The day’s top political news:
Employers slashed payrolls by 524,000 in December
The unemployment rate is at its highest level in almost 16 years.
A government report, suggests the year-long recession was deepening.
The Labor Department says the national unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level since January 1993. The jobless rate was 6.8 percent in November.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Economy-loses-524000-jobs-in-rb-14013641.html
President-elect Barack Obama warned of dire and long-lasting consequences if Congress doesn't pump unprecedented dollars into the national economy, making an urgent pitch Thursday for his mammoth spending proposal in his first speech since the election.
"In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse" if Washington doesn't go far enough to address the spreading crisis, the Democrat said as fresh economic reports showed an outlook growing increasingly grim.
As Obama spoke, his economic advisers were on Capitol Hill to brief Democratic lawmakers on details of his economic plan. Senate Finance Committee members met privately to assess his proposals. The Senate Democratic caucus planned a late afternoon meeting, followed by a news conference by Majority Leader Harry Reid and other caucus leaders.
The president-elect cast blame on "an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington." But he added, "The very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it is not beyond our ability to solve."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95J4DV00&show_article=1
Obama Uses Poll, Focus Groups to Sell Stimulus Plan to Congress
President-elect Barack Obama’s top political aides are transplanting their campaign tactics to the policy arena, using data from polls and focus groups to shape the debate over a stimulus plan that may cost at least $775 billion.
David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political adviser, along with campaign media adviser Jim Margolis, are encouraging lawmakers to use the word “recovery” instead of recession, and “investment” instead of “infrastructure.” Those recommendations came from focus-group research indicating that such framing would make the package more appealing to voters.
The Obama camp is trying to build support for the stimulus proposals, which have encountered resistance from lawmakers of both parties over size and cost. Republicans have employed similar tactics in past policy debates, notably when they labeled the estate tax as the “death” tax in arguing for its repeal.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aHNaiptix3lk&refer=home#
Opinion:
"Spending” wont create wealth
In the new world of Barack Obama, there’s a bit of Alice in Wonderland at work.
Obama and his clan thinks prosperity can be regained by spending tons of Federal dollars on the problem.
Of course “throwing money” at a problem has long been a liberal Democrat modus operandi. They love it. They point to FDR’s claimed success in pulling the country out of the recession. If truth be considered, it was the demands of WWII that pulled us out of the Depression – FDR simply created a huge government and led us into an era of threatened socialism.
After all, FDR was oblivious to the ultimate threat posed by his pal Stalin.
Now, Obama utilizes all the rhetorical tools of a political campaign to build support for a stimulus plan that is nothing more than “Son of Paulson”.
(You will note, Paulson demanded immediate action on a scheme to use $700 billion to save the banking industry – within days, he simply changed his mind – today they cant tell us where the money went)
Keep in mind, its all our money. The government has no money of its own and cannot create profits.
As Ronald Reagan sagely noted: “no government can give its people that which it does not first take from its people”.
Nuff said.
By the way, do I need to note “government solution” is an oxymoron?
If I read things correctly, Obama plans to provide tax returns to people who pay no taxes. (Huh?) That’s a slight of hand that would amaze any three card Monte dealer on any street corner. Had Obama been consulting that Ponzi scam artist now “imprisoned” in his plush New York home? Maybe that’s why this guy who ruined thousands of his friends, is allowed to remain at home, enjoy his plasma TV and his bar, and not worry about handcuffs and all those things.
I hope I’m kidding.
Buddy
Headlines and overviews of the top blogs:
1.
Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'
The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/08/barack-obama-gaza-hamas
2.
Upon listening to president-elect Barack Obama as he addressed the nation this morning about the state of this nation's economy and what is needed to fix it, I was appalled.
Obama displayed ignorance while promising miracles
Upon listening to president-elect Barack Obama as he addressed the nation this morning about the state of this nation's economy and what is needed to fix it, I was appalled by Obama's ignorance. Rush Limbaugh on his radio program in the aftermath of Obama's address likened Obama's cure to putting an undertaker in charge of the economy.
The giant $1 trillion stimulus package -- this seems to be the spending floor -- that Obama wanted on his desk by his swearing-in on January 21, but whose date could be advance until mid-February, is nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme marketed as a way to spend ourselves out of this economic downturn. It will involve money that this nation doesn't have to spend. It would be the biggest government spending bill in world history, charged to this nation's credit card for our children to pay without safeguards and appropriate hearings to scrutinize how the tax dollars are being spent. The money will either have to be borrowed or printed (unbacked paper) which could cause double-digit inflation in 6-to-18 months, as it is not possible to raise enough taxes from people or businesses in a down economy.
3.
Are They All Democrats Now?
David Limbaugh
Barack Obama, itching to implement his gigantic stimulus package as soon as possible, is dangling the idea of combining his spending package with a tax cut in hopes of securing another kind of stimulus: Republican support for his package.
Republicans should remember that when you polish manure, you still have manure.
Obama went to Capitol Hill Monday to promote his stimulus plan of between $675 billion and $775 billion. An estimated 40 percent of the package (between $270 billion and $310 billion) would consist of tax cuts.
Obama strategists say the proposed tax cuts are based on historical and empirical evidence of what works, not ideology. But despite his denials, Obama's intention to target the cuts to the "middle class" and exclude higher-income earners, whose stimulated activity has been shown to have the greatest economic impact, betrays his crippling bondage to ideology.
The lion's share of the relief would involve $500 tax cuts per individual or $1,000 per family for income earners and an equal amount in credits for those who qualify for the "earned-income" credit. But he would phase out those cuts and credits for households with incomes of $200,000 or more, which is inexplicable apart from ideology and class-warfare populism.
http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2009/01/06/are_they_all_democrats_now
Now for the details of these articles:
1.
Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'
Incoming administration will abandon Bush's isolation of Islamist group to initiate low-level diplomacy, say transition sources
US president-elect Barack Obama is widely expected to adopt a more even-handed approach to the Middle East conflict once he assumes office. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA
The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.
The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.
A draft was agreed last night at the UN, calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire between Hamas and Israeli forces in Gaza, the head of the Arab League said. Amr Moussa said Arab countries want the security council to vote on the resolution. It was supported by the US, Israel's closest ally, and Arab countries with ties to Hamas.
Richard Haass, a diplomat under both Bush presidents who was named by a number of news organisations this week as Obama's choice for Middle East envoy, supports low-level contacts with Hamas provided there is a ceasefire in place and a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation emerges.
Another potential contender for a foreign policy role in the Obama administration suggested that the president-elect would not be bound by the Bush doctrine of isolating Hamas.
"This is going to be an administration that is committed to negotiating with critical parties on critical issues," the source said.
There are a number of options that would avoid a politically toxic scenario for Obama of seeming to give legitimacy to Hamas.
"Secret envoys, multilateral six-party talk-like approaches. The total isolation of Hamas that we promulgated under Bush is going to end," said Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation. "You could do something through the Europeans. You could invent a structure that is multilateral. It is going to be hard for the neocons to swallow," he said. "I think it is going to happen.
But one Middle East expert close to the transition team said: "It is highly unlikely that they will be public about it."
The two weeks since Israel began its military campaign against Gaza have heightened anticipation about how Obama intends to deal with the Middle East. He adopted a strongly pro-Israel position during the election campaign, as did his erstwhile opponent and choice for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. But it is widely thought Obama would adopt a more even-handed approach once he is president.
His main priority now, in the remaining days before his inauguration, is to ensure the crisis does not rob him of the chance to set his own foreign policy agenda, rather than merely react to events.
"We will be perceived to be weak and feckless if we are perceived to be on the margins, unable to persuade the Israelis, unable to work with the international community to end this," said Aaron David Miller, a former state department adviser on the Middle East.
"Unless he is prepared to adopt a policy that is tougher, fairer and smarter than both of his predecessors you might as well hang a closed-for-the-season sign on any chance of America playing an effective role in defusing the current crisis or the broader crisis," he said.
Obama has defined himself in part by his willingness to talk to America's enemies. But the president-elect would be wary of being seen to give legitimacy to Hamas as a consequence of the war in Gaza.
Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University's school of foreign service, said it was unlikely that Obama would move to initiate contacts with Hamas unless the radical faction in Damascus was crippled by the conflict in Gaza. "This would really be dependent on Hamas's military wing having suffered a real, almost decisive, drubbing."
Even with such caveats, there is growing agreement, among Republicans as well as Democrats, on the need to engage Hamas to achieve a sustainable peace in the Middle East – even among Obama's close advisers. In an article published on Wednesday on the website Foreign Affairs, but apparently written before the fighting in Gaza, Haass, who is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote: "If the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold and a Hamas-PA reconciliation emerges, the Obama administration should deal with the joint Palestinian leadership and authorise low-level contact between US officials and Hamas in Gaza." The article was written with Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel and an adviser to Hillary Clinton.
Obama has said repeatedly that restoring America's image in the world would rank among the top priorities of his administration, and there has been widespread praise for his choice of Clinton as secretary of state and Jim Jones, the former Marine Corps commandant, as his national security adviser.
He is expected to demonstrate that commitment to charting a new foreign policy within days when he is expected to name a roster of envoys to take charge of key foreign policy areas: Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, India-Pakistan, and North Korea.
Obama has frustrated and confused those who had been looking for a more evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by his refusal to make any substantive comment on Israel's military campaign on Gaza, nearly two weeks on.
He said on Wednesday: "We cannot be sending a message to the world that there are two different administrations conducting foreign policy.
"Until I take office, it would be imprudent of me to start sending out signals that somehow we are running foreign policy when I am not legally authorised to do so."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/08/barack-obama-gaza-hamas
2.
(Obama displays ignorance while promising miracles)
“Upon listening to president-elect Barack Obama as he addressed the nation about the state of this nation's economy and what is needed to fix it, I was appalled.”
Obama displayed ignorance while promising miracles
Nancy Thorner
Upon listening to president-elect Barack Obama as he addressed the nation this morning about the state of this nation's economy and what is needed to fix it, I was appalled by Obama's ignorance. Rush Limbaugh on his radio program in the aftermath of Obama's address likened Obama's cure to putting an undertaker in charge of the economy.
The giant $1 trillion stimulus package -- this seems to be the spending floor -- that Obama wanted on his desk by his swearing-in on January 21, but whose date could be advance until mid-February, is nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme marketed as a way to spend ourselves out of this economic downturn. It will involve money that this nation doesn't have to spend. It would be the biggest government spending bill in world history, charged to this nation's credit card for our children to pay without safeguards and appropriate hearings to scrutinize how the tax dollars are being spent. The money will either have to be borrowed or printed (unbacked paper) which could cause double-digit inflation in 6-to-18 months, as it is not possible to raise enough taxes from people or businesses in a down economy.
All this is happening at a time when we in the private sector are tightening our belts. One day the piper will have to be paid.
In truth, behind the promise of jobs and an economic rebound seems to be is political motive that seeks to build an enduring and a lasting Democrat majority through the doling out of government money to Democrat mayors, Labor Unions, environmental groups, etc. All are lining up like pigs at a trough to feast for a piece of the pork from what amounts to a large government slush fund. Already the U.S. Conference of Mayors has forwarded to Congress a list of 11,391 infrastructure projects. There are likely to be many "bridges to nowhere." Remember the "Big Dig" in Boston? What was suppose to cost 1.4 billion dollars escalated to 22 billion. Still taxpayers face a yearly bill of 100 million dollars for maintenance. It is not reasonable to think that the 25,000 workers losing their jobs in financial services on Wall Street will regain them as government-paid construction workers laboring on infrastructure projects.
Concerning Chicago and Illinois, Tom F. Roeser -- chairman of the editorial board of Chicago's internet newspaper, "The Chicago Daily Observer", and a radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, and teacher -- wrote astutely in his blog on 12/12/08: "Daley hopes Obama will open the federal spigot of his stimulus package so a floodtide of new construction, land acquisition and jobs will flow into Chicago, not so much to satisfy his zest for winning the Olympics for Chicago in 2016, but out of his desire to nurture in perpetuity his machine politics."
Jon Holkevitch in his "Tribune" commentary of Dec. 25, 2008, "Illinois transportation projects sought as part of the federal stimulus package," wrote how planning and transportation experts are expressing concern that "the state's track record of too much politicking and too little discipline over project selection creates a risk that the one-time-only infrastructure bailout could be frittered away."
Of concern is that Obama's $1 trillion stimulus plan is patterned after FDR's New Deal which did nothing to pull this nation out of the Great Depression. Lyndon Johnson's socialist-based Great Society programs also failed in the 60's. While there is some controversy over the rate of employment in the 30's under Roosevelt's New Deal frantic spending programs (Roosevelt was elected president in 1932), it is well to note that in 1939, five years into the New Deal, unemployment still stood at 17.2%. At the time Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary, lamented: "I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started." It took the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese to jump start this nation's economy through the start up of war time industry and production.
Where are the expressions of outrage over the national debt? Debt no longer seems to matters to many Americans. Debt certainly factored as an issue during the presidency of George W. Bush. Unfortunately the American people have been scared into believing that this nation is in a hopeless mess, that because this is an emergency spending has no limits, and that free enterprise and capitalism have failed.
Fearful of the freedom to make choices and the responsibility that comes with it, and captivated by rhetoric that spoke of hope and change and the promise of a free lunch, 52.7% of the American voters, lured into accepting that centralization of power under government can solve economic and societal problems better than capitalism under the free enterprise system, elected Barack Obama as president last November.
This nation stands on the brink of a socialist abyss which could very easily morph into a full-blown socialist society, minus a despot. We are becoming a "government with people" instead of a "people with a government" as envisioned by our founding Fathers and set forth in our nation's Constitution. Its people are becoming like sheep.
Obama's stimulus package could suck a trillion dollars out of the private economy. Has any consideration been given to what will happen down the road if all the bullets have been used up and the economy has still not responded? Possible consequences could be 2 - 3% inflation every month with prime rates rising to 6 - 7% and even 10%.
From now until mid-February when Obama is likely to sign the stimulus bill, the final bill will undoubtedly have under gone many changes. Even now there are tugs of war going on. What Republican legislators want included in the final bill conflicts with Democrat ideology of more government bureaucracy and spending, which, minus competition from the private sector, routinely results in waste, fraud, and inferior service.
The solution to resurrecting this nation's economy lies in restricting the growth of government, legislating tax cuts across the board, and slashing regulations. It is unbelievable that corporate taxes here in the U.S. are 1/3 higher than in the socialist utopia of Sweden! Democrat legislators seem inclined to direct America back to the frightful economic conditions of the 30's. There is no way this nation can survive if the national debt continues to expand, as some feel it will, to 20 billion dollars under eight years of an Obama presidency. Also looming ahead is 52 trillion dollars of unfunded debt that is owed to America's Baby Boomers. All will result in economic bankruptcy. It is our children and future generation of Americans who will suffer.
Republican legislators should not sell their souls to the devil for token tax cuts offered by Democrats under the guise of making the bill appear bi-partisan to the American people, for down the road at the next election the American people will surely judge those who fashioned the stimulus recovery bill and the effectiveness of its measures.
This country was founded on individual liberty and a self-reliant citizenry with an entrepreneurial spirit. By restricting the resources of the American people to create, invest and achieve wealth under a free market, capitalist system, lost will be the survival instinct which served this nation so well in the past.
As America moves increasingly toward the undesirable and destructive nature of a socialist welfare state, it is well to remember the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote: "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated (in the Constitution)."
In 2009 the "general welfare" has come to mean to many Americans the right to have a college education, to have health care, to be employed, to be able to afford a house, etc. These rights are not enumerated in our Constitution. As such our nation's Constitution is being eroded and with it our constitutional form of government. Sadly, most Americans seem not to care. They realize not that socialism has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried.
Posted by Pamela Geller on Thursday, America's Civil War, America's willful stupidity, Jihad in America: Enemy in our Midst, World War IV
3.
Are They All Democrats Now?
David Limbaugh
Barack Obama, itching to implement his gigantic stimulus package as soon as possible, is dangling the idea of combining his spending package with a tax cut in hopes of securing another kind of stimulus: Republican support for his package.
Republicans should remember that when you polish manure, you still have manure.
Obama went to Capitol Hill Monday to promote his stimulus plan of between $675 billion and $775 billion. An estimated 40 percent of the package (between $270 billion and $310 billion) would consist of tax cuts.
Obama strategists say the proposed tax cuts are based on historical and empirical evidence of what works, not ideology. But despite his denials, Obama's intention to target the cuts to the "middle class" and exclude higher-income earners, whose stimulated activity has been shown to have the greatest economic impact, betrays his crippling bondage to ideology.
The lion's share of the relief would involve $500 tax cuts per individual or $1,000 per family for income earners and an equal amount in credits for those who qualify for the "earned-income" credit. But he would phase out those cuts and credits for households with incomes of $200,000 or more, which is inexplicable apart from ideology and class-warfare populism.
Also demonstrating his ideological motivations, Obama's plan envisions short-term relief via one-time tax credits or refunds rather than long-term changes to the tax code. As others have noted, long-term changes are far more effective at stimulating growth because producers and consumers look to the long term in making their investment, hiring and spending decisions.
Cash infusions from rebates or credits, especially with today's sluggish economy and people's uncertainty, could be ineffective because recipients might choose to save the money rather than spend it.
That is what happened with the 2008 stimulus bill, as documented in a Heritage Foundation paper by Rea S. Hederman Jr., Stephen Keen and Brian M. Riedl. Only a small part of the rebate checks was spent, with large portions likely saved or used to pay down debt.
The John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts, by contrast, all involved reductions in the marginal income tax rates and all empirically stimulated economic growth by incentivizing producers.
If Mr. Obama could remove his ideological blinders or shed his class-warfare mentality and truly be guided by "what works" (as he promises), he wouldn't even be thinking about targeted or short-term cuts.
But the other half of Obama's stimulus plan is even more troublesome and probative of Obama's allegiance to ideology rather than empirical and historical evidence.
Contrary to most history and economics textbooks, Keynesian pump-priming stimulus packages do not lead to economic growth. No central planning-type guru is as smart at allocating scarce resources as a free market pricing mechanism. As the Heritage analysts point out, when government spends $1 billion on highways, for example, hiring road builders and purchasing road materials, "It must first tax or borrow $1 billion from other sectors of the economy -- which would then lose a similar number of jobs. In other words, highway spending merely transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another."
Though liberals, such as Obama and the vast majority of textbook authors, have a romantic attachment to FDR, the best evidence is that his New Deal did not end the Great Depression, but exacerbated it.
No one has done a better job in refuting liberal history revisionists and FDR apologists than Burton W. Folsom Jr. in "New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America."
Almost at the end of FDR's second term, the economy was getting worse, with unemployment at more than 20 percent. Folsom cites the words of FDR's treasury secretary and one-time confidant, Henry Morgenthau Jr., to make his case. These words should serve as a chilling reminder to all politicians even considering jumping on Obama's FDR big-spending bandwagon:
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."
So when I read that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has suggested that Obama's economic stimulus plan could receive "significant support" from Republicans if Democrats would just include Republicans in crafting the legislation, I have to ask,
"Are they all Democrats now?"
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2009/01/06/are_they_all_democrats_now
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