Love My Country, Loathe My Government: reagan

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Thursday, May 12, 2016

May, 2016, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: HIllary's History of Lies, More Obama Economic Underperformance, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) One recurring theme that keeps surfacing this week is Obama's mishandling of the economy. Tens of millions of Americans still receiving government food assistance every month, stagnant wages and household growth, low economic growth, millions of part time workers who cannot find full time work, skyrocketing debt, real unemployment still around 10%, etc. Pathetic economic policies and strategies.

And today we start off the political class insanity with more proof that the Obama administration is going to go down as one of the worst economic administrations ever. Consider some recent analyses from the Commerce Department:

Obama will be the first President EVER to not see a single annual national economic growth level exceed 3%.
Continuing this trend, the Commerce announced last week that the economy grew only .5% in the first quarter of 2016, down from the meager 1.4% growth in the fourth quarter of 2015.
The Reagan administration, for comparison, annually averaged 3.5% during its term in office.
Obama’s overall annual growth average will likely end up somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6%.
If the previous point holds true, it will make his Presidency the fourth worst ever from an economic growth perspective.

And this anemic economic performance was achieved despite spending well over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, enjoyed an extended period of rock bottom energy prices, and benefited from the Federal Reserve pumping trillions of paper dollars into the economy. An insane failure of epic proportions.

2) For a very long time, our veterans have not been receiving the medical care and treatment that the Federal government has promised them despite Obama’s insistence that he was dedicated to maintaining high standards of medical treatment for them. Long waiting lists, falsified records, etc. have been uncovered by investigators to prove that the Veterans Administration (VA) has been a failure in doing its job, so much so that its top executive was fired a while ago for the scandal.

However, despite the firing and Obama’s claim he was working the problem, things have apparently not gotten much better:

After investigating ten VA veterans benefits offices around the country, VA investigators found that the VA was systematically destroying documents via shredding relating to veterans’ claims with some of the destruction affecting veterans benefits.
The surprise visits to the offices by the Office of the Inspector General found that of 155 claims related documents that were scheduled to be shredded, 69 of them (almost 40%) were found to have been incorrectly placed in the shred bins at those ten offices.
Two of those 69 documents would have definitely affected veterans benefits directly, 9 had the potential to impact benefits, and the remaining would likely not have affected benefit payouts for veterans but should not have been waiting to be shredded anyway.
The Inspector General report was harsh in criticizing the screwups: "The potential effect should not be minimized. Considering that there are 56 [VA regional offices], and if weekly shredding is conducted, it is highly likely that claims-related documents at other VAROs are being improperly scheduled for destruction that could result in loss of claims and evidence, incorrect decisions and delays in claims processing."
In addition: "VBA's policy is outdated, lacks standardized procedures for records management staff and increases the likelihood for VARO staff to destroy claims-related documents without supervisory-level review."
The VA accepted the Inspector General’s recommendations for change but, of course, insisted there were no systemic problems.

Thus, even after all of the attention and all of the promises to fix the broken Veterans Administration over the past two years, the administration, Congress, and the VA itself are all still inept.

3) It has been my personal opinion that Obama has never been a great believer or respectful of our armed forces. His inability or inattention to fix the broken VA discussed above is just one example of why I feel this way. Which means I was not surprised when he committed the following insult relative to our brave military people.

The Obama administration recently announced that a new Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer will be named the USS Carl M. Levin. Who is Mr Levin? Is he a valiant war hero or Medal Of Honor winner? Did his bravery save the lives of fellow soldiers or civilians? Did he do something extraordinary to help our military forces? Was a brilliant General or Admiral?

No to all of the above. Mr. Levin has been a 31 year veteran of the U.S. Senate, a Democrat from the state of Michigan. The closest thing he came to serving in the armed forces was to be a one time chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for eight years.

Some additional insulting facts about this Obama move:

Levin never served in the military.
The Navy has traditionally named these types of vessels after deceased Medal of Honor recipients and other combat heroes, as well as admirals and generals who played significant roles in naval warfare.
Of the 318 Medal Of Honor recipients, 100 have had a ship named after them while 218 are still awaiting that same honor.
This naming does not conform to the Navy’s own guidelines that were submitted to Congress in 2012, “Policies and Practices of the U.S. Navy for Naming the Vessels of the Navy.”
This will be the only one of 71 Arleigh Burke ships that do not meet the Navy’s guidelines.

But as always with the Obama administration, rules, laws, regulations, and customs do not apply to its actions and insults. It is whatever is politically expedient and convenient, everything else be damned including the memories and actions of our brave fighting men and women. Insane and pathetic to name a ship after a non-descript politician when there were so many other more noble names to opt for.

4) One last piece of insanity for today. We have often shown the many lies of Obama and his administration, far too many to review here. But for those of you thinking about voting for Hillary Clinton, keep in mind the old line from a Who song: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

The link below will take you on a video history of Hillary Clinton’s many lies and deceptions over the years. If you think that Obama was bad from an integrity perspective, I think this video montage will show you that Hillary is not going to be any more trustworthy or in integrity than Obama:

http://conservativepost.com/after-watching-this-video-nobody-should-vote-for-hillary-clinton/

That will do it for today’s insanity: the history of Hillary’s lies, naming a Navy ship after a has-been politician, more screw ups at theVA, and more anemic economic growth, courtesy of the Obama administration. Every day they seem to come with new and unique ways to mess up and tomorrow should be no different.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

May, 2015, Part 1, By The Numbers: Tax Numbers Stink, Economic Numbers Stink, Welfare Cheat Numbers Stink

On a semi-regular basis we revisit the theme "by the numbers" just to check in on the state of the country and political class using actual realities and their underlying numbers, not the spin or lies from our politicians. You see, politicians usually have nothing to gain by looking at reality and the numbers since they are more than likely to have screwed up reality and our lives in the first place.

That is why they would rather lie and deceive than tell the truth. But that approach can be destroyed by looking at the hard numbers behind the mess they have created. I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: "There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right number.” And that is what we try to do with this theme, devastate politicians’ opinions by looking at the right numbers.

So let’s take a look at the numbers that have recently cropped up and again prove that the political class in America continues to be one of the worst set of people to ever hold office, given the state of the country, the many ways they screw up our wealth and government functions, and their inability or non-desire to step up and tell the truth.

1) We have often talked about how insane the nation’s tax code is. Physically it runs about 70,000 pages. We once cited the example that the GE annual Federal tax return would have been 56,000 pages long if it had been printed out. American households spend billions of dollars a year preparing their taxes since it is such a complicated exercise, billions that would have been better spent growing the economy.

But nowhere is the tax code idiocy more on display when it comes to major corporations and their overseas operations. Since the U.S. has the second highest top business tax rate, 35%, in the world, it makes better financial sense for corporations to keep their profits offshore rather than bringing them back to this country where they might actually help grow the economy and improve the employment opportunities of all Americans.

Think about it: why bring billions of dollars back to the U.S. just to pay a whopping 35% income tax on those profits when they can be kept far away and invested in other countries at a much lower tax rate?

How bad is the problem? Consider an analysis that was recently published in Businessweek that showed how much the Federal government would reap in taxes if those large corporations actually brought their profits home and what entities of the Federal government could be funded with those taxes:

Microsoft has $92.9 billion of profits sitting offshore, which results in $29.6 billion in lost taxes which could be used to annually fund the Department of Justice and half of the Commerce Department.
Apple has $69.7 billion of profits sitting offshore, which results in $23.3 billion in lost taxes which could be used to annually fund all but $500 million of the Department of Agriculture’s discretionary budget.
Oracle has $39.3 billion of profits sitting offshore, which results in $12.2 billion in lost taxes which could be used to annually fund the Treasury Department.
Citigroup has $43.8 billion of profits sitting offshore, which results in $11.6 billion in lost taxes which could be used to annually the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The list goes on and on but you get the idea: tens of billions of dollars in lost tax dollars due to the second highest business tax rate in the world. What if the corporate tax rate was 10%? The Federal government would then get $9.29 billion in taxes if that rate was low enough to get Microsoft to bring those profits back to the U.S. vs. getting $0 at 35%? And how much more research jobs, sales jobs, and programming jobs would be created in the U.S. if Microsoft did bring that $92.9 billion back to the U.S.?

The numbers are a no brainer: drop the tax rate, the Feds get billions of dollars vs. nothing today, the economy gets a big boost by the infusion of billions and billions of dollars, and companies can focus on growing their business rather than sheltering profits. Everybody wins this numbers game….which means it will never happen if the current set of politicians stay in control.

2) The government released the first quarter GDP growth estimate and it was an anemic .2%. That is right, not 2%, .2%, two one tenths of a percent. A very bad number.

Even worse, the population was up .8% so the GDP per person was actually negative in the first quarter, not a very inspiring number. But less than inspiring economic numbers is to be expected from this administration and this set of Washington politicians. According to a recent comparison of economic recoveries between the Obama administration and the Reagan administration done by the Heritage Foundation:

23 quarters after the last recession ended, the annualized GDP growth rate under the Obama administration is a meager 2.24%.
This places the Obama recovery dead last compared to the six other post recession recoveries since 1960.
Those recoveries averaged 3.97% after 23 quarters.
This difference between the Obama recovery and the average of the other six recoveries translates into nearly $1.7 trillion (in constant 2009 dollars) in missing economic growth.
But Reagan’s economic recovery’s was a whopping 4.8% annualized growth through 23 quarters.
That was more than double the Obama economic recovery.
If Obama’s recovery had been as robust as Reagan’s the country’s annual GDP number would be $2.48 trillion larger than it is today.

A $2.48 trillion larger economy would have provided a lot of job opportunities for Americans that are finding it difficult to find jobs. But the reasons for the anemic economic numbers is not to hard to discern:

The Obama administration has added, on average, nine new Federal regulations every day, burdening businesses and business growth with unnecessary government interference.
The higher taxes on the wealthy has restricted discretionary spending and economic development by the very people that actually have discretionary income.
The out of control EPA has shut down in the energy industry in this country with no coherent reasons for such overpowering interference and regulation of that industry.
Obama Care has added taxes and bureaucracies to the whole economy, reducing economic growth and employment opportunities.
If a no brainer like building the Keystone pipeline and the creation of the thousands of jobs associated with that effort was blocked by this President,chances for other economic opportunities are gong to be far and few between.

The numbers stink, the reasons they stink are obvious, and that is why politicians should never play with economics.

3) Michele Hickford, writing on April 28, 2015 for the Allen West website, put together some very interesting numbers. She showed how easy it was to earn almost $70,000 a year by milking the Federal government’s welfare processes and doing no work and not being employed in the process.

Her analysis has some validity. According to recent Bureau Of Labor Statistics in 2014 19.9% of American families had no one in the household that had a job. Amazing number, one out of every five households had no one earning wages or a salary last year. Which says either the economy is in terrible shape with unemployment around 20% or many Americans are ripping off the welfare system.

Given that the unemployment rate, no matter how you measure it, is nowhere close to 20%, the following numbers show that there is a good case to be made that ripping off the Federal taxpayer is now a full time job for many Americans. According to Ms. Hickford, this is the easy way to earn almost $70,000 a year:

1. If you’re a man, don’t get married
2. Have a couple kids
3. Use your mom’s address for your mail
4. Buy a house
5. Rent your house to your girlfriend and your two kids
6. Section 8 will pay $900 a month for the rent on the 3 bedroom home
7. Have your girlfriend sign up for Obamacare
8. Your girlfriend gets to go to college free as a single mother
9. She also gets $400 a month form food stamps.
10. She gets a free cell phone.
11. She also gets a cash grant to help pay for heating costs
12. Move into your house with her, but keep your mom’s address for your mail
13. Each of you can claim one child on your taxes so now you both get to claim head of household credit ($1295)
14. Have your girlfriend get a permanent disability for “marked difficulties maintaining concentration” or having a “back pain.”

This is all perfectly legal, and is likely being done by millions of people. Adding all the numbers up:

$22,800 disability + $10,800 housing benefit +$4,800 food stamps + $3,300 Obamacare subsidy + $900 utilities grant + $5,645 Pell Grant + $12,000 annual college tuition grant + $8,000 single mother tax benefit + $1,295 head of household credit…- Almost $70,000

Okay, the economic numbers stink, the welfare abuse numbers stink, and the tax numbers stink, regardless of Washington’s politicians tell us. Remember, there is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right numbers and we will devastate more tomorrow.

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:

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Obama Epic Fail Series, Part 2B - Economics

Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.

This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris.

If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.

The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.

But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, eic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.

Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:

Transparency and integrity
Economic policy
Foreign policy
Healthcare policy
Government management policy

Economic Policy

I am not denying that Obama came into a difficult economic situation when he came into office. The country was in the midst of the Great Recession. Banks were failing, unemployment was sky high, and economic growth was lousy.

However, he was not the first President that inherited a tough economy. Reagan took office after the disastrous Jimmy Carter Presidency. During that Presidency, a new economic term was coined, stagflation. Previous economic theory stated that you could not have high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. However, Carter mangled the economy so much that we had high inflation, high unemployment, sky high interest rates, and anemic economic growth all at the same time.

But what did Reagan’s economic policies and strategies produce:

Seven consecutive years of economic growth that never fell below 3.5% a year.
In four of the seven years, economic growth was above 4.0%.
One year economic growth was over 7%.

Even Clinton’s Presidency recovered nicely from a recession, averaging 4% growth coming out of a recession. And both Reagan and Clinton did not have the economic tailwinds that Obama enjoyed:

Spending over $800 billion on an economic stimulus program that failed miserably.
Adding over $7 trillion of government deficit spending to the economy and the national debt.
Benefiting from over $3 trillion of Federal Reserve printed money that was added to the economy.
An energy revolution that caused energy prices to drop substantially and created loads of high paying energy industry jobs.

So given this historical background, let’s see how badly the Obama Presidency has come up short and decide if this is also an epic fail.

First, the good news:

The traditional unemployment rate has been slowly decreasing over the past few years.
The weekly filing of first time unemployment benefits has been slowly decreasing over the past few years.
Inflation has been under control during the entire run of the Obama Presidency.

Now the bad news:

According to an Obama promise, if his economic stimulus program was enacted, unemployment would not go higher than 8% and the unemployment rate would shortly drop back down to 5%. His stimulus program was passed and unemployment soared past 8% and the unemployment rate has yet to drop to the promised 5%.
But the traditional unemployment rate measure, the so-called U-3 unemployment rate, is now a somewhat deceptive measure since this measure does not take into account the part time workers that want full time work and the workers that want a full time job but have become too discouraged to look for one in the past four weeks. These populations of workers have been increasing in these tough economic times but this trend is not captured by the U-3 measurement.
The truer measure is the U-6 unemployment measure which takes into account these types of workers. The latest monthly measure of the U-6 unemployment rate is 11.2% vs. the U-3 rate of 5.6%. Thus, the more realistic unemployment rate is twice what the government claims is the unemployment rate.
This 11.2% is equivalent to about 10 million Americans not being able to reach their full employment desires, either because they are stuck with part time work only or cannot find a job at all.
This U-6 rate has not been this high since 1994, over twenty years ago, certainly not an economic record to be proud about.
The economy has been so anemic that ever higher college graduates are having to live back home with their families after graduation due to anemic job growth:

At the end of the recession in 2009, median U.S. household income was estimated by the government to be $54059. However, since the recession ended, median household income has decreased, not increased, during the recovery, bottomed out at just under $52,000, when adjusted for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Board, a decrease of about 4%.
While household income has decreased after the recession ended, wage and salary growth has been flat and anemic, averaging only about 1.5% during the so-called recovery, probably less than the rate of inflation:

While the economy has been in recovery for years. most, if not all of that recovery was in Texas, a low tax, business friendly state:

Is the economy improving? Yes. Is unemployment down? Yes. Is inflation under control? Yes. Did Obama inherit a difficult economic situation? Yes. These are all true statements.

However, despite record deficit spending, hundreds of billions of dollars spent on an economic stimulus plan, trillions of dollars of aid from the Federal Reserve Board, and an energy revolution, this recovery has been anemic, weak, delayed, and geographically focused with household income and wage/salary growth behaving as if the recession never ended.

The 70% or so increase in national debt as a result of Obama’s economic plans will place tremendous financial pressure on American families for generations to come. Young Americans have not seen the economic opportunities that previous generations have enjoyed despite being five years out of the recession.

And most Americans agree with this assessment. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll:

While Americans in general believe the economy is getting better. they do not think, on average, that their personal financial situation is getting better.
Americans are far more likely to believe that unemployment and the economy are improving because of themselves and American businesses, not Obama and Congress.
According to the poll, only one in four think they are better off than when Obama first came into office, with one in three saying they are worse off.
52% of those polled do not even believe the government’s unemployment numbers, saying unemployment is worse than what the government admits to.

When the majority of Americans do not believe or trust your basic economic numbers, think they are worse off than before you came into office despite being five years removed from the recession, and do not give you credit even for the weak, delayed, and expensive economic recovery, that can be classified as nothing else than an epic fail.

A long but necessary post to cut through the hype of economic spinning from this administration. Stay tuned over the next few days as we investigate whether there are other epic fails from this administration in other areas of governance.

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:

Friday, January 23, 2015

The Obama Epic Fail Series, Part 2A: Economics

We are going to take a few days and discuss the track record of the Obama Presidency across several perspectives. The impetus for this discussion and review was the fact that when the world leaders and millions of French men and women rallied in France to protest and take a stand against global Islamic terrorism, this President embarrassed himself and the United States by NOT attending the gathering of world leaders in Paris. In our opinion, this was an epic fail and a missed historical opportunity.

Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.

This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris.

If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.

The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.

But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.

Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:

Transparency and integrity
Economic policy
Foreign policy
Healthcare policy
Government management policy

Economic Policy Part A

I am not denying that Obama came into a difficult economic situation when he came into office. The country was in the midst of the Great Recession. Banks were failing, unemployment was sky high, and economic growth was lousy.

However, he was not the first President that inherited a tough economy. Reagan took office after the disastrous Jimmy Carter Presidency. During that Presidency, a new economic term was coined, stagflation. Previous economic theory stated that you could not have high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. However, Carter mangled the economy so much that we had high inflation, high unemployment, sky high interest rates, and anemic economic growth all at the same time.

But what did Reagan’s economic policies and strategies produce:

Seven consecutive years of economic growth that never fell below 3.5% a year.
In four of the seven years, economic growth was above 4.0%.
One year economic growth was over 7%.

All this robust economic growth came from a place of stagflation. Thus, the argument to protect Obama’s economic performance because of the Great Recession is an empty one compared to what Reagan accomplished.

Even Clinton’s Presidency recovered nicely from a recession, averaging 4% growth coming out of a recession. And both Reagan and Clinton did not have the economic tailwinds that Obama enjoyed:

Spending over $800 billion on an economic stimulus program that failed miserably.
Adding over $7 trillion of government deficit spending to the economy and the national debt.
Benefiting from over $3 trillion of Federal Reserve printed money that was added to the economy.
An energy revolution that caused energy prices to drop substantially and created loads of high paying energy industry jobs.

So given this historical background, let’s see how badly the Obama Presidency has come up short and decide if this is also an epic fail.

First, the good news:

The traditional unemployment rate has been slowly decreasing over the past few years.
The weekly filing of first time unemployment benefits has been slowly decreasing over the past few years.
Inflation has been under control during the entire run of the Obama Presidency.

Now the bad news:

Despite the four favorable economic tail wind components discussed above, annual economic growth during the Obama Presidency has never been above 2.5%, substantially below the Reagan and Clinton Presidencies and certainly below the long term average annual growth rate of the country over the centuries.
Adding over $7 trillion to the national debt has added over $60,000 in debt burden to every American household and Obama administration economic policies have put us on a path of record deficits both during his tenure and for years afterwards (click on graph for a larger view):

While the Federal 2014 deficit has been cut in half in 2014 (to just over $400 billion) vs. earlier Obama deficits, it is still higher than any annual deficit run up by any other previous President.
Even worse from a debt perspective, Obama’s economic policies have pushed the national debt to GDP ratio to over 100, far higher than it has been in at least twenty years and at a level that puts on a par with countries around the world who are approaching insolvency:

His tactical economic policies and programs such as Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, HARP, Solyndra, etc. have spent billions of taxpayer dollars with no societal benefit in return.
According to a recent analysis by the National Association of Counties, housing prices have recovered in less than half of all U.S.counties more than four years after the recession ended, about 75% of county economies are still below their pre-recession employment levels, average wage levels have declined in half of all county economies between 2012 and 2013, and only 65 counties across the entire country have recovered to pre-recession levels in jobs, unemployment, GDP, and median home prices.
While inflation has been under control and gasoline prices have been dropping, Obama's energy programs have driven U.S. electricity rates to sky high levels, sapping American households of whatever gas savings they may have been experiencing:

Electricity Price Index Hit All-Time High in 2014

This concludes the first half of our economic discussion and whether or not the Obama administration's management of the economy was also an epic fail. We will finish the discussion tomorrow but based on what see today, epic fail is probably a very good bet.

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:

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Thursday, May 12, 2016

May, 2016, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: HIllary's History of Lies, More Obama Economic Underperformance, and More

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

May, 2015, Part 1, By The Numbers: Tax Numbers Stink, Economic Numbers Stink, Welfare Cheat Numbers Stink

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Obama Epic Fail Series, Part 2B - Economics

Friday, January 23, 2015

The Obama Epic Fail Series, Part 2A: Economics

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