Cap-N-Trade Tax Update ***UPDATE***

So, the last of the pillars of the radical Leftist takeover -- the energy sector -- is now under assault, with a vote coming in the Senate before too long. We'll get to that in a moment. First, let's recap some of the most wonderful tenets of the enviro-wacko movement that is pushing this energy takeover.

These lovable folks are the very same ones who endorse the enforcement of limits to the number of children any family can have, too. What happens if you accidentally get pregnant with more? Well, don't think too hard about that.

Naturally, Green High Priest Al Gore is so concerned about the rising waters due to the melting ice caps due to *ahem* man-made global warming that he just dropped $9 million on a new vacation home...overlooking the ocean, of course. Never mind the fact that only 1/3 of U.S. meteorologists actually believe that humanity is the cause of global warming. You're also supposed to ignore the fact that this planet is not, in fact, running out of oil, which provides cheap, reliable, and safe energy to everyone. But for those of us who lack a personal fortune with 7 or more digits, the costs of energy legislation like this will be crippling.

Interestingly, one of the primary alternatives to this horrible use of oil is wind power. Aside from the rather obvious fact that the wind doesn't always blow everywhere, people live close to windmills always seem to find them objectionable. Shucks, that's too bad.

The bottom line is that the environmentalist movement has been exposed as a bunch of suckers who've been taken in by a hoax and a lie, and simply refuse to acknowledge reality in their quest to serve their self-appointed cause. In fact, it won't be long until they declare food to be hazardous to your health. Oh wait...they've already done that.

But let's address the current legislation, whether the latest cap-n-tax bill or the EPA regulations being kicked around (they both do essentially the same thing in the end). As with everything these radical Leftists are doing, beware...all is not as it seems. It's a full-blown legislative Trojan horse, in fact:

The basis of the EPA’s regulatory efforts is the agency’s finding that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that supposedly “endangers” us by causing global warming. Once the EPA made this unprecedented and unsupported endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act, it put the enormous regulatory machinery of the federal government in gear to generate rules regulating CO2, rules that will damage every aspect of the U.S. economy. Thankfully, substantive legal challenges to the endangerment finding and the rules the EPA is generating have been filed.

One rule the agency has already issued, something known as the tailoring rule, seems, at first glance, different than its economy-stifling kin. The tailoring rule was supposedly designed to exempt smaller CO2 emitters from the new regulations until 2016. While the Clean Air Act itself states that pollutant emissions of 250 tons or more must be regulated, EPA’s tailoring regulation simply contradicts the law, stating that for now the agency will only regulate CO2 sources emitting 50,000 tons or more.

How, you may ask, can a federal agency just overturn a law by regulation? Good question. The reality is that the EPA is well aware that the tailoring regulation contradicts black-letter law; consequently, it knows legal challenges have high prospects for success. So why would an agency like the EPA that has no trouble flexing its regulatory muscles exempt tens of thousands of potential regulatory targets with such a rule? Quite simply, in addition to recognizing the regulation’s tenuous legal grounds, the EPA realizes that as the number of individuals aware of the pending regulatory burden grows, the stronger the backlash against its CO2 rules will be. Crafty bureaucrats also know that the biggest hurdle they now face is beginning the process of regulating CO2 — striking out against our national economy from the regulatory beachhead of the EPA’s very questionable endangerment finding.

The reality is that with or without the tailoring exemption, the Clean Air Act is already festooned with complex and expansive regulatory mechanisms. The EPA’s extension of its grip to CO2 will be another unparalleled regulatory bonanza for this government agency. Once done — like virtually every other federal regulatory effort — the scope of the agency’s CO2 powers will only continue to expand. While a small business, family farm, or ranch might escape the EPA’s direct regulatory burden and a particular permitting process with the tailoring rule (perhaps only temporarily), they will still suffer from this unlawful aggregation of power by a federal agency. At the end of the day, the enormous economic costs of job losses, reduced GDP, and dramatically higher energy prices from the impact of the EPA’s rules will punish all of us.

In fact, if you look objectively at the numbers, it's not only going to drastically increase costs of just about every good or service in the country, it's a proven job-killer. And, amazingly enough, as with all of these massive, unread, undebated, constructed-in-secret, freedom-destroying bills we've seen in the past year and a half, it's also a thinly disguised payoff to liberal Democrat special interests.

Another way to put it would be that it's an egregious power grab, but there's a chance to stop it:

The Senate will vote Thursday on Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's S.J. Res. 26, which would forestall the EPA's efforts to give itself authority to impose sweeping new regulations on greenhouse gases. U.S. code lays out Congress's power to review new rules promulgated by federal agencies to enforce existing laws. Congress can overturn these rules by issuing a "joint resolution of disapproval."

In the Senate, such resolutions are privileged and thus not subject to filibuster. S.J. Res. 26 already has 41 cosponsors, including three Democrats. A fourth, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.V.) is heavily leaning toward supporting the measure. But even if the resolution gathers enough additional Democratic votes to pass and makes it to the president's desk, the Obama administration announced today that it will likely face a veto.

This latest wrinkle adds a level of boldness to the Executive's blatant attempt to circumvent separation of powers and legislate from the White House. Even if administration can't goad enough Democrats in Congress to yield their constitutional authority to the EPA; even if they cannot pass a version of Kerry-Lieberman, the White House will have its cap-and-trade. One way or another.

Of course, even if that resolution succeeds, the battle is not completely over:

We also shouldn't forget that the Democrats don't need Kerry-Lieberman to get the grab-bag of green subsidies and the new conservation mandates they want. The editors make the case today that the Democrats really don't need Kerry-Lieberman at all: They can pass the Bingaman bill — which contains all the new subsidies and mandates, but lacks cap-and-trade — and just let the EPA do the dirty work of rationing carbon. This is looking increasingly like their default strategy.

And things will be miserable along the way...by design. Remember:

And, keeping in mind the fact that well over half of our nation's energy comes from coal:

The bottom line is that the radical Leftists in charge of the government right now will stop at nothing to gain control over every possible aspect of the nation in order to control as many people as possible. They don't care how badly they damage this nation, how much havoc they wreak, or how miserable they make life for peons like you and me during their greedy quest for power.

The only thing that will truly stop them is to force them out of the positions of authority that will allow them to dictate policy this way. Start by placing a call to your Senators today.

There's my two cents.


Related Reading:
Stopping the EPA's CO2 regulations
Window dressing cap-and-trade won't make the costs go away
Subsidized green jobs still destroy jobs elsewhere


***UPDATE***
The Senate voted Murkowski's bill down, 53-47. Some analysis to keep in mind:

Don’t cry too hard over the vote. For one thing, there was zero chance of it passing the House (although watching purple-district Democrats agonize over whether to vote for it would have been fun) and The One would have vetoed it even if it had. For another thing, consider this a trial run on the viability of cap-and-trade. If Reid can’t get 60 to agree that, yes indeed, carbon is very dangerous, he’s not getting 60 for a much broader regulatory regime like C&T. Nor, given the latest polling from Nevada, will he want to even try. Exit quotation from Dan Foster: “I don’t want to hear a liberal bemoan executive supremacy ever again. This is Congress abdicating its own authority because the Democrats know they can’t get the votes to pass cap-and-trade.”

Unfortunately, this allows the EPA to declare things like dirt and air to be deadly to your existence. Good luck with the coming cost increases...

Seriously, You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

It just writes itself:

President Obama continues to take political cynicism to new heights, or new lows, with his now-habitual use of student graduation ceremonies to preach political pieties that he casually ignores.

A month ago, the president told University of Michigan graduates to embrace "a basic level of civility in our public debate." This from a president who is a master of division, as he demonstrated that very same week when he sleazed Republican senator Mitch McConnell as "cynical and deceptive" for claiming the administration's financial-regulation bill would allow more bailouts "when he knows that it would do just the opposite."

Yesterday, Obama was at it again at another southeast Michigan school. In a speech to Kalamazoo High School graduates, the president advised the Class of '10 not to "make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes, but for your failures as well. When you screw up…it's the easiest thing in the world to start looking around for someone to blame. We see it every day out in Washington, with folks calling each other names and making all sorts of accusations on TV."

The Senate GOP agreed, helpfully pointing out a few applicable headlines from recent months:

ON AMERICA'S CHALLENGES

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "When I Showed Up After Inauguration, They Had Left A Big Mess On The Floor.  So I Got A Mop, And I Started Cleaning Up Their Mess." (President Obama, Remarks, Norfolk, VA, 10/27/09)

ON THE ECONOMY

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "By Any Measure, My Administration Inherited A Fiscal Disaster." (President Obama, Remarks, 3/4/09)

ON DEFICITS

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "Now, If We Had Taken Office In Ordinary Times, I Would Have Liked Nothing More Than To Start Bringing Down The Deficit. But We Took Office Amid A Crisis." (President Obama, State Of The Union Address, 1/27/10)

ON THE ADMINISTRATION'S BUDGET

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "My Budget Does Not Attempt To Solve Every Problem Or Address Every Issue.  It Reflects The Stark Reality Of What We've Inherited – A Trillion Dollar Deficit, A Financial Crisis, And A Costly Recession." (President Obama, Remarks To A Joint Session Of Congress, 2/24/09)

ON DEMOCRAT ELECTORAL LOSSES

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "Here's My Assessment Of Not Just The Vote In Massachusetts, But The Mood Around The Country… People Are Angry And They Are Frustrated. Not Just Because Of What's Happened In The Last Year Or Two Years, But What's Happened Over The Last Eight Years." ("Exclusive: President Obama Says Voter Anger, Frustration Key to Republican Victory in Massachusetts Senate," ABC News, 1/20/10)

ON THE OIL SPILL

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Took Office, For Example, He Found A Minerals And Management Services Agency That Had Been Plagued By Corruption For Years ..." (President Obama, Remarks, 6/1/10)

 OBAMA: "The Habit [At MMS], Predating My Administration, Was You Just Automatically Gave The Environmental Waiver." (President Obama, Remarks, 5/27/10)

ON HIS ADMINISTRATION'S ECONOMIC ACTIONS

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "We Had To Act Fast.  And Unfortunately We Didn't Have All The Tools That We Needed To Act Fast Because You Had A Previous Congress And A Previous Administration That Had Left A $1.3 Trillion Deficit Wrapped Up In A Bow That Turned Surpluses Into Deficits As A Consequence Of A Whole Host Of Irresponsible Policies." (President Obama, Remarks, 5/26/10)

ON AMERICA'S STANDING ABROAD

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "Well, First Of All, During The Campaign I Did Not Say That Some Of That Loss Of Authority Was Inevitable. I Said It Was Traced To Very Specific Decisions That The Previous Administration Had Made That I Believed Had Lowered Our Standing In The World. And That Wasn't Simply My Opinion; That Was, It Turns Out, The Opinion Of Many People Around The World. I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we've made, that you're starting to see some restoration of America's standing in the world.  And although, as you know, I always mistrust polls, international polls seem to indicate that you're seeing people more hopeful about America's leadership." (President Obama, Press Conference, 4/2/09)

ON AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ABUSES

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "And By The Way, I Don't Recall Any Of These Republicans Trying To Do Anything About Insurance Companies' Abuses During All The Years They Were In Charge." (President Obama, Remarks At St. Charles High School, St. Charles, MO, 3/10/10)

ON GUANTANAMO
PRESIDENT OBAMA: "The Problem Of What To Do With Guantanamo Detainees Was Not Caused By My Decision To Close The Facility; The Problem Exists Because Of The Decision To Open Guantanamo In The First Place." (President Obama, Remarks On National Security, National Archives, Washington, D.C., 5/21/09)

Hot Air posts some video here if you want to see it, along with this commentary:

Stirring words, my friends, from a guy who, by Charles Krauthammer's account, had already blamed Bush by October last year for "the economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad — everything but swine flu." In fact, it was only three weeks ago that Politico reported the Democrats' midterm campaign macro-strategy will be to run against — ta da — George Bush.

Ah yes, sometimes it just writes itself...

There's my two cents.

The Ultra-Competent Obama Administration Continues Showcasing Itself

Sometimes the competence just oozes off the page:

More fun from this morning’s exercise in ass-kicking on “Today”. Skip ahead to 2:36 for the key bit. The One’s logic, such as it is, is that it’s not worth talking to Tony Hayward because he’ll only end up giving him the runaround — a curious position coming from a guy who campaigned on the virtues of “dialogue” and who’s been locked in halting negotiations with Iran for fully 16 months. Even Lauer is openly incredulous. Captain Kickass has nothing to say to a guy who potentially holds the fate of his presidency in his hands? Even after yesterday’s hair-raising Times piece claiming that BP’s effort to cut the leaking riser may have actually increased the flow of oil many times over? I thought this was supposed to be the new, improved, “engaged” Hopenchange.

That’s the second half of the clip. I gave you an extra two minutes up front so that you can watch O once again throw himself a pity party over the “24-hour news cycle” (TV critic David Zurawik is pounding him for that today) before insisting that none of his critics seem to have any suggestions for what he should have done differently in the early days of the spill. Don’t they, though? Byron York highlights this bit from a recent NYT piece:

For example, it took the Department of Homeland Security more than a week to classify the spill as an event calling for the highest level of federal action. And when state officials in Louisiana tried over and over to win federal permission to build sand barriers to protect fragile coastal wetlands from the oil, they got nowhere. “For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore,” the Times reports, “officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach.”

And here’s something hot off the presses from ABC:

A leading scientist following the BP oil spill said Monday that if the company or the government had made realistic estimates about the amounts flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, they could have had sufficient tanker space ready on the surface to hold the crude being pumped up through a make-shift collection device…

In an extensive interview with ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross, [oceanographer Ian] MacDonald examined underwater video from the early days of the disaster and concluded that BP had been underestimating the scope of the spill, with little objection from the U.S Coast Guard or other federal agencies…

Coast Guard officials told ABC News that BP refused to allow them to release the more startling images, arguing they were proprietary. But at the time, the agency was doing little to convey to the world what the images were showing. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry was sticking with estimates, calculated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which put the spill’s size at about 5,000 barrels a day for several weeks.

Don’t forget either that Bobby Jindal’s request for hard booms on May 2 was still woefully undermet three weeks later.

Video at the link above (I can't stand watching it, so I'm not going to post it here).

Moe Lane at RedState adds some supplementary information that really puts the flies on the turd:

Let me tell you a story (via Instapundit).

Once upon a time there was a owner of a packaging material factory in Maine who found out one day that there was a major oil leak disaster going on in the Gulf of Mexico. It turns out that a useful item for oil leak containment - known as ‘floating oil containment boom,’ or just ‘boom’ - was something that the owner’s factory could make; and since business was horrible anyway the owner decided to bring in extra workers and make all the boom that he could. The Governor of Louisiana was yelling for lots and lots of boom, and surely both British Petroleum and the federal government would be downright eager to buy up the boom as fast as the factory could make it.

Surely.So, what happened? Well, British Petroleum did… well, this:

Two weeks ago BP sent a quality control person to Maine, looked at the factory, and was impressed by what he saw. Packgen was feeling confident. That confidence has now turned to frustration. Packgen says BP controls who the boom suppliers are going to be — and they have yet to approve Packgen’s design.

And the federal government did… well, this:

…and the boom piles up in the warehouse.

Moe Lane

PS: That’s it. That’s the end. Boom in Maine; oil in Gulf; ping-bong balls in government beer.

Elections have consequences.

Oh yes, the showcase of competence is on.

There's my two cents.

Update On 2/3 Of The Radical Leftist's Roadmap To Taking Over America

First up is even more good news about DemCare:

Come September, a feature of the ACA will kick in that could spell the end of affordable "mini-med" coverage plans for low-income workers. Such plans typically provide access to a limited number of health-care providers and cap annual benefits payouts, but a provision in Obamacare bans insurance companies from doing the latter. That could spur massive spikes in premiums that put the mini-med plans beyond the reach of the very consumers for which they are designed.

And remember, the up to 1 million workers who will be affected by the provision won't have exchanges or subsidies to fall back on for years, thanks to the tax-and-regulate now, pay later structure of Obamacare.

Or, put another way:

Democrats will get their wish — but the employees won’t get their coverage. The law imposes the penalties for mini-med plans in three months, but the exchanges won’t start until 2014. That means more than three years of having no insurance at all for low-income workers who previously had it, even if Obama and Pelosi sniffed at the worth of the plans.

So why did they do it this way? Good question:

This was part of the “front-load” strategy of the Democrats, who wanted to implement what they thought would be the most popular components of ObamaCare immediately, in order to build support for its continuance. Instead, the mandates will mean that mini-med plans will either cost so much that the employees can’t afford it, or more likely, the insurers will drop the plans as money-losers. It’s a big indicator that the people who drafted the law had very little understanding of the insurance industry, or of the private sector.

NO...! I'm shocked SHOCKED that the Obama administration doesn't understand the private sector.

Hot Air points out that the massive unintended consequence here is that up to 1 million people could be kicked out of their health insurance by DemCare just a few weeks before the election. I'm pretty sure that's not going to do any favors for any Democrat on any ballot.

RedState thinks that not even the brainwashed, sycophantic media can cover over this one...but they'll give it another shot, anyway:

Why sell it when it does not go into effect for a few more years and it has already passed Congress? To improve Democrats’ chances in November, of course. Duh.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and remember that past performance is the best indication of future success. So you liberals shouldn’t expect this time will be any more successful than all the other times.

June 7, 2010: “Tomorrow, Democrats and the White House will hold more than 100 simultaneous events nationwide as President Obama plunges back into health reform, selling the historic plan all over again…” (Politico Playbook) “White House Mounts PR Blitz for Health Care Reform” (AOL News)

May 18, 2010: “White House seeks missing health bounce. The White House is aggressively touting the new healthcare law after failing to see an immediate bounce in polls from congressional approval of the legislation.” (The Hill)

May 11, 2010: “White House health-care campaign begins. The Obama administration’s campaign to sell the new health-care law to a skeptical public is beginning to take shape…” (The Washington Post)

May 8, 2010: “President Barack Obama on Saturday touted the benefits of his healthcare overhaul, renewing a bid to counter Republican criticism and ease public doubts more than a month after he signed reform into law.” (Reuters)

April 22, 2010: “Stephanie Cutter, the Democratic communications strategist who spearheaded the White House effort last year to win Senate confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, is returning to the Obama administration to help sell the newly passed health care bill.” (The New York Times)

March 24, 2010: “Clearly, inside the White House there is acknowledgement that Republicans outmaneuvered Democrats in the weeks after the stimulus bill passed and did a better job of defining for the public what was in that bill. … The White House is determined to learn from that experience. ‘Obama and the Democrats won’t make the same mistake,’ said Thomas Mann, who studies Congress for the Brookings Institution.” (CongressDaily)

And those are just the efforts to sell it after it was passed into law! Hit the link for many, many more.

Related:
The federal government is a bunch of radicalized, hippy slackers
DemCare starts squeezing the private sector



Now, on to the economy in general...

This morning White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag will release a memo directing all federal agency heads “to develop plans” to cut at least 5 percent from their budgets by “identifying programs that do little to advance their missions or President Obama’s agenda.” This spasm of fiscal responsibility can mean only one thing: the Obama administration is about to go on another wild spending binge. And sure enough Politico reports that while Blue Dogs in the House managed to whittle what was a $200 billion “jobs” bill down to $146 billion last month, the Senate is now larding it back up again with a $24 billion Medicaid bailout and a $23 billion teachers union bailout.

This spend-now/cut-later act has become a staple for the Obama administration.

It just doesn't work very well when you go overboard with the 'spend-now' part and never get around to the 'cut-later' part, which is exactly what Obama has done.

Of course, to be fair, overspending isn't solely an Obama problem. Washington in general has an overspending addiction that needs to be stopped immediately. Of course, you and I both know that the way to fix that problem is to STOP THE SPENDING, but the geniuses in Washington haven't quite figured that out yet.

Case in point:

On May 13, 2010, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced H.R. 5297, TARP III. The bill is being promoted as necessary to increase the availability of credit for small businesses. TARP III would create a $30 billion lending fund and authorize the Treasury Secretary to make capital investments in banks with less than $10 billion in assets.

Another TARP?! What happened to the previous ones?? They failed, that's what. They did little to stimulate the economy, nor generate jobs or anything useful; all they did was to prop up some favored liberal constituent groups and lobbies. Now that the money is running out, the bribes must continue, so they're back to the spigot for more. The GOP points out several of the inconvenient problems with TARP 3:

Taxpayers Can't Afford Another Bailout: The original bailout bill, TARP I, was $700 billion. In 2009, the Democrats enacted a $1.138 trillion "stimulus" plan, including the cost of interest, a $410 billion FY09 omnibus appropriations bill and a $3.6 trillion FY2010 budget. The Democrats increased the debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion, and the national debt now stands above $13 trillion. The taxpayers lost $145 billion by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, and the CBO expects the cost to approach $400 billion. Recently, the EU and the IMF pledged $145 billion to bail out the bankrupt nation of Greece. America's taxpayers are on the hook for $6.8 billion in loan guarantees from the IMF. The EU and IMF also announced a $1 trillion bailout plan that could put America's taxpayers on the hook for $50 billion in additional loan guarantees to bail out other financially irresponsible members of the EU. Yet, the Democrats continue to spend the nation into a financial abyss.

Creates Unnecessary Programs: Under the original TARP, Treasury created several programs to generate lending to small businesses. In addition, the federal government instituted federal guarantee programs through the FDIC and the Small Business Administration. The creation of a $32 billion TARP III program to do what the $700 billion TARP and other federal programs were intended to do is simply unnecessary. In fact, according to a recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, 8 percent of the small businesses surveyed cited a lack of credit as an immediate problem, but more than 50 percent cited a lack of sales as an immediate problem. In other words, small businesses are suffering due to a lack of jobs for consumers.

Lacks Proper Oversight: The TARP III program would not be subject to the effective oversight of the Special Inspector General for TARP. SIGTARP's Neil Barofsky, on February 19, 2010, sent a letter to Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability, Herb Allison. In the letter, Barofsky, expressed concern regarding Treasury's decision to remove TARP III from SIGTARP's oversight and warned that such a move would be "terribly wasteful" and "could lead to significant exposure to waste, fraud and abuse."

Creates More Uncertainty: Like the original TARP program, the federal government will once again, at it discretion, be able to reach into the boardrooms and pocket-books of private sector firms and employees. The use of the original TARP by some banks begot the use of the Obama administration's pay czar and auto task force (which closed thousands of dealerships). Also, the use of the original TARP inspired the Democrats to pursue a "responsibility fee," another tax on financial firms. Through TARP III, many small and mid-size banks may soon find the federal government as their new senior partner.

Whether they like it or not. And remember, the pay czar will stick his nose in there, and many Dems actually believe that the government should set wages of everyone in every company in the country!

How are you liking the hope-n-change? Just wait...it'll get lots better, I'm sure.

There's my two cents.

That's Quite A Lot Of Skin Ya' Got There...

In the game, that is (courtesy of Gateway Pundit):

Back in January 2009, Barack Obama told Americans that,
“Everyone must sacrifice… Everyone must have some skin in the game.”

Well… Everyone but Barack and Michelle Obama.

Canada Free Press reported, via FOX Nation:

The same hypocrite who says our energy costs must “necessarily skyrocket” to fund his political ambition, is giving Marie Antoinette a run for her money when it comes to spending national treasure on personal luxuries.

While much of the country is struggling to pay their bills, the President and First Lady are partying like rock royalty. The collection of talent that has made the pilgrimage to the White House to entertain Obama and friends is nothing less than amazing: Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennet, Paul Simon, Marc Anthony, Herbie Hancock, Martina McBride, Queen Latifah, The Foo Fighters, Faith Hill, and recently foot-in-mouth Paul McCartney to name a few.

This has the makings to be the greatest ongoing concert series ever to be seen on this Earth just to entertain one man … all paid for by the American taxpayer.

…The executive branch does not provide detailed information regarding entertainment expenses, however, it has been estimated the Obamas spent at least $10 million on “drunken White House parties” in 2009 alone.

Remember the liberal modus operandi: two sets of rules, one for them and one for the rest of us. And geez, if you think there should only be one set of rules for everyone, well then you must be racist or something.

There's my two cents.

Playing Politics With Oil Damage?

Seems awfully suspicious, anyway:

Glenn Reynolds reminds me of this paragraph by Allahpundit in response to the news that the President has been aware of the true magnitude of the BP spill all along:

The real disgrace here is why, if he really did know right away that this was the oil equivalent of an asteroid strike, he didn’t scramble some sort of all-hands-on-deck emergency operation to protect the coastline. Remember, Jindal reportedly requested five million feet of hard boom back on May 2, long after Obama (according to Wolffe) knew about the magnitude of the disaster. By May 24, not even 800,000 feet had arrived. What happened?

So, seeing as it’s been clear all along to the White House that we had an ecological disaster on our hands: why did the President not act in a timely fashion to try to keep the oil off of the beaches in the five Gulf of Mexico states?

State	Governor	Party	Election Year?	Note
Alabama	Bob Riley	Republican	Yes	Open race
Florida	Charlie Crist	Independent	Yes	Former GOP
Louisiana	Bobby Jindal	Republican	No	GOP leader
Mississippi	Haley Barbour	Republican	No	RGA head
Texas	Rick Perry	Republican	Yes	Re-election

Gee, I don’t have the slightest idea.

But hey, Barack Obama really cares about those states, and about the environment.

There's my two cents.

Dems Make Good Use Of Recess To Meet With Hide From Constituents

You would think that they would, you know, want to understand the thoughts and feelings of the people they represent so that they could, you know, represent them.  Right?  Wrong:

When opposition to ObamaCare reached a fever pitch last summer, a number of Democrats in Congress went home to angry constituents — or at least those who had enough guts to hold town-hall events.  Many Democrats simply chose not to hold them at all, or to hold staged "virtual" town halls in conference calls.  Now with ObamaCare behind them and a tough midterm election approaching, one might expect these incumbents to reconnect with their constituents, but the New York Times reports that even more of them have gone into hiding:

The sentiment that fueled the rage during those Congressional forums is still alive in the electorate. But the opportunities for voters to openly express their displeasure, or angrily vent as video cameras roll, have been harder to come by in this election year.

If the time-honored tradition of the political meeting is not quite dead, it seems to be teetering closer to extinction. Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.

It was no scheduling accident.

With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions. The recommendations were clear: hold events in controlled settings — a bank or credit union, for example — or tour local businesses or participate in community service projects.

And to reach thousands of constituents at a time, without the worry of being snared in an angry confrontation with voters, more lawmakers are also taking part in a fast-growing trend: the telephone town meeting, where chances are remote that a testy exchange will wind up on YouTube.

Nancy Pelosi assured America that we would love ObamaCare as soon as it became law.  Why then are Democrats putting themselves on milk cartons in their districts during recesses?   If ObamaCare is such a great deal, wouldn't these supporters be rushing to hold open forums to accept the love and gratitude of their constituents?

I find Hot Air's conclusion very interesting:

For a bunch of class warriors, the majority party sure seems intent on setting themselves up as an American nobility.  They want to exercise their power without having to account for themselves to the people they rule who send them to represent their interests, as if mixing with commoners has become somehow beneath them.  The "commoners" need to send them a big reminder in November about who works for whom in the American political system...

Distributed monarchy, anyone?

Seriously, though, it's just more proof (as if we needed more) that these Dems know they've been voting and governing contrary to the will of their constituents.  Therefore, they know that those constituents are seethingly angry at them.  The icing on the cake is that, more often than not, those constituents were actually far more knowledgeable on the bills and issues than the elected representatives, so not only do these Dems have to endure all this anger, but they end up looking like total idiots to boot.  Is it any wonder they'd rather just avoid these situations?

Still, the danger here is one of precedent - are we going to allow our elected leaders to escape responsibility for misbehavior and misrepresentation?  If so, then all this angst will have been worth it.  It's up to you, me, and 310 million of our closest friends to vote them into retirement to prove that theory wrong.

One last note - did you catch how the Democrat leadership actually recommended they avoid their constituencies?  The radical Leftists in charge are deliberately trying to separate the pesky obligations of actual representation from their ability to wield political power in whatever way they choose.  Is anyone else disturbed by this?

There's my two cents.

Insane, Offensive, American Insanity

In New York:

Founder of Ground Zero mosque part of group that helped fund Gaza flotilla

More specifically, he’s part of a group that’s funding another group that helped organize the flotilla. Too far removed for culpability? Let’s see.

The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, according to its Website.

Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.

Here’s Rauf’s bio at the Perdana website. Reuters confirmed with the Free Gaza Movement — whose supporters include William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, natch — that its biggest donation did indeed come from Perdana.

Not only is it an abomination to have any mosque at Ground Zero, but to have a mosque funded by the same organization that is currently funding active terrorist operations is the absolute height of offensive insanity!

But yes, by all means, let's let these people build a temple to their violent and murderous religion on the very patch of ground representing their most successful attack on our soil. What could possibly be wrong with that?

On a related note, some dedicated Leftists are openly calling for another holocaust.

There's my two cents.

Obama Continues To Mislead On Energy Policy

Are we really that surprised? This is nothing new, but the fact that he's still misleading means we need to go over it again:

President Obama keeps trying to make our electric bills skyrocket. Now he’s seized on the BP fiasco as an excuse to do it. According to Obama, the Gulf of Mexico gusher proves we need billions more to subsidize green energy. That was the President’s claim in his big Pittsburgh speech.

He didn’t tell the audience about his previous admission that electric bills will “skyrocket” under his plan. Or that our government continues to block access to immense onshore oil and gas reserves that don’t require the risks of deep-sea drilling.

Obama’s exact words in 2008 were, “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”. Converting fossil fuel plants, he said, “will cost money; they will pass that money on to consumers.”

If we were rapidly running out of oil, scarcity would drive up its price and make alternatives affordable without needing subsidies. But Obama left out the facts about our abundant untapped onshore reserves. As Heritage Foundation energy expert David Kreutzer notes,

He also could have noted that billions of barrels of “easily accessible” oil have been turned into “impossible to access” oil by federal regulations and moratoria that block any access. There is still a lot of non-deep sea oil available off the coast of California that can be accessed from onshore. And, don’t forget, there are the 10 billion barrels in ANWR. All of this oil has been placed completely off limits by federal regulations.

Instead, Obama’s speech simultaneously condemned overspending and denounced subsidies to big oil even as he proposed spending billions more to in new subsidies for the competitors of oil and gas.

Obama wants to eliminate tax deductions that, according to his own budget plan, “distort markets by encouraging more investment in fossil fuel production than would occur under a neutral system.” Yet he intends to distort markets even further by expanding subsidies and tax preferences for alternative energy. Those would heavily favor wind and solar as preferred by environmentalists who overstate the potential and affordability of those.

Nuclear power, however, has far more abundant potential and needs only the lifting of government barriers rather than subsidies. As noted by Heritage’s nuclear expert, Jack Spencer, “the monthly cost of producing electricity from uranium-based fuel remains slightly less than coal and substantially less than natural gas or oil” because, “Nuclear power is the least expensive form of electricity produced in the United States.”

But nuclear power is not politically correct. So another proposal is a backdoor subsidy that does not give government money directly toward alternative energy but instead dictates that utilities must generate certain levels of our electricity from sources like wind and solar (but not nuclear)—a so-called RES “renewable energy standard.”

The wind and sun are free, but the expensive equipment to harness them makes these among the costliest ways to generate electricity. RES forces utilities to use this higher-priced power and pass along the rising costs to customers. One study projects that home electric bills would rise by a third and business bills by 60 percent under proposed RES plans.

But for anyone who believes we can power America solely through windmills (even though it is costlier), dream on. This would require 55,000 square miles densely packed with nothing but windmills. That’s like emptying the entire state of Wisconsin and making it all windmills all the time. But our lights would still go dark when the wind wasn’t blowing.

Solar power is even trickier than wind power, requiring rare elements to build solar cells, plus daylight and large surface area.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, when subsidies are allocated according to how much electricity is generated, it costs $.44 per megawatt for coal, $.25 per megawatt for oil and gas, $1.59 for nuclear, $23.37 for wind and $24.34 for solar. (This leaves out the heftiest subsidy—ethanol—because it’s not used to generate electricity.) Since DoE made that study in 2007, the non-fossil fuel subsidies have been increased; now Obama wants to raise them again.

Like them or not, fossil fuels have provided great quantities of affordable energy. Higher subsidies for alternatives will cost a lot more, but still not meet our needs.

As predicted, he's following the same template: never let a crisis go to waste. In his case, that means use every possible incident that you can spin as a crisis -- whether it is or not -- to expand government and gain more control.

Unfortunately, the truth is not on his side, nor are the American people.

Not that that stops him, of course. The only thing that will stop him is if the ability to implement his agenda is forced out of his hands.

There's my two cents.


Related Reading:
Obama halts all new oil drilling in Gulf
BP leak may last until Christmas

Subverting Transparency Again

Hot Air pegs yet another example of blatant two-facedness on the part of the Obama administration:

The old paradigm: Supreme Court nominees being "extra forthcoming" when it comes to disclosures "in the absence of any judicial record" on the nominee's part.

The new paradigm: Executive privilege, baby!

Jonathan Strong reports for The Daily Caller that the White House may block some Clinton-era memos from Elena Kagan, and others might get dumped on the Senate Judiciary Committee the day before the confirmation hearings start:

In a carefully worded letter to top Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Obama administration says it might withhold some of the memos Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote when she served in the Clinton White House.

The letter says Obama "does not intend" to assert executive privilege to block the release of the documents but neither does it foreclose the possibility. It says Obama is consulting with a representative of President Clinton to determine which documents to block.

"President Obama does not intend to assert executive privilege over any of the documents requested by the [Judiciary] Committee," the June 1 letter from White House counsel Bob Bauer says. "Of course, President Clinton also has an interest in these records, and his representative is reviewing them now."

That has piqued Sen. Jeff Sessions' curiosity.  Why has the White House put Bill Clinton in the loop at all?  He's no longer the executive; the decision on executive privilege lies solely with the current President. In fact, as Strong notes, Obama's own executive order from last year made that explicitly clear.  Does the Obama administration intend to allow George W. Bush the same latitude in future cases, say, on reviews of war policy?

It's not the only part of the explanation that has the ranking Republican scratching his head, either:

Bauer's letter says there are two reasons: First, the documents might be requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the general public and, second, to prevent "classified national security information or personal privacy information" from being released, just like in the cases of the nominations of Justices John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor.

Republicans say the first rationale – regarding FOIA requests — is bizarre because, as the letter says, the Judiciary Committee's request is privileged, unlike a FOIA request. In other words, while Clinton can block the release of documents requested under FOIA, he can't block documents requested by the committee, so the relevance of FOIA is a mystery.

Bauer's letter says Clinton's review of the documents "will not prevent the Archives from producing these documents to the Committee in advance of June 28" – the day of Kagan's first hearing before the Judiciary Committee.

Republicans say that Bauer's language means Obama could release hundreds of thousands of pages of documents as late as June 27, the day before the hearing but still "in advance" of it.

If the White House executes some massive document dump on June 27th, there will be no time to review Kagan's work in the Clinton administration before the confirmation hearing starts.  That's not the act of an administration that supports transparency and professional review.  It's the act of an administration that thinks it has something to hide.

The Obama administration has redefined transparency into something akin to being open and honest only about certain select topics which we feel make us look good.  Or, put another way: we'll be the most transparent, open, and honest administration in history...except for the times when we won't.

I don't think there can be much doubt about this anymore.  Anyone who thinks otherwise has their head stuck firmly in either a deep, dark crevice or a deep, thick barrel of Kool-Aid.

I look forward to what I'm absolutely certain will be a campaign season full of brilliant, cutting campaign videos made up of nothing but back-to-back clips of Barack Obama and/or his liberal Democrat hacks in Congress promising one thing and delivering another.  This should be fun!

There's my two cents.

On Marshes And Singular Focus --- UPDATED AND RE-POSTED

Gateway Pundit creates an interesting and saddening juxtaposition on marshes:

It could be argued that President George W. Bush was the greatest environmental president in the last 100 years. During the Bush years air pollution levels in every category fell from 2001 to 2007.

But, that's not all…
One of the most significant environmental tragedies of the late 20th Century was the destruction of the Mesopotamian Marshes by Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi marshes were the largest wetland ecosystem of Western Eurasia. The genocidal dictator drained thousands of miles of southern Iraqi marshland after the 1991 War and slaughtered the Marsh Arabs who lived there. But after Iraq was liberated from their brutal tyrant the US restored the region. George W. Bush resurrected the marshes. In early 2003, less than 10% of the Mesopotamian Marshlands remained. By early 2004, 40% of the marshlands had been re-flooded. Since the liberation of Iraq the marshes have been restored to over 85% of their former glory.

A photogragh in 1977 of the marshlands before Saddam drained the land of water. (Nik Wheeler)

Contrast this resurrection story to what we are witnessing today.
40 plus days ago, a BP rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 workers. Since that time the underwater well has been leaking hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the waters off the Gulf coast. And, where has Barack Obama been during this time? On vacation, playing golf and basketball, partying with rock stars and threatening BP. Instead of initiating a proactive approach to the disaster, Team Obama has ignored, downplayed, and passed the buck on the worst environmental disaster in American history. If you taught Leadership 101 this would be a great example of Exactly NOT what to do.

Crude oil has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and has impacted about 125 miles of Louisiana coastline. Today the oil slick is expected to reach the pristine white sand beaches of Pensacola Beach, Florida. How sad.

Bush restored the Iraqi marshes. Obama destroyed the US marshes.

And while our own marshes were being threatened, what did Barack Obama do? First, let's see what he said:

Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don't know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.

Personally, I'm briefed every day, and have probably had more meetings on this issue than just about any issue since we did our Afghan review. And we understood from day one the potential enormity of this crisis, and acted accordingly.

So when it comes to the moment this crisis occurred moving forward, this entire White House and this entire federal government has been singularly focused on how do we stop the leak and how do we prevent and mitigate the damage to our coastlines. …

And so my job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about — the spill.

Okay, let's grant that these words are true (this is purely hypothetical, of course). How do his actions line up with his professed singular focus on 'the spill'?

The web site PolitiPage gives its readers a pictorial of Obama's days and nights for each of the days following the Gulf spill until three days after Obama's press conference. According to my count, the days and nights of Obama during the crisis have involved:

• Two days of media events (White House Correspondents Dinner and a tête a tête with Bono)
• Three days of fundraising
• Four commemorations
• Six days of vacation
• Six days of campaigning
• Six sports events
• Seven days of golf

Um...singular focus? Really?

***UPDATE***
Here's a video that really helps illustrate that singular focus:

Wow. Such dedication is very reassuring, don't you think? One can only hope that he applies similar dedication to the nuclear emergence of Iran, the defense of our ally Israel, staring down Russian aggression, the War on Terror, and the daunting economic problems we face...

There's my two cents.

Barack Obama Re-writes History, Shows His Abject Ignorance

Again:

President Barack Obama seized on the nation’s worst oil spill Wednesday to argue for rolling back billions of dollars in oil company tax breaks and using the money to speed the way to a clean-energy future. “The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century,” he said.

The White House released excerpts of Obama’s speech while he was en route to a speech at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. In his remarks, the president aggressively sought to cast Republicans as a party that fought him on tax cuts for small businesses, tax credits for college tuition, new spending on clean energy and more.

...

“We already know where their ideas led us,” Obama said of Republicans. “And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future.”

...

He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil. Obama said that the Gulf spill “may prove to be a result of human error — or corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety” — but that deepwater drilling is inherently risky and America cannot rely solely on fossil fuels.

Let's take this a paragraph at a time.

..."the next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century..."

Not if you get your energy policy into law - then the next generation will be held hostage to foreign nations who want to see us humiliated and dead. Of course, that'll only be when there is any energy available...just ask California how all that new alternative energy works out for them, what with their rolling brownouts and sky-high prices.

"...the president aggressively sought to cast Republicans as a party that fought him on tax cuts for small businesses, tax credits for college tuition, new spending on clean energy and more..."

Right, and it's a damned good thing they did! He has not offered any substantial tax cut to small businesses (if you can point one out to me, I'd love to hear it), and his tax 'credits' are nothing more than redistribution of wealth via a takeover of the student loan industry. And, these new clean energy things he wants to waste billions of dollars on are unproven, nebulous future technology that can't possibly provide legitimate energy for even a few people -- let alone millions of people all over the country -- for decades, and even then they will not pay for themselves! I sincerely hope he keeps reminding people of the fact that the GOP fought these things.

"We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future..."

Gateway Pundit reminds us of those 'failed' policies:

During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.

Hm, I dunno. If that's failure, I think I'll take it. Oh, and that stronger future he mentions? GP slays that lie in one short sentence:

Obama has tripled the national deficit and nearly doubled the unemployment rate of the previous administration during his first year in office.

You pick.

"He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power..."

Remember, these green jobs he keeps talking about have already been tried in Spain, and were proven as a dismal failure, with about 2.2 jobs being lost for every 'green' job created. And if he wants to increase development of natural gas and nuclear power, then why has he killed literally every effort to expand the domestic development of natural gas and nuclear power he's seen, both as President and as a Senator before that? His words are exactly what needs to happen, but his actions speak volumes about how honest those words really are.

"...deepwater drilling is inherently risky..."

That's right, it is. So remind me again why we're having to drill for oil so far out in the middle of the Gulf, and over a mile down? Oh yeah, because of insane environmental regulations that prevent oil companies from drilling for oil in shallow water or on land where it is readily available in copious quantities, can be acquired for far less expense, and has essentially no chance of wreaking environmental damage like this spill.

This is a shameful attempt to mindlessly re-write history into something that's a whole lot more convenient for him, nothing more.

There's my two cents.

Obama White House: Bribery Central

Whoa! If only the media wasn't hooked up to a hope-n-change Kool-Aid IV on this one! Of course, this is such a big (and obvious) deal that it may become an issue anyway:

U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff acknowledged tonight that he discussed three possible jobs with the deputy chief of staff of the Obama administration — all contingent upon a decision by Romanoff not to challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

Romanoff said none of the jobs was formally offered, but said the only reason they were discussed with Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina was if Romanoff stayed out of the Senate race.

“Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race,” Romanoff wrote in a statement. “He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions. At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina’s assistance in obtaining one.”

Hot Air poses the obvious question:

Is Messina guilty of a crime for having made this kinda sorta offer, even without any formal “promise”? Let’s see:

Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

I think we can get this one to the jury! Seriously, though, I don’t want Messina charged, partly because he was obviously acting at Rahm Emanuel’s behest (no deputy COS would be authorized to bribe a senate candidate on his own initiative, I assume) and partly because I’m sure this really is D.C. business as usual for both parties.

The point here is to illustrate not that this behavior is unusual, but to illustrate that it is depressingly normal. And, it also happens to be precisely the sort of thing that Obama campaigned on, promising to do the opposite! Just because both sides likely engage in this doesn't make it right, and the American people shouldn't tolerate it from either side.

Of course, this also serves to bring even more pressure and visibility onto the whole Sestak bribery situation. How will the White House spin this? Even in cases where the strictly legal minutiae end up working out, sometimes the public perception is so firmly fixed that a politician will be crushed under its weight alone (remember what killed George Allen's presidential run before it even began?). This may be one of those times. Keep watching.

There's my two cents.

Gag Alert: 'The Word' Edition

The woman knows no shame:

Astounding. Truly astounding. Doug Powers offers a few points for your consideration:

Kind of like watching Jack Kevorkian trying to gain the trust of attendees at an AARP convention, isn’t it?

“The word was made flesh” — unless that flesh wasn’t wanted for any reason whatsoever.

Here’s a bit of Pelosi’s abortion voting record from On the Issues:

Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Jan 2007)
Voted YES on allowing human embryonic stem cell research. (May 2005)
Voted NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions. (Apr 2005)
Voted NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)
Voted NO on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother’s life. (Oct 2003)
Voted NO on forbidding human cloning for reproduction & medical research. (Feb 2003)
Voted NO on funding for health providers who don’t provide abortion info. (Sep 2002)
Voted NO on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad. (May 2001)
Voted NO on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes. (Apr 2001)
Voted NO on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
Voted NO on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)
Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 0% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-choice stance. (Dec 2006)

If there’s a bumper sticker slogan that best represents Nancy Pelosi, it’s “What Would Jesus Not Do?”

Sorry, I know that was probably as unpleasant for you to watch as it was for me, but we need to understand the depths of hypocrisy to which these people will go. Or, if you prefer it in different terms, we need to understand just how twisted, incoherent, and morally bankrupt these people are.

Whatever works. You get the point.

There's my two cents.

Don't Get Suckered By The May Employment Numbers

Hot Air:

Advance word on this week's employment numbers due on Friday morning is that the figure will be eye-popping — a growth of over a half-million jobs in May.  However, only a third or less will come from the private sector.  Most of the rest will come from an explosion of Census Bureau hires last month, some of which have already ended, according to The Hill:

Hiring by the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to spike May's job figures dramatically.

Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's.com projects the economy will add 575,000 jobs in May, while the Economic Policy Institute's (EPI) rough projection is for 560,000 jobs. …

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser on Tuesday, touted what he said would be a positive report for Democrats, who are hoping a revitalized economy will help them in this fall's elections. He said the May report would be "well beyond" the 290,000 jobs created in April, according to Reuters.

The numbers pose a problem for the administration, however, in terms of their reflection of economic growth.

Zandi expects that only 150,000 of the jobs created in May will come from the private sector, while 425,000 new jobs are sparked by the once-a-decade census.

Those jobs are temporary ones that will disappear as the Census completes the process of collecting data from people who did not mail in their forms.

In fact, if Zandi is correct, the inflated number will obscure a drop in private-sector growth.  April's employment figures showed the addition of around 224,000 private-sector jobs, the first significant growth against population expansion in more than two years.  Adding 150,000 jobs would still beat population growth — it takes adding more than 100K jobs to keep pace — but not by much.  That would signal a slowing economy, not a move to sustainable growth, although one month could also be a hiccup — just as April's could have been a hiccup as well.

But that's not all.  We've already been over how crooked the entire Census project appears to be in terms of employment.  John Crudele at the New York Post also throws this into the mix:

A couple weeks ago I found out that Census was repeatedly hiring and firing workers without any apparent reason. I questioned if this was being done to artificially boost the nation's employment figures since the Labor Dept. considers it a new job created whenever someone is hired to work as little as one hour in a month.

Was Census churning jobs to make the economy look healthier than it really is?

Could be.  If so, HA's conclusion is awfully hard to escape:

...the big issue for the Obama administration is what happens when the Census Bureau completes its work.  Hundreds of thousands of workers will be back looking for jobs that won't exist, which will spike the unemployment number later in the year, just when voters go to the polls.  If the private-sector numbers come in as weakly as Zandi predicts, it could be a sign that we've just about squeezed all of the growth possible from the artificial stimuli applied by the Democrats.

And what happens then?  When everything they've tried has demonstrably failed, and when even the made-up money is gone, what then?  Double dip recession?  Great Depression 2.0?  Greece?!

Barack Obama and liberal Democrats have no answers, no solutions, and no hope of bringing anything to this nation but oppression, deception, and destruction.  The longer they retain power, the worse off we'll all be.

There's my two cents.