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Biden: 'I'm Proudest' of the Stimulus Daniel Halper May 10, 2013 7:36 AM Vice President Joe Biden says that of first term accomplishments, he's "proudest" of the stimulus. He made the comment in an interview to Rolling Stone magazine. "The thing I'm proudest of that we were able to get done in the first term was the Recovery Act," said Biden. The "Recovery Act" is also known as the stimulus. The vice president went on to say that he's particularly proud of the "clean-energy programs" that were part of the the stimulus. "It had $90 billion in clean-energy programs. We...

Federal Reserve officials have mapped out a strategy for winding down an unprecedented $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program meant to spur the economy—an effort to preserve flexibility and manage highly unpredictable market expectations. Officials say they plan to reduce the amount of bonds they buy in careful and potentially halting steps, varying their purchases as their confidence about the job market and inflation evolves. The timing on when to start is still being debated. Enlarge Image image image The Fed's strategy for how and when to wind down the program is of intense interest in financial markets. While the strategy being...

Kim Jong Un building 'mini world' with replica Big Ben and Eiffel Tower Chubby tyrant Kim Jong Un is building a “miniature world” in North Korea – with a replica of London's Big Ben at its heart. The dictator is set to open the theme park in capital Pyongyang – and has included the iconic clock tower. The new attraction, which opens this year, will also boast a copy of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. The secretive state famously doesn’t allow its citizens to leave the country – so it appears Jong Un has decided to bring the world to his people....

As the Department of Energy seized the last of Fisker Automotive’s reserves in lieu of an unknown amount that it was due to repay this week, what’s left of the lame electric automaker clings to the slim hope it can survive. While CEO Tony Posawatz and his team may need an intervention, a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday revealed that DOE and committee Democrats (as well as those in the Obama administration) are hopelessly stuck in an alternate universe, where losing millions of taxpayer dollars is considered a good record. Republicans had called officials from...

For the past five years, a fierce war of words and policies has been fought in America and other economically challenged countries around the world. On one side were economists and politicians who wanted to increase government spending to offset weakness in the private sector. This "stimulus" spending, economists like Paul Krugman argued, would help reduce unemployment and prop up economic growth until the private sector healed itself and began to spend again. On the other side were economists and politicians who wanted to cut spending to reduce deficits and "restore confidence." Government stimulus, these folks argued, would only increase...

Laugh all you want about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's campaign to recruit businesses from Illinois to the Lone Star State. We don't know whether Perry will succeed in prompting a commercial exodus from the Land of Lincoln to the land of droughts, fire ants and deadly fertilizer-plant explosions. Yet Perry's stunt is another serious wake-up call for Illinois politicians and the inhospitable business climate they've created. Perry can boast to Illinois business leaders of a Texas unemployment rate that has fallen to 6.4 percent. That's an excellent barometer of his state's economic health. By contrast, the unemployment rate in Illinois...

“Ineptocracy” is a new Internet-popularized word in wide circulation, which came to my inbox with the following definition: “A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.” Clearly the word’s creation was inspired by the current presidential administration, where the ineptocrats abound. And as NLPC has documented for 4+ years, nowhere has that been more evident than in President Obama’sDepartment...

If you want to see where a little bit of your $833 billion stimulus went, head south from St. Louis on Interstate 44 until you reach the Mark Twain National Forest. On March 13, 2009, less than a month after President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law, the federal government awarded $462,912.30 to a Spokane, Washington, construction firm called CXT Incorporated to build and install 22 “precast concrete toilets” in the park. These bunker-style commodes did not add to the number of bathrooms in the forest; they replaced existing toilets that didn’t meet Forest Service...

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has condemned President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget as “just another left-wing wish list.” It raises spending and offsets these increases with additional taxes, such as a proposed 94 cents per pack additional tax on cigarettes. It also proposes additional funding for “basic research.” “The administration’s 2014 spending plan includes a total of $33.2-billion for basic research, an increase of about 4 percent over fiscal-2012 levels,” reports Paul Basken for The Chronicle of Higher Education (emphasis added). “It proposes total research-and-development spending of $143-billion, about 1.3 percent more than the fiscal-2012 amount.” “The White House,...

As green energy stimulus recipients raked in billions of dollars the last few years, with President Obama declaring what a great “investment” they were for taxpayers, friends of mine would jokingly ask, “Where’s my dividend?” “Where are my stock certificates?” “Where’s my free electric car?!” In the case of our $193-million stake in Fisker Automotive, thanks to a Department of Energy loan guarantee, it looks like American shareholders will end up with the whole company itself. With the Anaheim non-automaker (no cars produced since last summer) firing about 160 of its 200 remaining employees on Friday, a bankruptcy law firm...

While most regular people don’t really know or care who he is, Rupert Murdoch is among a small handful of individuals who is most despised by the far left in this country. Unlike many others, he also has the great distinction of being loathed by exponents of socialism worldwide. After reading (or watching) the speech which he recently gave to an Australian think tank called the Institute of Public Affairs about the moral superiority of free markets, it’s not hard to see why those who would enslave markets because they believe them to be based on greed would despise Murdoch,...

A Pittsburgh, Pa. solar energy company has shut its doors four years after receiving nearly $10.2 million in tax credits from the Obama Administration as part of the as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Flabeg Solar U.S. Corp., a $30 million solar plant located near the Pittsburgh International Airport, opened its doors in 2009 and was said to provide 300 jobs. Now, just four years later, the plant has shut down and laid off more than 60 workers. In addition to this, 10 of its former employees have petitioned a federal judge for severance pay after they...

In an effort to jump-start the nation's economy, the Democrat-controlled Congress, in February 2009, passed Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama's "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (better known as the "Stimulus"). In fact, in order to get enough votes for passage, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed the final vote until Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) returned from his mother's memorial services. Following its passage, Reid said (emphasis mine): The plan we passed will strengthen our economy by creating millions of good-paying jobs here at home; deliver tax relief for 95% of workers and invest in America's future by fixing...

I just heard another Republican politico, a state senator here in Georgia, at a meeting, claim that Common Core is not a federalized education curriculum, but a “state-led” education reform initiative. He could have been reading from a press release sent by the Obama Department of Education. In reality, Common Core was attached to millions of dollars in stimulus funds that were dangled by the feds before the states in a contest called “Race to the Top” during the 2009 economic crisis. The attached Common Core standards were not even written when states signed up. Writing the standards and attached...

President Obama ’s alternative energy “stimulus,” administered through hisDepartment of Energy by previous SecretarySteven Chu, had already become a joke because of the failures and foibles of so many recipients of Recovery Act funds. But now – as though officially commemorating the absurdity of this historically bad U.S. government program – one of its bankrupt beneficiaries has changed its name from one of simplicity to one of mockery. Electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems has changed its name to B456 Systems. Incorporated. Reporting the development, headline writers across the nation rubbed their eyes, double-checked the wire information, and then...

President Barack Obama walked into the mouth of a giant tunnel in Miami on Friday to highlight proposals to boost investment in U.S. infrastructure, a move designed to show a leader still focused on the economy in the midst of broader policy battles in Washington. Obama’s tour of the Port of Miami tunnel project and a subsequent speech were aimed at convincing members of the U.S. Congress to back proposals that would leverage taxpayer dollars into funds to rebuild American roads, bridges and other infrastructure. “My main message is, let’s get this done,” he said. “Let’s rebuild this country that...

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's failed job policies are facing bitter criticism from African-American leaders who say black unemployment has grown worse under his presidency. After four years of holding their tongues and remaining quiet in the face of sharply rising black unemployment and record poverty, political leaders from the Congressional Black Caucus to the NAACP have begun to open fire on the White House. Obama won 96 percent of the black vote in 2008 and about the same percentage in 2012, despite a worsening jobless crisis among African-Americans. At 14 percent for adults and 43.1 percent for 16-to-19-year-old teenagers, blacks...

UPDATE 11:30 a.m. Friday: Reuters reports that Fisker has hired a bankruptcy attorney. Fisker Automotive , which has received $193 million of a $529 million Department of Energy stimulusloan guarantee and apparently still wants the rest of it, stopped making its sole electric car – the $102,000-plus Karma – last July. But only now has it decided to furlough workers for a week. “In parallel with the process of identifying a strategic partner, Fisker is, of course, continuing to manage its day-to- day operations and has recently instituted temporary furloughs for its U.S. workforce covering the final week of...

Three weeks ago we gave Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government a $250 million economic stimulus package, and this week we decided to double-down in our national support for anti-Semites by giving the Palestinian Authority its own $500 million bonus.

Look out, Anthony Weiner. Another member of your party is taking the pole position. Daily Mail: A state representative in Massachussetts is being investigated after allegedly sending pictures of his genitals to a government computer. The investigation is ongoing and the committee has not formally reprimanded the individual in charge, but it is being widely reported that Democratic State Representative John Fresolo is the one behind the scandal. He allegedly sent ‘lascivious photos of his privates’ to a computer at the State House, and an aide complained to the Ethics Committee to start the investigation… Though he was curt and...

Last week, I reported on the federal government's massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP "leadership" continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush). The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children's academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats' grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/ccss-parent-opt-out-form/ Parents caught...

Abound made national headlines last year when the solar firm collapsed after receiving a $400 million taxpayer loan guarantee. But that failure could potentially stick taxpayers with an estimated $2.2 million more in cleanup costs ... ... Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had informally ordered Abound Solar to clean up hazardous waste at four Front Range locations, where concerns were raised about contamination. The CDPHE found 2,500 pallets of “unsellable” solar panels and over 6,000 gallons of hazardous liquids. The panels and liquids contain cadmium, considered a toxic substance by federal health agencies

The Federal Reserve's latest round of stress tests for the banking industry showed only one bank remaining on a shaky financial foundation . That bank was government-owned Ally Financial (the bailed-out company formerly known as GMAC), which also happens to be General Motors' prime source for financing. GM divested itself of GMAC so that the struggling lender could be classified as a bank holding company and receive billions of taxpayer dollars. In a move to distance itself from GM, the company was renamed Ally Financial. The government maintains majority ownership of Ally Financial, which in turn has helped GM by...

Oh, how time flies when we are having fun. Did you realize that February 17 was the fourth anniversary of President Obama signing the highly touted $821 billion stimulus package that was funded by the tax dollars you and I had no choice in sending to Washington? A lot of promises were included with that stimulus, things like lower unemployment because of all the jobs Obama said the stimulus would either create or save. If this is what stimulus really looks like, I want no part of it. Here is what President Obama had to say at the signing ceremony...

This should be a lesson to politicians and economists about the nature of gimmicky “stimulus� efforts …. but probably won’t be. In the pressure cooker of the tax fight over the holidays, most people forgot about the payroll-tax holiday — the reduction by two percentage points of FICA withholding for Social Security. Its backers claimed that putting $20 a week in the hands of earners would boost spending and the economy, which turned out to be entirely false. They then claimed that the expiration of this temporary stimulus would tank the economy through reduced spending.And that also turns out to...

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Wednesday left in place its monthly $85 billion bond-buying stimulus plan, saying economic growth had stalled but indicating the pullback was likely temporary.

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately?  In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved.  Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck. Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen.  Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which...

The U.S. Government took some enormous steps and continues to take enormous steps to right the economy.In his 2013 outlook, KKR's Henry McVey points to the $7.66 trillion worth of stimulus as a reason to be bullish on real assets like real estate and commodities.From McVey:The United States is running an explicit reflationary policy of holding nominal interest rates below nominal GDP. Though this relationship was slightly more stretched back in the late 1970s, it is again near record levels. We are also dealing with far more liquidity injections by the U.S. government than in the past. In the U.S....

President Barack Obama demands more stimulus spending to avoid the "fiscal cliff." Obama increased the national debt $6 trillion to $16 trillion. Yet the Democrats' 'cure for what ails ya' is even more spending. Obama demands around $75 billion in new spending to stimulate the economy in 2013. "Keynesian Economics" is the insane belief that the economy can be stimulated by government spending. It provides the excuse to depart from common sense that allows politicians to ignore the alarm bells. It is ludicrous mainly because our government doesn't have any money to spend. If the government had a surplus saved...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture improperly inflated the numbers of jobs created or saved by the 2009 economic stimulus, according to the agency’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG). “[We] identified job numbers that were inflated because award recipients reported cumulative job numbers instead of the number of jobs created or saved during the quarter being reported. In other instances, job numbers were under-reported,” according to an OIG audit released Dec. 13. The report claims that without accurate job figures, it is “difficult” to know whether the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was effective in creating or saving jobs....

A top Nissan official has said the company was “arrogant” in its marketing and sales approach for the all-electric Leaf, which received a $1.4 billion stimulus loan guarantee fromPresident Obama’s Department of Energy. Not that the company is going to return taxpayers their money, since the premise upon which Nissan received the loan were ridiculously high production estimates. Too much in expenses would have to be eaten otherwise. “We were a little bit arrogant as a manufacturer when we went to the 50-state rollout,”said Al Castignetti, Nissan’s vice president for sales, to Automotive News in late November. “We had assumed...

And the probe doesn’t involve some bit players in an obscure program, either.  The 1603 Program was one of the centerpieces of Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus, designed to subsidize a transition from hydrocarbon-based energy to renewables in the residential market, and federal government sunk $13 billion into the effort.  Now the Inspector General of Treasury has opened a probe of the three largest providers of solar panel installations, who gained the most from the 1603 Program, and who may have fraudulently calculated their bills in order to claim more taxpayer cash: Three of the country’s most prolific installers of...

This article analyzes the history of labor union violence, and how Rep. Capuano's comments are a perfect continuation of this historical truth. Labor Unions: A History of Murder and Sabotage The New American 28 February 2011 The raging union-led protests in Wisconsin have resulted in many Americans taking a closer, more critical look at labor unions and their political clout and influence in shaping policy. With the ubiquitous announcement from AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka that he is granted an audience at the White House “nearly every day,” the American people have become more skeptical of unions and the role...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve ramped up its stimulus to the economy on Wednesday, expressing disappointment with the pace of recovery in employment as contentious U.S. budget talks heighten uncertainty about the outlook. The central bank replaced a more modest stimulus program due to expire at year-end with a fresh round of Treasury purchases that will increase its balance sheet. It committed to monthly purchases of $45 billion in Treasuries on top of the $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds it started buying in September. In a surprise move, the Fed also adopted numerical thresholds for policy, a...

Policymakers are also likely to repeat a pledge to keep buying bonds until the labor market outlook improves substantially. A drop in the jobless rate to 7.7 percent in November from 7.9 percent in October was driven by workers exiting the labor force, a fact certain to disappoint the Fed. "The economic environment seems ripe for those at the Fed who support continued accommodation," said Victor Li, professor at the Villanova School of Business and a former St. Louis Fed economist. As its last program of Treasury purchases, known as Operation Twist, draws to a close, officials look set to...

Let me get my obligatory free-trade qualifier out of the way here first: It's not so much that there's anything at all wrong with businesses buying and selling on the international arena, because foreign markets may have demands for products we don't, and we all stand to make money off of one another in a mutually beneficial and productive way. Free-trade is not a zero-sum game, and everybody wins.The problem here is that in the case of A123 Systems, a manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric cards, the Obama administration spoon-fed hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into...

OneUnited sought Frank's help for TARP fundsBoston Business Journal Thursday, January 22, 2009, 8:57am EST Boston’s OneUnited Bank received $12 million in federal rescue funds last month just weeks after regulators issued a cease-and-desist order to overhaul some of its lending and executive compensation practices. Details of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s official enforcement action against OneUnited and the bank's pending $12 million infusion were first reported Dec. 5 in a Page 1 article in the Boston Business Journal. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the tiny bank received the bailout money after gaining influential support from Massachusetts congressman...

Maxine Waters elected ranking member of House financial panel (Reuters) - California Democrat Maxine Waters was elected to serve as ranking member of the House Financial Service Committee, according to an announcement from Waters' office on Tuesday.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that extending long-term unemployment benefits would be the “best stimulus there is” for the economy, saying it would create the most jobs for the money. … Schumer and fellow Senate Democrats called for yet another extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed before the current benefit extension expires at the end of the year. …

A bankrupt battery manufacturer that was a cornerstone of President Obama’s effort to make the United States a global leader in clean energy technology could end up in the hands of a Chinese company when it goes on the auction block Thursday. Congressional Republicans call the company, A123 Systems, which received $133 million in federal stimulus grants, a textbook case of how the Obama administration wasted taxpayer money trying to nurture new industries. Administration officials say the stimulus money was used to build a new manufacturing facility in Michigan

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016. By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

Everyone knows we’re approaching a date that lives in infamy in American history – Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. But there’s another more recent date in American history that should live in infamy. It’s Dec. 16, 2008. That’s the date on which President George W. Bush admitted what he did with the bailouts of the major investment firms and banks that were “too big to fail.” Here’s what he said in that infamous admission: “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the...

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year? All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting...

How about a little government economic stimulus? That may sound incongruous considering the budget deficit and the push from Republicans to cut government spending. But President Obama’s first offer to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff" holds out the hope of at least some stimulus. This would include extending the 2 percentage point Social Security payroll tax cut, boosting a tax incentive to businesses, establishing a $50 billion bank for long-term infrastructure projects, and extending unemployment benefits. The total bill: about $255 billion out of the federal government's pocket – an amount the GOP would likely say needs to be...

This article was adapted from the Autumn 2012 issue of City Journal. Despite a bleak decade for air travel—the result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the post-2008 economic downturn—local governments, aided by Washington, have been pouring billions of dollars into airport development and expansion. They claim that these expensive, debt-laden facilities will spur growth in economically precarious locales by attracting businesses that want more air connections. But from Cincinnati to the Florida Panhandle, this Field of Dreams approach—build it, and they will come—hasn’t worked. In 1978, Washington transformed America’s airline industry, deregulating fares, routes, and the entry of new...

A reply by stimulus recipient ($115 million of a $249 million grant paid out)A123 Systems to an inquiry by Republican Sens.Charles Grassley (Iowa) andJohn Thune (S.D.) showed theelectric vehicle battery manufacturer received nearly $1 million in Recovery Act funds on the day it declared bankruptcy. The money flow is not likely to stop. A123 as a whole, or in pieces, is going to be sold to the court-approved buyer(s). That is likely to be eitherJohnson Controls, which is the lead bidder for the company’s automotive business, or Wanxiang Group, which wants to buy the whole company. A123 had an agreement...

A pair of foreign-owned solar companies that benefited from a combined $84 million in Energy Department tax credits have announced they will lay off employees. One of the companies, German-owned SolarWorld, was integral in the fight for tariffs against the importation of Chinese photovoltaic solar panels. The other, Chinese company SunTech, blamed those tariffs for its own layoffs. Both companies benefited from the Energy Department’s stimulus-funded Advanced Energy Manufacturing (48C) Tax Credit. The 48C credit is worth up to 30% of the cost of manufacturing qualifying green energy projects. SolarWorld received a credit worth $82 million, while SunTech’s was worth...

The venture finance operation that raised money for crony capitalist investorsKleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, and their green tech firms like electric car companyFisker Automotive ($193 million paid in stimulus loan guarantees) and fuel cell manufacturerBloom Energy, is shutting down, according to a Fortune report. Advanced Equities, Inc. had recently been reprimanded by the Securities and Exchange Commission and by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for misleading investors and for breach of contract with its brokers. Fortune cited sources that said AEI brokers were told last week that Monday would be their last day. Crain’s Chicago Business confirmed that...

[written September, 2011, but even more applicable today] Re:  Could this time have been different?Ezra Klein     Washington Post columnistEzra Klein: Some partisans offer a simple explanation for the depth and severity of the recession: It’s the stimulus’s fault. If we had done nothing, they say, unemployment would never have reached 10 percent.This is the wrong way to look at it. The unemployment rate numbers are so skewed as to be virtually worthless. For instance, if all of the people that have given up searching for jobs were included in today’s unemployment rate it would be over 11%: Townhall Total employment is...

Four years ago Barack Obama was elected President with 53% of the vote -- a monumental achievement. He was swept into office with 364 electoral votes, compared to John McCain’s lackluster 162 electoral votes. With 60 votes in the Senate and a lock-step Democrat majority behind then Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the new President had complete party control of Congress. His approval rating by early spring peaked above 70%. The President's rhetoric was high-minded and soaring. His feel good messages of hope and change convinced Americans that the previous eight years were a disaster and that America needed a dramatic course...