not enrolled in school had jobs. Today, that number has declined to 65%.
#6 Back in the year 2000, more than 50% of all Americans teens had a job. This past summer, only 29.6% of all American teens had a job.
#7 When Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.
#8 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#9 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65% of all men in the United States have jobs.
#10 According to the Obama administration, about 20% of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs back in the year 2000. Today, about 5% of all jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#11 Sadly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.
#12 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#13 The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 28 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#14 About twice as many new homes were sold in the United States in 1965 as are being sold today.
#15 Home prices in the 4th quarter of 2011 were 4% lower than they were during the 4th quarter of 2010. Overall, U.S. home prices are 34% lower than they were back at the peak of the housing bubble.
#16 The total value of household real estate in America has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.2 trillion today.
#17 At the end of 2011, 22.8% of all homes in the United States with a mortgage were in negative equity. That would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago.
#18 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
#19 Total consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700% since 1971
#20 Since the beginning of 2009, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased by more than 90 percent.
#21 The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30% since 2007.
#22 Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
#23 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, 46.5 million Americans are on food stamps.
#24 The U.S. dollar has lost 96.2% of its value since 1900. You can thank the Federal Reserve system for that.
#25 In 1950, the United States was #1 in GDP per capita. Today, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.
#26 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49% of all Americans live in a home that receives direct monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.
#27 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18% of all income.
#28 Federal housing assistance increased by a whopping 42% between 2006 and 2010
#29 Medicare spending increased by 138% between 1999 and 2010.
#30 Back in 1990, the federal government accounted for 32% of all health care spending in America. Today, that figure is up to 45% and it is projected to surpass 50% very shortly.
#31 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#32 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24% of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#33 In 2004, the U.S. government had a budget deficit of a little over $412 billion. This year, the U.S. government will run a budget deficit of over $1.5 trillion.
#34 In 2001, the U.S. national debt was less than 6 trillion dollars. Today, it is over 15 trillion dollars and it is increasing by about 150 million dollars every single hour.
#35 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became President.
#36 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
#37 The head actuary of Medicare and Medicaid predicts that Obamacare will incrementally add over $300 billion to the national debt in its first ten years.
#38 A recent major and detailed study by Stanford University economists found that the United States does a horrid job of preparing public school students for proficiency in math since only 6% of U.S. 15 year olds perform at an advanced proficiency in math, which places them behind 30 other nations including Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakia, the top three performing countries, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, had about four times as many of their students performing at high math proficiency, only two states, Massachusetts and Minnesota, had more than 10% of their kids performing at high levels which were behind sixteen other nations, and New York state, which spends the most on public education per student, $17,000 per year per student, had only 6.3% of their students perform at high proficiency, trailing 30 countries and 15 other U.S. states.
#39 The United States is now ranked only 10th relative to the Economic Index Of Freedom, down from 4th in 1995.
#40 In one month in late 2011, the Federal government's deficit spending in one MONTH was larger than it's deficit spending in the entire YEAR of 2007.
Certainly a gloomy picture when you look at all of the various indices of economic and other performance criteria. So, who is to blame? If you look back over the past 24 years, from the beginning of the first Bush Presidency through the end of 2012, in our political history, you find the following Federal government profile:
- In the past 24 years, the Republicans have controlled the White House for 12 years, the Democrats have controlled it for 12 years.
- In the past 24 years, the Republicans controlled the Senate for 10 years, The Democrats controlled it for 14 years.
- In the past 24 years, the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for 14 years, the Democrats controlled it for 10 years.
- In the past 24 years, if you add up the above results you find that the Republicans controlled different parts of the Federal government for 36 years and the Democrats controlled parts of the Federal government for.....36 years. How ironic.
That is why the many steps in "Love My Country, Loathe my Government" need to be implemented as soon as possible in order to overhaul our political processes and finally get real problem solvers into office so that we do not suffer through another 24 years of similar dire results. Three first steps would go a long way to making this change a reality:
- This November, vote against all incumbents. How much worse could it get if we threw out all incumbents and started over with a fresh slate of office holders?
- For President, consider third party candidates. Having a Republican or Democrat in the White House does not seam to make any difference so why not try someone new?
- Visit the www.unitedstatesofpurple.com website where you will be able to join our drive to implement term limits for all existing politicians and also consider an alternative to the Presidency rather than be stuck with only a Republican and Democrat.
Thus, the steps needed to reverse the slide of America, as listed in the statistics above, begins with each of us. We will have to bring the ship to port, our political class has proven time and again that the are incapable or unwilling to do the job, always too busy placing blame rather than resolving problems.
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Just to make sure that my Democratic friends do not continue with the blame game that constantly emanates from this administration, "it is Bush's fault," let's review the following graphs from the past ten years.
In each situation, we see that economically, as measured by national debt, deficits, unemployment, etc., things were getting better until the Democrats took over Congress in 2007 and Obama took over the White House in 2009. So while Bush may have been a far less than stellar President, our current economic rut actually began as the Democrats gained control of the Federal government (double click on each graph for a bigger, more detailed view):
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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