Posted on 10/03/2014 11:49:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON - The painful, underperforming Obama economy remains Topic A here in the nation's capital and across the country. Pre-midterm election polls show that the voters are just as unhappy as ever over President Obama's mismanaged handling of the economic life of our nation, and Democrats are wringing their hands over expectations that it will cost them their congressional jobs on Nov. 4.
It's gotten so bad that even some members of the liberal news media have become a great deal more critical of an economy that one analyst said "simply isn't as healthy as the headline numbers suggest."
Even former President Bill Clinton, the man who will be choreographing Hillary Clinton's 2016 White House bid, is calling for cutting corporate tax rates as part of a sweeping overhaul of the tax code. The pro-business U.S. Chamber of Congress ran a full page ad in the Washington Post
Thursday with this quote from Clinton emblazoned across the top: "America has to face the fact that we have not reformed our corporate tax laws when 100% of the people, from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, agree we need to… We have the highest overall corporate tax rates in the world. We need tax reform."
Well, Bill, not all Democrats would agree with that. Ever since he took office, Obama's been pushing to raise taxes on businesses, and has never really warmed to the idea of any reforms that would lower rates. Democratic leaders in Congress have been downright hostile to the idea.
The result has not only been tax reform gridlock, but a chronically weak, lackluster economy held back by anti-investment, anti-growth and anti-job tax policies.
This doesn't get reported on the nightly news where its highly paid anchors have simply ignored these issues. But long-suffering, underpaid and jobless Americans are fed up with Obama and his party, are ready to strike back with vengeance in the midterm elections. And the polls say voters now trust the Republicans on the economy more than they do the Democrats.
Moreover, election handicappers this week said voters are not only likely to give Republicans full control of the Senate, but will significantly expand the GOP's hold on the House.
It the latter proves true, House Speaker John Boehner could end up presiding over the largest GOP majority in 85 years, observers said. The polling numbers have gotten so bad for Obama and the Democrats that the president this week was preparing to deliver a speech insisting the economy has been better than you think under his policies. Yet even with his talent for cherry picking only the best numbers and ignoring the bad ones, that's still going to be a hard sell this week.
The stock market plunged across the board Wednesday in response to a plague of disappointing economic data and uncertainty about the future of the economy that's been held back by weak investment, full time job losses, lower incomes, tighter consumer spending and a declining labor force participation rate.
The ISM manufacturing index fell in September (dropping to 56.6 from nearly 59 points in August), So did ISM's sub-index employment numbers.
Construction spending fell 0.8 percent; sales of existing homes were down; orders for long-lasting manufactured goods dropped by 18.2 percent in August; and consumer confidence fell in September to 86.0 points, the lowest point since May, according to the Conference Board. The network news programs ballyhooed the economic growth rate that rose to 4.6 percent in the second quarter (April-to-June), and Obama is still bragging about a lower unemployment rate that has fallen to 6.1 percent. The truth is that the economy's gross domestic product (GDP) has been growing by just 1.7 percent a year, "about half the pace of the Reagan-Clinton years," according to University of Maryland business economist Peter Morici.
And the "real jobless rate is likely closer to 20 percent, and the root cause is slow economic growth," Morici writes in his weekly economic analysis.
The reason for this wide discrepancy? Not counted by the Obama administration's Bureau of Labor Statistics "are prime working age adults who have quit looking for a job, part-time workers who want full-time positions, and young college graduates who have enrolled in graduate school because they can't find decent employment," Morici says.
But the economy's poor performance under Obama and the Democrats runs deeper than this on many other levels, especially among the middle class.
Median incomes haven't budged, median net worth has fallen, even during the so-called recovery, and the middle class is poorer. For those who are lucky enough to have a job, and perhaps a 401 (k) retirement plan, its value took a huge hit this week from a declining stock market.
"It is no surprise, then, that people are still so gloomy about the economy. The recovery just hasn't been much of one, or one at all, for most of them. Middle class wages are flat and middle class wealth is still falling," writes economic analyst Matt O'Brien in the Washington Post's Wonkblog.
All of this will determine the outcome of the midterms election in little more than four weeks and the new political makeup of Congress.
A GOP Congress of course would mean they can send Obama a pile of job creating, investment-making, income boosting reform bills to get this economy running again.
For starters, it would mean veteran Sen. Orrin Hatch, a tax-cutting Republican from Utah, would become chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee.
But it also means nothing changes at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue where Obama seems determine to veto anything that smacks of job creating tax cuts, export trade expansion, increased energy development, and getting rid of a mountain of business regulations that have sent jobs overseas.
Absent a two-thirds vote needed to override his vetoes, it would mean the voters will have to wait two more long, frustrating years before we can fix what's wrong with our economy.
I recall the Dems putting lipstick on the pig in the unemployment report just before the election in 2012.
People can look around and figure out that what they’re hearing aint what they’re seeing.
Uh, you mean American people? American voters? They are incapable of ANYTHING but destroying our nation with their votes. They are filth who gave America to a commie kenyan and eric doucher.
WRONG,
Congress has the absolute Authority to DEFUND EVERYTHING the White Hut does, simply by refusing to Appropriate Funds. But Bonehead will never upset his handlers, the Demonrats.
The press would assail bonehead, and then the American people would... Well, you know.
WE LIVE IN A REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC. The fault, ALL the fault lies with the people. True, they are duped by the media, but if you are dumb enough to give your nation to a commie kenyan who hates your guts because Katie Couric told you to do so, then you are filth who gets what you deserve.
The president went to the state of Illinois to brag about the economy. Illinois has 300,000 fewer jobs than it had in 2008. For the last four years in the state of Illinois, the number of new food stamp recipients has increased twice as fast as the number of new job recipients. He was speaking in Illinois on a college campus. He did not mention that 40 percent of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed — that is, in jobs that don’t require college degrees — and one in three recent college graduates is living at home with their parents.
Now, the president, we just heard, disparage trickle-down economics while bragging about doubling the stock market value. He is practicing trickle-down economics by doubling the stock market. He, and, for six years now, and most recently under his choice to be head of the Fed, Janet Yellen, have had zero interest rates, the intended effect of which is to drive people out of bonds and into assets like farm land, but particularly into stocks. That is why this has been a boon to the 10 percent of Americans who own 80 percent of all the directly owned stocks. And this is why 95 percent of the wealth created in the last six years have gone to the dreaded top one percent.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/wills-useful-reminder.php
No conservative economist has ever used the expression "trickle-down economics" to describe supply-side economics, Austrian economics, Chicago-school economics or other types of non-Keynesian economics.
However, the term does seem particularly apt for Kenyan economics.
We have the highest ever recorded poverty rate.
The press would assail bonehead
I agree, but if we had a real man as Speaker, he would begin hearings on the Nations Broadcast Airwaves and FORCE these Media Sluts to ADMIT THEIR LIES on the PUBLIC RECORD, while determining the renewal status of their LICENSE to Broadcast over the PUBLIC AIRWAVES.
But then again, this would require true statesmen to be in charge.
Not since 9/11. This generation has never known what it is to have companies fight over you with offers and counter offers. Like I was on the auction block.
Such freedom! Such security!
All gone.
I was watching The Five and when Eric Bolling responded to Obama’s speech claiming that America is better off by citing statistics such as how median incomes have declined, inflation has gone up and labor participation is the lowest it’s been in decades, Bob Beckel did a Biden and tried to laugh it off.
The denial of these Leftists is breath-taking.
People know if they cannot find good-paying full-time work. They know if they are losing their health care. They know if their bills are going up and their wages are flat.
The stock market is doing great, however. The evil 1% always benefits from collectivism, because it is an elitist concept.
Our local rag said unemployment is just over 4%. I guess the 70% commercial property vacancy rate must mean we are all working from home.
Another report says 92.6 million are not looking for work. My head spins when these people speak. They figure we are all as illogical as they are.
Why do we continue to use the phony ‘unemployment’ rate with no consideration of those who’ve just quit to go on the dole? Everyone knows it’s untrue.
But...but...but...
...I thought he said unemployment below 6% was a GOOD thing...
/s
This id what they said this morning, but you can’t believe anything from this administration
Not if dingy Harry Reid refuses to let the bills from the Republican House come up for a vote. He has over 300 bills from the House sitting on his desk
The House gave up, after refusing to call the administrations and media’s Bluff during the supposed Government Shutdown, funny thing is WE were WINNING!
That is what you say
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