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The Obama Watch
Our Marxist Wizard of Oz
Obama’s not in Kansas anymore.
His mother was an unabashed hippie from 1960s central casting. His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya. While his father wasn’t around much, his devoutly progressive grandparents arranged for him to be mentored during his adolescent years by a dues paying member of the U.S. Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis.
When he went to college, he was attracted to the Marxist professors and student activists, according to his own published memoirs. When he graduated, he moved to Chicago and became an instructor for the left-wing extremist organization ACORN in the social manipulation methods of radical Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky. He attended for close to two decades the Trinity United Church of Christ, which practiced neo-Marxist Black Liberation Theology. That church was headed during those years by the openly socialist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who declared that the 9/11 terrorist attack on America was “America’s chickens coming home to roost.” He also famously preached from his pulpit, “Not God bless America, God damn America….”
He launched his political career in the living room of the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, co-founders and former leaders of the openly Communist domestic terrorist organization, the Weather Underground. That organization conducted several bombings in America and engaged in other violence that resulted in several injuries and even deaths.
All of this is documented in the public record. This is the man the Democrat party took off the streets of Chicago, then pursuing a career as a Marxist street agitator, and launched into the White House, favoring him over Hillary Clinton because she was too moderate for the party. They did that because he best reflects the heart and soul of today’s radical-left, Che Guevara Democratic Party. It is in this context that we should understand and analyze Obama’s Hugo Chavez speech given last week at Osawatomie High School in Kansas.
Obama’s Hugo Chavez Coming Out
In that speech, he drew a picture of America as a struggling third world nation, saying at stake today “is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement.” In fact, he said, “there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal.”
This sounds more like Indonesia, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua. But it is not America “long before the recession hit.”
He explained the roots of the problem as:
Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world…. Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle…. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the Internet.
This Luddite analysis fundamentally misconceives the role of technology in a modern economy. Such advancing technology increases worker productivity, and, therefore, wages and standard of living. Technological progress over the decades is why the average American worker in 2000 enjoyed 7 times the standard of living of the average American worker in 1900.
He then tries to pin the blame for his failures on others, saying, “Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess.”
The policies that got us into this mess included primarily the so-called “affordable housing policies” Obama himself and other Democrats long advocated, with the government forcing the banks by overregulation to drop their traditional lending standards to provide loans and mortgages to low and moderate income applicants who could not qualify under those traditional standards. (See the full documentation and discussion in Paul Sperry’s The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Financial Crisis and Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.
The other major factor was the Fed’s loose monetary policy starting under Bush in the 2000s, which funded the housing bubble. Both policies were departures from the fundamental planks of Reaganomics. As I discuss in detail in my own book, America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, the four planks of Reaganomics had been effectively abandoned by 2008, and that was the cause of the financial crisis, which ended the 25-year economic boom from 1982 to 2007 that Reaganomics had created.
Obama tries to continue his historical revisionism, saying, “Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country.”
Here is what really happened. Those Bush tax cuts quickly ended the 2001 recession, despite the contractionary economic impacts of 9/11, and the economy continued to grow for another 73 months. After the rate cuts were all fully implemented in 2003, the economy created 7.8 million new jobs and the unemployment rate fell from over 6% to 4.4%. Real economic growth over the next 3 years doubled from the average for the prior 3 years, to 3.5%.
About the Author
Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy at the Heartland Institute, General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and Senior Policy Advisor on Entitlements and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (157) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Peter Ferrara
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JimH| 12.14.11 @ 6:38AM
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. One big difference is that the Wizard knew he was a fraud.
bill glass| 12.14.11 @ 10:57AM
True, that!
Riff Raff| 12.14.11 @ 11:01AM
The Wizard was a very GOOD man, just a very bad Wizard. Obama can't even claim to be a very good man. He isn't.
bill glass| 12.14.11 @ 11:08AM
True that, too!!
SpiralArchitect| 12.14.11 @ 4:53PM
Obama can't even claim to be a very good man.
With a mere wave of his forked tonge he claims anyhting he desires. This is not far removed from the manner he dispatches executive orders.
richard ryan| 12.14.11 @ 1:16PM
Obama must know that what he is saying is B___S___. Tax increases and Obamacare are not due to start crushing the country until 2013. So gets to say he will tax the rich and give us all healthcare now, knowing that after 2013 (when he thinks he will be starting his second term) things will completely go to hell and Cloward Piven plan will be complete.
SpiralArchitect| 12.14.11 @ 4:55PM
The POTUS is the conductor of a train named Socialism riding down the tracks of Marxism to a perceived utopia known as Communism. The American people are the passengers & the nations economy their baggage.
Lennin, Alinsky & Keyes writtings are on the walls.
...as a Marxist he definately believes what he is doing to be right(ous) & true.
Deborah D | 12.14.11 @ 5:01PM
He's such a sleazeball. This is our president...good grief, what a liar. To just lie constantly to the American people and not be called on it by the press, that's frightening to me. It tells you what he thinks of us, but why not lie? Who's going to report it? The Washington Post? The NY Times? ABC? NBC? CBS? CNN? BSNBC? I don't think so. We are being run by Marxists. Not just from the White House -- but the press, academia and Hollywood. I'm sure they don't think they're Marxists. They think they're enlightened -- the arrogance of ignorance.
Mertsj| 12.16.11 @ 8:41PM
No, my friend, he doesn't know what he is saying is BS.
The really accomplished liars, of which he is one, become that way by lying to themselves often and long enough that they can no longer diffenentiate between truth and lies and hence they believe their own lies.
That's how they can tell them so convincingly.
Deborah D | 12.14.11 @ 4:54PM
Please, God, save us from the Marxist-in-Chief. America, let's bring our country back from the brink. Great article, Mr. Ferrara, as usual. I keep praying that even the most out of touch Americans know in their bones the dire straits we are in.
Rene| 5.25.12 @ 1:43PM
Jim,
That's where people get wrong. Obama knows exactly what he's doing because he's doing it on purpose. Case in point: ponder over Reagan and Clinton as to what the two have in common.
Pecos Pete| 12.14.11 @ 7:02AM
I read the entire speech. It was class warfare at its best. It was community organizing. It was promotion of OWS mobs and unions. It was a speech glorifying statism and government taxation, regulation and bureaucracy. The speech blended some truth with many falsehoods and included outright polarizing rhetoric, emotional propaganda at its worst.
The quote below is from the speech.
"Today, even higher-skilled jobs, like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China or India. And if you’re somebody whose job can be done cheaper by a computer or someone in another country, you don’t have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages or better benefits, especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union."
Unions can be good, or bad, depending upon circumstances. The president speaks above, not as president of the United States, but as a union organizer. He speaks as a campaigner for office, not as the sitting president who should be speaking for all Americans.
The current president of the United States has pulled back the curtain on his true beliefs and his true intentions for changing the fabric of the United States. No one can be excused, now, for not understanding the damage he will cause if reelected. Nor, can anyone not understand that the federal government's attack on job creation is an active and directed policy of the president's administration.
Nancy in NC| 12.14.11 @ 8:07AM
And thanks to an education system, both public and private, we have a citizenry to stupid to see any of this. I know a number of so called intelligent people that would walk over broken class and burning buildings to vote for this piece of excrement AGAIN. Some are DIMS that would pull the D if Mickey Mouse were heading the ticket. Others are voting their own self interest, or at least that is what they perceive. Their ignorance is only exceeded by their pomposity of knowing what is better for the rest of us. And then there are those who hate this country and freedom (except for themselves), and are too foolish to realize that the Marxist value system does not work out for the majority of the people.
The "ruling class" and the Marxist educated drones have been working on this ends for over a hundred years. I hope we can find enough real Americans to defeat this leftist tide. But I certainly don't see Newt Romney and friends as the ones who will do it.
vicky bennett | 12.14.11 @ 10:56AM
Yes, Nancy. I am from Charlotte, and I know what you are saying. Our country is so divided thanks to our divider in chief.
And we get the "pleasure" of having the DNC convention here next year... Oh Joy! I believe NC may yet again be Blue.
Redstateboy| 12.14.11 @ 12:30PM
it'a been a hoot if the DNC had chosen Knoxville, TN. - we'd'a give'n a very hot welcome.
Nancy in NC| 12.14.11 @ 3:52PM
I live on the coast, vicky. And Ozero won't win this part of the state other than the minority vote and the D habitual pullers. I wouldn't want to be in Charlotte this summer; could get very hot!
ww40| 12.15.11 @ 10:22AM
Don't give up hope Vicky, I am in North Carolina as well and I do believe this state has learned its lesson and will be back in the Republican camp next time. I am very hopeful about this election.
Derek| 5.18.12 @ 11:41AM
*Thanks to *the education system, both public and private, we have a citizenry *too stupid to see any of this. I know a number of so called intelligent people that would walk over broken *glass and burning buildings to vote for this piece of excrement again. Some are dims that would pull the D if Mickey Mouse were heading the ticket. Others are voting *for their own self *interests, or at least that is what they perceive. Their ignorance is only exceed by their pomposity of knowing what is better for the rest of us. Then there are those who hate this country and freedom (except for themselves), and are too foolish to realize that the Marxist value system does not work out for the majority of the people.
The "ruling class" and the Marxist educated drones have been working on *these ends for over a hundred years. I hope we can find enough real Americans to defeat this leftist tide, *but I certainly don't see Newt Romney and friends as the ones who will do it.
Edited by a Marxist educated drone.
bill glass| 12.14.11 @ 10:59AM
Yet, he'll get a heck of a lot of votes...which means that a significant number of voters are in total agreement or are dipsh!ts.
Larry in WI| 12.14.11 @ 11:36AM
Don't think it's mutually exclusive. They both agree with him AND are dipsh!ts.
Philip Knaff| 12.14.11 @ 12:06PM
It is often forgotten that Adolf Hitler was elected. The secular-progressive-transformative statism of BO is adolescent totalitarianism. It will soon grow to manhood. Bo has already tried to create an actual federal police force without success. The reality is, however, one already exists. Homeland Security, TSA, DEA, ICE and many others with unenumerated police powers are the brown shirts of the BO political party. This beast will create the crisis to invoke a police state. God help you then if you are not a supporter or a member of the nomenklatura.
bill glass| 12.14.11 @ 12:36PM
Just what I was thinking.
faxmatter| 12.14.11 @ 2:09PM
Correction: strictly speaking Hitler was never elected as his party never got more than about 40% of the vote. Senile Pres. Hindenburg asked Hitler to form a government since the National Socialists were the largest party. Not long after the Reichstag burned and Hitler invoked emergency powers.
Philip Knaff| 12.14.11 @ 4:05PM
Weimar was parlimentary in nature. When the Nazi party won a plurality, Hitler was already the party leader. Consequently, he was an elected official ala Arafat of the PLO. You are correct, however, writing that Hindenburg made him chancellor and the enabeling act was instituted thereafter.
SpiralArchitect| 12.14.11 @ 4:57PM
ACORN is no more but it's members are omnipresent.
Election fraud, including the dead, factors into every election. IMO the larger the election the greater the magnatude of corruption.
Shamus| 12.14.11 @ 7:17AM
Might as well be prepared to have this fraud in office for another 4 years. Postpone any prospects of economic growth until 2018.
Mike Hawk| 12.14.11 @ 8:34AM
Re-elect this clown and you won't have to worry about 2018. It will be all over.
vicky bennett | 12.14.11 @ 10:57AM
We will all be Toast. Without a doubt we are headed toward the abyss at 100 miles an hour, while barack hussein obama golfs.
9thID| 12.14.11 @ 11:04AM
Obama is not inept, and this is all intentional. Two years ago I thought Cloward-Piven was a conspiracy theory, but not any more...
bill glass| 12.14.11 @ 11:02AM
Sad, but true. The overall media view is still pro-Obamao, and that's not gonna change. Beware the DNC- media-union- complex. "Some say" moving might be a good idea, but to where?
SpiralArchitect| 12.14.11 @ 6:12PM
Re-election will establish a totalitarian Gov removing the defacto eliments that exist in the current version we endure currently.
TrueBlue| 12.14.11 @ 7:10PM
Not big on conspiracy and 'end of the world' theories, but re-electing Obama (or not re-electing him and having riots that result in martial law), followed by the fall of the US would be a rather world changing event like so many 'end of the world as we know it' types keep shouting. Scary thinking though.
Chalkdust| 12.14.11 @ 7:22AM
A very well reasoned and sourced article Mr. Ferrara.For the love of god, keep'em comin'.
squalis| 12.14.11 @ 10:12AM
He needs to get these articles in to the Huff Po. They are so frustratingly dense over there.
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.14.11 @ 7:52AM
Peter? Are you copying me?
His Mother was an Atheist/COMMUNIST. His Father was the Muslim/MARXIST. His Maternal Grandparents were COMMUNISTS, and they did hook him up with Frank Marshall Davis: COMMUNIST.
Wait a Minute! You ARE Copying me. Everything you just wrote, is practically Word For Word, of what I write EVERY DAY, on this SITE.
I think we've got some PLAGERISM going on here, people. I don't know if I should be Honoured, as Imitation is the highest form of Flattery? Or, PISSED, that he's getting PAID, for using MY COMMENTS?
Dec. 2, 2011. James Bowman's Piece: I wrote - "He is the product of the union between an Atheist/Communist Mother and a Muslim/Marxist Father. His Maternal Grandparents were Communists. He was raised, for the first 11 Years of his life, in the Muslim Schools and Mosques, of Indonesia, where he was TAUGHT to Hate the Jew, and Hate the Infidel. He LEARNED at the Mosque: Death to America". "Death to the JEWS." He knelt on his Prayer Rug, facing Mecca, and prayed to his God of MURDER 5 times a day.
He cut his teeth, on the Streets of Chicago. Smoking Dope and Snorting Cocaine. He taught the philosophies, that he learned in a book, partially dedicated to LUCIFER. He took on two Mentors, to guide him on his path. One: Frank Marshall Davis, was an Atheist/Communist. The other: Jeremiah Wright, was an Ex-Muslim/Marxist. (Sound Familiar?)
He surrounded himself with Radicals, Anarchists, Communists, Marxists, and Maoists. He began his Political Career in the living room of Cop Killing, Bomb Throwing Terrorists. He has been financed, from the beginning, by a Jew, who spent his teens, helping the NAZIS, in their attempt to Exterminate his fellow Jews."
I write this, in one form or another, almost every day, and I have for at least a YEAR. In fact, I was starting to worry that people's eyes were gonna glaze over, from reading the same thing, every day.
Apparently, Peter enjoyed them so much, that he's now using them as his own.
I'm not bragging. I just think that "SOMEBODY'S" got some Spainin to do.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 12.14.11 @ 8:33AM
TLP: Don't worry about our eyes glazing over while reading your posts, they're not!! You might be saying the same thing over and over again, but you do find a new and creative way, to say the same things over and over again. Now personally, I never skip you comments (I love the anger that just flows through them!!).
So here today at FT Bragg, a dark cloud is hanging over all the dropzones here!! There's a real disturbance in the force here today, there's a tension in the air that's so thick, you can almost choke on it, because today, today "he" is here!! He's coming to talk to the Troops this morning, I believe to say, that despite how hard we tried, despite how hard we worked, we actually lost the War in Iraq. Or at least that's what I think he's going to say? Now to prove how bad it is here today, just this morning during PT, I saw somebody driving a better car than I drive, and for some unknown reason, I had this overwhelming urge, that I wanted to take that car away from this guy. That's how powerful his presence really is!! It's so strong, that I actually wanted to redistribute that car, and make it all mine!! Thankfully, this guy was driving at the time, and I was running, so after a few seconds the feeling left me, when he finally drove out of sight (I'm not that fast of a runner you see?). Pray for us Paratroopers today, won't you?;^)
Mimi| 12.14.11 @ 8:49AM
Will do LLL ....my Grandson proudly served with the 82 nd. Enjoy your posts!
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 12.14.11 @ 6:54PM
Thanks for your prayers Mimi!! I survived the day, and everything's back to normal again,.... that is until the next time "he" comes here again!!
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.14.11 @ 8:50AM
I'm Ex-Air Force. McGuire AFB.
I too, fell a disturbance in the Force. Let it worry you not, you do. Go forward with your life. Do not try to stay true to your beliefs. No try. Do. Or do not. That is the way of the JEDI. The way of EVERYONE who has ever served this Country. We all share the hatred for the LEFT, and their Hatred of US, and what we stand for.
Be Strong. Be True. And, may the Force be with you. May it be with us all.
SIC SEMPER TYRANNUS!
Cato the Younger| 12.14.11 @ 8:35AM
Don't accuse this good man of PLAGERISM [sic], the facts he recites don't belong to you or anybody. They belong to Obama!
Grzmlyk| 12.14.11 @ 10:41AM
Not only that, but these facts are well-known - even to the liberal mainstream media. That's why they've put a de facto, voluntary gag order on reporting about any aspect of Obama's actual biography or his career. Their silence about Obama's past associations and pronouncements is deafening.
After all, for them, myth is so much more compelling than empirical reality (just as it is with all liberal icons like the frauds Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Michael Moore, etc. etc.): To hear the media tell it, our ignorant, petulant, callow, vengeful, lazy piece of crap in chief was born in a manger to a virgin mother, the son of God the Father Almighty. I find this particularly galling since it is that selfsame media that hates Christianity with a rabid intensity and wants to execute God in a public hanging once and for all - and with extreme prejudice.
Except when it comes to THEIR god - who WISHES his feet were only made of clay, because they're actually made of excrement. And, in fact, the sewage reaches all the way into his brain.
I hear more and more about the military supporting Ron Paul, Lullabyes; I'm not sure how to process that. I also hear about an alarming increase in the number of militant Islamists who are trying to infiltrate the armed forces.
How do things look from your vantage point?
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 12.14.11 @ 11:22AM
Grzmlyk: I know a couple of Ron Paul supporters here, but to be honest with you, most of the Soldiers here are just too young to give a crap about politics, so they couldn't pick Ron Paul out of a lineup, if their lives depended upon it. I keep telling them that this is the most important election "ever", but they just keep laughing at me, because I take politics too serious. So I wouldn't take the Ron Paul is loved by the Military hype as being a fact, he probably has the same amount of support here, as he does in the general population, no more, no less. And the few that do love him, who are in my Company, when they start talking too much about him, and start pissing me off about how he's the answer to all our problems, well I just put them in the front leaning rest!! Problem solved!!;^)
Now about those Militant Islamists? If they're here right now on FT Bragg, they're doing a good job of keeping it on the down low!! I don't see them around!! Maybe Allah doesn't like his followers jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, and if that's the case, well they wouldn't make it here for too long.
The disturbance in the Force has peaked here, I think he's close by?
Grzmlyk| 12.14.11 @ 12:39PM
Thanks for your perspective, Lullabys.
I suppose I'm somewhat heartened by the Paul stuff - I see a lot of statistics that show that, with respect to campaign contributions, Paul leads all GOP candidates by far among military - which shocks me. And number two is Obama, which flabbergasts me.
As for the jihadists joining up , I'm glad you don't see evidence of it.
But it wouldn't surprise me if Congress mandates that the army be comprised of half jihadists - you know, just to make it fair.
CopyKatnj| 12.14.11 @ 12:39PM
I wouldn't worry too much about the military vote, it has become common practice for their votes not be counted. Something that needs to be fixed.
Grzmlyk| 12.14.11 @ 4:37PM
That will change if they vote for Obama, however. Then, all of a sudden, Democrats will fight to the death to get those votes counted, whereas with Bush and McCain, they did everything the could to suppress the military vote.
I can't figure out why ANYBODY in the military supports Obama - it makes me think our armed forces really are being infiltrated by enemies.
Also, the military has long since stopped being a military to the left; for them, its primary function is as a laboratory for liberal social policy.
I'm waiting for the requirement that at least 50% of all commissioned officers in any theater of operation will be required to be transgendered.
I give it 10 years.
JmsA| 12.15.11 @ 12:10AM
No, Grzmlyk, they're not being infiltrated; they've insidiously indoctrinated by the increasingly prevalent left.
JmsA| 12.15.11 @ 12:11AM
Sorry, meant to write: they've been...
Karen| 12.14.11 @ 11:26AM
I agree, this history and record belong to Obama, which he attempts to hide with his rhetoric. I wish everyone would recite these facts.
vicky bennett | 12.14.11 @ 10:58AM
I say all this too , daily , so you gotta be copying me too.
We all agree, and its fact. :)
GaltFan| 12.14.11 @ 4:01PM
What does Atheist have to do with anything?
As for your having written the same thing over and over? My eyes DID glaze over. Nothing new, no original thinking on your part... You ain't the first, you won't be the last.
Don't pull a muscle patting yourself on the back.
Norman Conquest| 12.15.11 @ 12:47PM
Well, perhaps someone is plagiarizing me! I' ve often referred to this purple-lipped cretin as the mulatto spawn of an African witch doctor and a Kansas slut.
wodiej| 12.14.11 @ 8:13AM
Straight up truth. We need as many of these articles as possible.
Sam Vaughn| 12.14.11 @ 8:19AM
Shamus, tempting but no. When the going gets tough,,, we get going.
Indy| 12.14.11 @ 8:33AM
What's troubling to me is Obama continues to make speeches at the taxpayers expense on college campuses and in high school gyms where most of these students have not been taught about marxism so they take in the utopia message The President delivers and they chant his name, how sad. They want the free stuff, free education, a guaranteed job and not just any job, it must be well paying and have a corner office.
The press cheerleads Obama and carries the blame Bush message for everything. They completely overlook the facts presented in this article and the GOP continues to sleep at the wheel. The burst of the DOT.Com bubble is long forgotten, the failure of Enron, WorldCom and others is long forgotten but with all of that the economy came back and unemployment was much lower than it is now. The alarms were raised about Freddie and Fannie but the Dems were in denial, all was ok said Barney Frank and Chris Dodd but we know how that story ended. The GOP cannot craft a simple message nor can they defend facts. We have much to do to educate our children, sadly we are behind decades of liberal indoctrination.
Cato the Younger| 12.14.11 @ 8:41AM
While I accept the analysis in most of this article, Obama's explanation of the two trends that have eviscerated the middle class in the last 30+ years isn't totally off the mark. They are simply this: what hasn't been automated has been outsourced to China, the Philippines, and a host of other Asian countries with low labor costs. Yes, of course that represent productivity gains. But you can't deny that the people who lost their jobs to automation or Asia and are now sitting home drawing unemployment checks are being productive. For the most part these people formerly held middle class jobs and they are now unable to find work in technical, services-oriented economy because they lack the training, experience or natural ability. (It's not easy to turn an assembly line worker into a web administrator.) I consider this explanation of why the middle class has been hollowed out to be unexceptional and in fact a central fact of life we will all have to deal with for a long time.
DTOM| 12.14.11 @ 9:17AM
Young Cato;
Automation represents investment in manufacturing which creates wealth. When workers become more productive, economic activity expands, there is more work for people to do and get paid for and more stuff for people to buy and enjoy. When a robot increases production, the firm tends to produce more, better products at a lower cost. Therefore, more products are available at lower costs.
What about the fellow who used to do what the robot is now doing? He may be doing one of four things, running the robot, building and maintaining more robots, something else entirely, or sitting home on unemployment mooning over his old job that was 'stolen' from him by the "evil" automation. The first three are what he's supposed to do in a free economy, the last is what the Democrats and the socialists prefer. Because anyone taking any of the first three options understand that it is work that supports them, the fourth option guy? He understands that it is government that supports him and if he votes correctly, they'll give him more, until everybody who's working catches on and the game fails. Cf. Europe today.
Obama is among other things a Luddite-they fought the change in manufacturing that required them to change how they worked in their industry. Luddites hate CHANGE! Another instance of Obama's narcissistic self hatred.
Narcissistic self hatred? You betcha- he knows that what he is doing and hopes for is failing and blames everyone and everything outside himself-but in his hard, little heart - he knows that he is the cause of the current mess...
It's like the alcoholic who in lucid moments hates the booze, until, of course, his next drink.
rpm| 12.14.11 @ 9:29AM
Spent much of my life in automation. Most of the automation is for one of two reasons: 1)humans can't do it. Too precise, etc. or 2) it is too mind numbing and repetitive for humans. For example, do you REALLY want to spend your life putting on lug nuts eight hours a day?
MXLord327| 12.14.11 @ 2:49PM
For $65 an hour like the union drones make? Absolutely!!!
Philip Knaff| 12.14.11 @ 12:27PM
The problems you address are complex. It is important to remember that we are not merely a capitalist economy, but also a representative republic. Free trade encourages the most efficient use and movement of capital, but capital is not a nation or a people. Cheaper goods without the means to purchase them are of no value. Where crushing poverty and harmful externalities are acceptable and the rule of law does not really exist, much manufacturing will be cheaper. Capital will move there as it is economical. The vacume left behind, however, creates a social/political problem. Free trade must be balanced with economic nationalism (not statism) to preserve the republic.
George S| 12.14.11 @ 4:17PM
The "vacuum left behind" is a political problem -- which makes it a social problem when politicians refuse to accept the responsibilities that caused that vacuum. Question is: what causes the vacuum?
Look at it this way: if you provide a good or service and you work out of a $10,000 a month office and I do the same work out of my house, I can charge a lower fee than you. Yet, I may make a higher (marginal) profit at my lower cost. I would be the equivalent of those "harmful externalities" and you would be the higher standard of living United States. You cannot say that I am exploiting myself with the dark side of capitalism. I am happy with what I make because I do not have that high overhead that you do.
The high overhead in the U.S. is the cost to comply with government regulations. Everything from OSHA to Family Leave to EPA to NLRB to IRS to hiring support. legal and accounting staff, not to mention the Diversity Coordinators and Outreach Counselors and the shakedown of everyone from Building Department inspectors to the Rainbow Coalition.
Government consumes 40% of GDP. That means your employer has to earn three times as much from your labor today than fifty years ago. That's why incomes stagnate and labor moves overseas.
rpm| 12.14.11 @ 9:25AM
Blaming the migration of mfg jobs out of US on "lower labor cost" is only part of the story. The real reason is that the cost of doing business is lower. The computer I am typing on came from China. I can assure you that the labor content in it is minimal--it was built on a highly automated line that looks just like one in Kansas. The "labor" in that factory is mainly skilled and, while paid less than equivalent in KS, not all that much less.
The main reason that that plant is in China and not in CA (where I live) is that China WANTS it, CA wants it in China.
Put simply--in those countries you mention, if you need a building, they build you one. In CA, if you want to build a building, they make you pay for it yourself (as they should) plus build a park and buy 40 acres of land somewhere to protect some rat.
It is a much bigger problem than labor rates.
I spent a good part of may career in factory automation. The saying was : "Automate, emigrate or evaporate".
Until our political class recognizes that business isn't evil; HAS to go to the most efficient venue and starts taking action to make that the US (again), this will continue.
To me, one of the iconic statements out of Obama came during the BP spill, when he vowed to keep "his foot on BP's neck."
Franklin51| 12.14.11 @ 2:16PM
So Caot, would you be in favor of the government enforcing the continued production of buggy whips and plows to be drug behind mules? Innovation causes dislocation but often for every 10 jobs lost another 12 - 15 are created - and not over seas.
Mimi| 12.14.11 @ 8:44AM
OMG ....Peter, There is the campaign of 2012...Written for them.....Each candidate should POCKET this article and quote from it
The deception and outright falsehoods in Obama's Kansas speech were worrisome coming from a sitting President. He shamed the OFFICE with his total Lack of HONOR!
Tim...maybe Peter owes you some credit ! We all post here and elseware knowing our IDEAS, WORDS & OPINIONS go out into the vast universe of the internet...and picked up by some pro's as well as influence some future voters...enjoy it!!!
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.14.11 @ 9:07AM
No. Please. He owes me ALL the Credit. Almost WORD for WORD. Nobody talks about his MOTHER or his FATHER or his GRANPARENTS except ME, until today.
His Parents, and his Grandparents, Frank Marshall Davis, Jeremiah Wright, Searching out the Marxists Professors, starting his Political Career in the Living Room of two Unrepentant Domestic Terrorists: Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, AND, Saul Alinsky, in the same Article?
I don't think so.
"We all post here and elsewhere, knowing our ideas. words , and opinions will be picked up".
I guess! I just never thought that they'd all be "picked up" at once, and put in an article, by a Professional Writer.
If I was anybody else, he'd be up SH*T'S CREEK, for this. If he was writing for the New York times. he'd have to return his Pulitzer.
I'm just saying.
DTOM| 12.14.11 @ 9:26AM
TLP,
Come on now. It's not like you divined the General Theory of Relativity. Anyone with a lick of sense knows all these things to be true.
Whining about someone repeating some of the same thoughts as you have is sort of like complaining about the weatherman in the next market downwind copying your forecasts the next day.
Under patent law, inventions must be novel, i.e. new. TLP, you make millions (Should that be tens of thousands?) of good points, you are a square shooter, and I generally agree with you. But let's not get all algore with inventing the internet, okay? Peter Ferrara isn't calling on his dead mining forebears who are not his, but actually yours, ala Joe Biden stealing from Neil Kinnock in '87.
You can do way better, please.
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.14.11 @ 9:55AM
I don't wanna do better. I'm afraid he'll copy that, too.
Drunken Sailor| 12.14.11 @ 12:47PM
Be flattered or write your own article. Many on here (including me) would gladly read it. The more that write articles like this the better. Notice how the liberal trolls have yet to try and disprove any of the points mentioned?
JmsA| 12.14.11 @ 11:38PM
"Notice how the liberal trolls have yet to try and disprove any of the points mentioned?"
Funny, I was asking myself the very same. Good post, DS.
vicky bennett | 12.14.11 @ 10:59AM
We all need to copy and paste this one to our FACEBOOK, with the Share button, that can be passed around.
done.
Stormy| 12.14.11 @ 8:45AM
So, Obama was a cheap street hustler who was polished up and made-over to become president, huh? Sounds like a more successful, articulate version of Al Sharpton, doesn't it?
Drunken Sailor| 12.14.11 @ 12:50PM
A polished turd is still a turd. Politics is the art of taking a turd and practicing Dorodango to make it appeal to the voters.
jothepro| 12.14.11 @ 8:57AM
Does anybody remember the chant of 1992. "The worst economy in 50 years?
Louis Jenkins| 12.14.11 @ 8:57AM
Obama's at it again. He's telling us that we are to blame. That we're the hold up. That we're the cause of all this mess. It's not us, Mr. Obama. It's your mis-spending, bad policies, over regulation, in other words, your heel in the lower back of America. America is down on its belly thrashing about while you grind your foot into the spinal column. At the moment it looks like another four years of Obama. And America says, "Thank you, may I have another." The free-be entitlement crowd keeps up with their mantra. And I ask, "How much longer Oh America?"
Porcus Fugit| 12.14.11 @ 9:07AM
We're not really worthy of Obama. Perhaps a really deserving country like Kenya should have him.
Riff Raff| 12.14.11 @ 11:04AM
Great Moniker. But I think Kenya will take Obama back when, well, you know, "pigs fly."
joanne| 12.14.11 @ 9:04AM
This agitator has ripped off his phoney mask...in Kansas. He is hell bent on our destruction. How in the world did this happen??? We have to turn this boat around, or this socialist will finish the job in making us a bananb\a republic. he sees himself as a king. He's no king. and I'd like the voterd\s to do the same thing that was done in 2010.Kick his @ss to the curb.
Timothy L. Pennell| 12.14.11 @ 9:18AM
He did more than that. He crossed the Ideological RUBICON. His Speech was Shot across the Bow, as to his intention of Destroying our Way of Life.
"Anyone who thinks that a Free Market, combined with a Small Government, is the way to go, is mistaken. It doesn't work. IT'S NEVER WORKED."
No. He wants to go another way. The way of the Soviets, the Maoists, and the Khemere Rouge. The way of Mugabe and Castro. Of Min and Kim Il Jung.
That is what is in his DNA. These are the Systems that bring about Equality. These are the systems that are FAIR. In these Systems, everybody has the SAME THING. They all have NOTHING. That's how it starts.
In these Systems, Everybody Dies. That's how it ends.
Every time.
DRed| 12.14.11 @ 10:00AM
That sentence you put in quotation marks isn't actually a quote, Timmy. Since Obama didn't say that, I'm not sure why you decided to put in quotation marks. Maybe that's what the voice in your head said? Or maybe it's somehow connected to your random capitalizations? I don't know.
"He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It’s led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world."
See that-that's a quote. Because Obama actually said that.
DTOM| 12.14.11 @ 11:55AM
Uh, if he's so for it, why is he trying so hard to destroy everything associated with it?
Hmmm?
George S| 12.14.11 @ 11:55AM
"Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let's respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, well, that's the price of liberty.
Now, it's a simple theory. And we have to admit, it's one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That's in America's DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked. It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the 50s and 60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory."
See that-that's a quote. Because Obama actually said that
DRed| 12.14.11 @ 12:14PM
That's been the democratic platform for what-80 years? A regulated market is better for capitalism than an unregulated one. That's not a marxist argument. Obama isn't saying capitalism doesn't work. He's saying trickle down economics don't work. Even if you don't agree with him you should at least acknowledge what he's actually saying, rather than make up quotes and start ranting (like Timmy does).
bruce108| 12.14.11 @ 3:17PM
Yes, he does plan to kill many millions of us once he has seized power. Many more will be 'reeducated.' Dead-faced, listless people will trudge to the labor trenches while, out west, the gulags swell with patriots: or not. This madman can still be stopped...
The Bishop| 12.14.11 @ 9:15AM
This article combined with Bob Tyrell's from today should send all of us to our knees for a leader other than a policy wonk, Marxist or non-Marxist. My supposition is that the Internet has made us all too wonkish for our own good. Where is our next Reagan?
VonMisesJr| 12.14.11 @ 9:18AM
It is all about LIBERTY. This argument was started by the Enlightenment Philosophers (read Marxist of the 18th Century) as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. The socialist still have not given up on serfdom.
The Robber Barron and union propaganda of the 19th Century failed to disclose that while there were sweat shops, the people who became the bourgeoisie and the peasants that wished to emulate them would not give up their factory jobs to return to indentured service.
But these same Marxist rail against the Founding Fathers as slave owners when their statist policies are no different than serfdom or slavery.
Juan Jose Morales-Castillo | 12.14.11 @ 9:30AM
Obamboozle promised HOPE.
Instead he has delivered DESPAIR, DEMORALIZATION, RESENTMENT, PESSIMISM and just plain HOPELESSNESS.
Whoever delivers OPTIMISM, VISION and a POSITIVE OUTLOOK will earn the Presidency just as Reagan did in 1980.
Anthony| 12.14.11 @ 9:42AM
The only folks still clueless about the Muslim- Marxist- in- Chief are the whores in the MSM.
Mr. Ferrera gives a cogent history of Obozo that we conservatives knew prior to the 08 election, yet was hidden from America by these enablers who call themselves journalists.
I still love the riff that Rush plays where Tom Brokow and (?) muse between themselves how little they know about Obozo, yet they are the same media enablers pushing Obozo onto America in the 08 election, without delving into Obozo's past, which was their primary responsibility as journalists.
The four pillars of corruption need to be cleansed!!
Peppermint Tea| 12.14.11 @ 9:50AM
Thank you, Mr. President, for the Kansas speech. Now when we call you a Marxist, we are not racist and have your own words to support us. "Capitalism has never worked"?!
1ConservativeUSA| 12.14.11 @ 9:55AM
Peter Ferrara has written so well about the harm being caused by Obama and his policies.
The real key for conservatives, however, will be to get a message like this out to the other half of the electorate; the ones who simply choose not to be informed, or who take the main stream media as Gospel.
This is where we need to be better.
Jim| 12.14.11 @ 9:59AM
Is there hope, a ray of light in the darkness, that some of this discussion will infiltrate into the minds of those who are undecided? There is no hope for the useless idiots that crave for equality, fairness and other peoples money. They are delusional, lost and in the bag for obozo. We need the fence sitters, the undecided voters to read this and believe it.
The power of the darkside is threatening and ominous. Obozo is a wanna be "emperor". Shine the light and get this traitor and all of his foot soldiers out of our house.
G.S. Patton| 12.14.11 @ 10:07AM
The Carter Administration on steroids, reincarnated..... and the apathetic, useful idiot serfs continue to pull the lever, for their marxist King. Lets hope these Bolsheviks can be removed from power next year; America needs to get her soul back, and quick.
bill| 12.14.11 @ 10:19AM
Name: Barack Obama
Favorite ideology: Socialism
Favorite moment: Becoming the President
Favorite mentor: Jeremiah Wright
Favorite politico: Bill Clinton
Favorite book: Rules for Radicals
Favorite place: Chicago
Favorite sports team: White Sox
Favorite Pop singer: Lady Gaga
Favorite home: White House
Favorite food: Big Mac
Favorite drink: All
Favorite color: Black
Favorite costume: white shirt with blue ties
Favorite friends: Union bosses
Favorite wish: Winning the second term
Hate: Republicans (always)
bill glass| 12.14.11 @ 11:12AM
Favorite "Body Guy" - __________________
Bill| 12.14.11 @ 11:34AM
Favorite "Body Guy": Tiger woods (I love Golf!)
Mike Hawk| 12.14.11 @ 1:32PM
His favorite place is a golf course, preferably one in Hawaii.
Christopher Riddle| 12.14.11 @ 10:21AM
This man is either a FOOL or a SABOTEUR!Whatever he is,the resulting destruction of our economy is undeniable!!
Buck Ofama| 12.14.11 @ 10:30AM
I can't stand to read this stuff about Ovomit the clown. We must RID the white house of the vermin infestation at all costs, ASAP.
Brian Mc| 12.14.11 @ 1:55PM
The die is cast, BO...we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. The tree of liberty needs watering and there is a huge storm coming. Watering, hell...it's gonna be a flood of Biblical proportions...win, or lose.
martin j smith| 12.14.11 @ 10:52AM
I knew Obama would be bad news well before the election of 2008. The facts were out there. But I think the Republican Party also is either a failure and or complicit in covering up a great deal of Obama. And to this day say they want to play nicy nicy in the campaign. That is a fraud. That would virtually give away the election. American people want an opponent
to counter Obama politely in debates etc.
NoMoBO| 12.14.11 @ 11:13AM
Or not so politely.
bruce108| 12.14.11 @ 3:21PM
The "republican" leadership is just as corrupt as the Left. You will only have a choice between Progressive A or B. Time for a New Party. Time for these guys to go.
Melvin| 12.14.11 @ 11:21AM
People, we're not going to get rid of the Communist Demon Seed that has been planted in our government, by merely electing Newt or Mitt. Frankly, neither have the desire to do so, they would rather enter into a power sharing coalition, that resembles our friends across the pond .
Barrack Obama is more than that, much more. His whole existence, his very being on this planet has been designed by Communists within the then Soviet Union.
Obama's was not born. He was designed, created, and educated for one designed outcome. The weakening and or destruction of the American philosophy.
Communists do not want to destroy this Country, they want to recreate it, and detach and completely separate the populace from American Nationalism.
Because it appears that there is two forces at work here. Marxism under Obama, and Globalism aka One World Government under the Socialist Republican elite. They are both working maybe not in concert with each other, but their goals are similar to dilute to the point of irrelevance of being an American.
This is why we hear from so many in this Country, "I'm not an American, I'm a citizen of the world." I have lost count how many times that I have either read or heard that particular utterance.
Remember not that long ago of thousands upon thousands of protesters in major cities but mostly contained to Western States because they have the largest Hispanic communities filling the streets on command.
Where did they go? Did these on demand protests achieve it's goal? Then they just disappeared into the woodwork to hibernate.
These protests were not part of any groundswell of public sentiment, they were created by the very same forces that created Barrack Obama.
Even Michelle Obama was created for Barrack. A young militant Angry Black Woman to capitalize on a hibernating African American sentiment in they're feeling towards they're Country.
May I remind those on Michelle's comment, “For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I’m Really Proud of My Country” Hmm. think of this for a moment, "Her adult lifetime." Hmm makes one wonder what went on during the other half of her formative years. Also she didn't say that she was proud to be an American. She said that she was proud of her Country.
I wonder what Country Mrs. Obama was referring to. Could it be that she was referring to the New United Socialists States of America?
Remember back when I mentioned that one of the goals of the Globalists and Marxists is to dilute and or strip away American Nationalism. Michelle Obama's comment reinforces that thought.
I apologize for being wordy, but there is just some things we can't or should not ignore.
This isn't the rant of a delusional Jar Head, I've seen what Communism is up close. Communism is evil incarnate. And like TLP who keeps hounding and hounding and hounding his opinion home, but when the crap does it the fan, in whatever form that may be. What will be the first comment Americans will say, "How come nobody warned us?" The very same comment that Americans said after the Japanese attack on Peal Harbor.
And at that time I will invite Mr. Pennell over to have a refreshment and we'll enjoy the masses running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Ken (Old Texican)| 12.14.11 @ 12:03PM
Copy paste alert:
Eric,
I think you are mistaken.
When an oil well blows out...they put out the flames with a huge bomb..."bluie!" (not a wet broom.)
Our country is in the midst of a communist blowout and Romney is a wet broom. Sorry.
I personally know Rick Perry knows and will utilize the proper explosives. He has done so for eleven years.
I just don't think you folks from piddly-wink States quite understand that Texas, (under Perry), has literally undergirded our whole country out of our back pocket. Without our jobs and profits on the "balance sheet", the whole damned country would be bankrupt.
I can settle for Gingrich, but Perry is the guy who has proven consistent conservative (sensible) leadership on principle AND common sense.
Remember the Alamo! Victory or death!
Brian Mc| 12.14.11 @ 1:59PM
Interesting, Ken.
Sunnyr| 12.15.11 @ 2:25PM
Governor Rick Perry is my candidate all the way through the Primary Election. He is the real deal. I want a real Leader and a DOER, not a Professorial Debater who has no executive experience at running a state, much less our inflated government. Perry has 12 years experience at securing his 1200 mile border with Mexico and has done a fabulous job in spite of the idiot in the WH throwing blocks in his path every step of the way. He handled the Katrina disaster beautifully and took in thousands of refugees from their devastated state. He is a plain-talking man of honor and will beat Obozo like a rented mule by just comparing their two records.
Perry - 2012!
bruce108| 12.14.11 @ 3:24PM
Yep. Barry was a carefully designed stealth cruise missile. But the warhead is on a timer. It hasn't gone off yet...
L. Ross| 12.14.11 @ 11:30AM
Is it just me, or has anybody else done some thinking on the prosperity we experienced under G.W. Bush. Looking back at much of the economic expansion that we experienced, a great deal of it was based upon housing construction, fueled by the very risky bank loans that led to the downfall of the housing market. Easy credit, second and third mortgages, bad lending practices all combined together to fuel the illusion of a booming economy. Savings rates were non-existent, many families were engaging in deficit spending through borrowing against their "increasingly valuable" homes, all of this led to the illusion of prosperity. In actuallity, almost all of the economic growth that Mr. Ferrara mentions was led by Alan Greenspan being asleep at the switch, Fannie and Freddie releasing banks from being responsible for their bad lending practices, and lending standards which were loosened to a ridiculous degree through government fiat. I'm not saying that BHO hasn't made a terrible situation far, far worse or that he is not the biggest impediment to leading us out of this recession. I am saying that Mr. Ferrara is looking at the run-up to the bubble bursting with very rose colored glasses.
Ken (Old Texican)| 12.14.11 @ 12:07PM
L Ross,
Uh...two final years under W...with a communist congress both houses?
Your glasses are covered with BS!
L. Ross| 12.14.11 @ 1:36PM
Ken:
I am a Bush backer. I think he was all in all very satisfatory. He did a fairly good job in fighting against muslim incursion against western civilization. Not to big of a fan of his relationship with Ted Kennedy or his expansion of medicaid, but overall infintely better than what we have now.
That said, I think it is important to examine mistakes of the past honestly. I found Mr. Ferrara's article to be a whitewash of some huge mistakes. If you didn't, I assume you had no real estate dealings over the past decade. If that is the case, good for you. You are the better for it. However, many of us in the military who have to move around frequently have suffered tremendous losses as a result of these bad mortgage policies. They have their roots in the '70s, but really hit home with a vengance from about 1998-2007. The runaway housing bubble is so catastrophic because that is where most American's have the majority of their net worth. Or at least that is where they used to have the majority of their net worth.
If you want to lay this at the feet of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, go ahead. You lay the firewood around their feet, I will hold the torch. However, it is counterproductive to look at a mortgage bubble as the "good old days". Personally I would prefer a more accurate assessment of those days.
Finally, I keep my glasses clean so I can learn something from the past. I don't turn a blind eye to remain ignorant.
DTOM| 12.14.11 @ 12:07PM
The bubble could have been burst with far less collateral long term damage if GM, Lehman Bros, and the rest had been allowed to fail, if Freddie and Fannie could have been shut down ala the S&L crisis of the late 1980's. But by bailing out these stupid "Too big" organizations and local governments all that has happened is that lots of money losers, like GM have been permitted to continue their losses, with those losses being made up by increased financial burdens on the profitable sectors. Now they're down, too. This is not freaking rocket science.
All we have done is spend trillions to support failed businesses - all they have done is continued their failures. This is not humane, it is insane. Our economy is spending too much money on non-productive assets. What to do? Oh yeah, let's borrow a bunch of money (40% of what the government is spending) so that we can continue to fund those non-productive enterprises. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Won't a decrease in traffic congestion really improve business? NO.
China needs infrastructure like roads, sewers, communications systems. We already have all that stuff in place. Our economy is not in the soup because trucks cannot get from point A to B, it's because anyone who tries to make a nickel is attacked by this administration as evil, as rich, as those who only deserve to be eaten: "Eat the rich!" Is OWS's call, and OWS is Obama.
Good grief! What the heck is there to talk about? Why aren't you all out working for your favorite CONSERVATIVE candidates?
Sheesh.
L. Ross| 12.14.11 @ 12:43PM
To quote myself. "I'm not saying that BHO hasn't made a terrible situation far, far worse or that he is not the biggest impediment to leading us out of this recession."
I don't support anything that BHO has done. Yes, we were told that if nothing was done, it would be a catastrophe on par with the Great Depression. Well, guess what. Three years in, it is looking like it is a catastrophe on par with the great depression. Real unemployment/underemployment is right about 20% and has stayed there for years. I agree, BHO has done nothing to improve our country. In every way you can measure, he is a failure.
I was merely commenting on the article as written. Mr Ferrara quotes a number of statistics which show how much better off we were several years ago. I am just suggesting that much of that prosperity was an illusion brought about by poor banking practices and artificially low interest rates. If we had sound banking practices and an intelligent head of the fed (no the current idiot who makes me long for the somnambulant Alan Greenspan) economic growth at the start of the century would have been more temperate. However, there would have been no bubble to burst.
Sheesh
rnixon| 12.14.11 @ 11:43AM
Outstanding article which actually speaks the truth. We need someone to stand up before the press and reiterate the contents of this article every single time Obama makes another of this propaganda filled/factually challenged speeches.
Tom Johnson | 12.14.11 @ 11:57AM
Obama’s GAME
1 Nov 2010 (original date)
Folks,
Obama’s GAME (Great American Marxist Experiment) is over, a failure. Marxism goes against the basic human instincts that freedom is a natural, God-given right, that what you make (or earn) is yours to keep, that family, not government, is the basic social unit.
Democrats have historically been the party to raise taxes and increase the size of government, but Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have taken these mistaken policies to the extreme.
The Obama administration’s inept solution for everything is to destroy the purchasing power of the dollar. Inflation will be brutal. Can you say, “We Buy Gold”?
Republicans, Independents, and Tea Party members will now be forever vigilant of the Left and we will vote.
Respectfully,
Tom Johnson
http://opinionscribe.blogspot.com
DTOM| 12.14.11 @ 12:10PM
Their policies are NOT "mistaken." They are intended to have the very effect they are having.
Soon voting will not be enough. We will have to root out the communists and socialists in our governments. If we have the will...
Anthony| 12.14.11 @ 12:16PM
It ain't quite over yet Tom, one of Obozo's allies, John DeStefano, mayor of New Haven, CT is asking the CT legislature to allow ILLEGAL ALIENS the right to vote.
This is end game folks, game, set and match to the left if this happens.
Meanwhile, Obozo's head baboon, David Axelrod, is fixated on Newt and monkey asses.
Had enough yet folks?
Bill| 12.14.11 @ 12:33PM
How about?
They are scary...................................
Philosophy: Socialism, Nationalism, Antisemitism
Leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Castro, FDR, LBJ, Obama
Political party: Nazi Party, Communist Party of Russia, Communist Party of China, Labor Party (UK), Democrat Party (USA)
Political wings: Nazi "SS", SEIU, NAACP, La Raza, ACORN, NEA, Move On.org, Emily's List, Sierra Club
Skip Oberon| 12.14.11 @ 12:54PM
Let me start by saying, "Great read!" This really provoked my thoughts on a large scale, and I am very appreciative of the work that went into this, and everything that Peter has done. If I can paraphrase another recent article by Peter, then I will. There are few extormenances in life that cause the suffering and mailaise as do the interregulation of thought, the preponderance of impropriety, and the encapsulation of grandeur. If there's anything in this world that's worth fighting for, then by golly let's open a can of Busch Light on it!
Dr. X| 12.14.11 @ 1:36PM
Now let me preface my comments by saying this: I utterly loathe Obama. I absolutely think he is purposely doing his damned best to bring this country to its knees. And I despise the Marxist Left.
That being said, conservatives are going to have to get a little bit more creative than to simply blame Obama for "class warfare" (even thought that is true).
The fact is that we now live in a society where job opportunities for average schmucks are in fact quite limited and have been outsourced to the Third World. Further, there's a LOT of people in this country who would rather leech off the government than work 60 hours in a steel mill -- even if those steel mill jobs were to magically return somehow.
In some ways -- and conservatives are loath to admit this -- Marx was right. I think that Marx's PREscription was 100% wrong, but some (NOT all) parts of his DEscription had merit. And one thing that Marx observed was that people's expectations change as their economic conditions change. Today's Americans (and Europeans) are fat, lazy, and have high expectations of what they think they "deserve" in terms of economic status, and are less and less willing to WORK for it. The average Chinese guy is willing to make $2 a day to assemble sneakers seven days a week because he's a hell of a lot better off than his parents were under Chairman Mao. Americans expect a very high standard of living and if they can they'll simply vote to have the government give it to them.
Obama is in fact a radical anti-American Marxist demagogue, but he's got a lot a LOT of sympathetic ears out there. The American public (and the American conservative movement) need to take a good hard look in the mirror before they subscribe to the fallacy that Obama is the sole cause of our situation. More likely, he's the effect.
Sterling Abernathy| 12.14.11 @ 1:40PM
This piece is extraordinarily informative, reveals the imposter-president/democrats incessant lies and obfuscations and every word of it truth!!! That begs the question: How does this truthful message get delivered to the general public without the jacked-up MSM twisting the facts? The leftist lies sure get favorable coverage, while there's no direct questioning of those who promote the misinformation, continually they're allowed to blatantly lie [Wasserman-Schultz], although it seems the truth, the reas0ns we're having to suffer through monumental incompetence, those reasons the economy isn't recovering, will never be revealed!!!
Aren't there out-n-out, bald faced lies in every speech Obonehead gives?! Those lies need to be addressed with facts, we're running out of time/freedom!!!
VBMax| 12.14.11 @ 2:17PM
It used to be one could win by exposing the lies to truth. I'm not so sure that works to a large degree anymore. Too many Americans seem to be in a hypnotic trance brought upon by unceasing propaganda and are in no condition to recognize truth when they see it.
James Edwards| 12.14.11 @ 2:12PM
I wonder if the recovery after the 9/11 recession would have been as good if we hadn't financed it with the housing debt? Was all or most of the growth due to the housing bubble?
RDV| 12.14.11 @ 2:14PM
WOW. THE ONLY THING THE ARTICLE MISSES IS TO DECLARE : TODAY IS THE END OF THE WORLD. LOL!
randy| 12.14.11 @ 2:23PM
While I agree with everything you say, Republicans are losing the class warfare battle. Why not offer a token tax increase to the truly millionaires and billionaires (not Obama's threshold of $250k) to get the issue off the table and then say, "There, we did it. Now shut up!"
bill| 12.14.11 @ 2:23PM
Let's just say, Obama is a crazy devil.
Randy| 12.14.11 @ 2:26PM
Romney and others need to step up and be as bold and vocal as Donald Trump. Seriously!
Cicero| 12.14.11 @ 2:28PM
Only about 4% of the mortgages in the country were underperforming. They were not what caused the collapse. The banks, both depositary and investment, were using the mortgage derivatives that they had invented as "poker chips", along with their pals in the hedge funds. As long as the game continued around the table, they were making paper millions beyond anyone's imaginations. They were also saddled with "mark to market" accounting by our geniuses in Congress. When they got cute, and decided not to lend interbank between the losers of the last hand, the whole house of cards came tumbling down. If Bear Stearns' chips, and Lehman's chips weren't worth anything, neither were Goldman's or AIG's. They all had to mark their mortgage backed assets down to zero - what someone would buy them for on that day.
That ship righted itself when the Congress sent them back to "standard acounting practices" in March of 2009. All at once, the mortgage "chips were worth their face value again, and could be borrowed against at the Fed window. Happy days were here again.
Except by that time, the entire economy was in the tank, because the banks were not loaning any money to people to buy houses, or cars, or anything else. They were using all of their money to buy T-Bill that paid 3.75%. (They were borrowing at the Fed window at 0% to .05%. Not a bad deal).
I love it when anyone talks about the government bailing out General Motors andd Chrysler. The shareholders of those two corporation lost all of their money. The bondholders lost 90% of their investments. Those companies were not rescued. They were liquidated. The good assets were given to the United States government and the United Auto Workers.
This was not merely incompetence, as we had in the Clinton years. He was a mere junior league grifter. This was hatred for America, and unfathomable greed. But don't get me started.
JmsA| 12.14.11 @ 11:59PM
Got to say, that was quite eloquently put. Good work, Cicero.
RonRonDoRon| 12.14.11 @ 2:47PM
Just want to say that the whole "Bush's policies caused the financial collapse" talking point is getting really tiresome. It's such an error of reasoning and logic. It's known technically as the "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy (forgive me if I've misspelled).
I wouldn't expect people (or politicians) in general to know the Latin phrase or the rules of logic, but is it too much to ask that they be able to grasp the following? Just because A comes before B, that doesn't mean that A caused B.
Any reasonably intelligent person, given just a few moments of thought, knows this is true. Yet this type of fallacious argument comes up again and again - and not just in this particular context. It is is a perennial favorite of political rhetoric.
Sorry if I sound snarky, but sloppy thinking pisses me off.
Rockebabe| 12.14.11 @ 2:53PM
Calling President Obama names doesn't make him any of the things the writer asserts. President Obama was legitimately elected to office by 57% of the vote and the approval of the supremes was not needed in anyway shape or form.
All of this gobbly-gook the write talks about is just small-mined, in the box thinking about someone who doesn't have to take risks to get a paycheck. What the writer should be doing is castigating Congress for its gross failure to negiotate in good-faith, with the leader of this country, a leader that was duly elected by the people. Instead, what we have is obstructionism and inertia. If Congress or the Repubs wanted to fix the problems we have in this country, they could have done so a long time ago. Instead, Congress takes its paycheck for doing nothing but blowing hot air. The Wizard is really Congress as it is Congress who has the authority to make laws and spend money . . .not the President.
This article is a piece of crap that enlightens no one on anything. Shame on you.
Melvin| 12.14.11 @ 3:18PM
That is your problem you Liberals always want to be enlightened. This article is to inform not enlighten, we leave enlightening to the Progressives.
New Age thinkers all think the same. la, la, la, la, la, la, lalalalala, Ouuuuummmmm, hiccccccccccchicccccccc Obama. "We are now purified. Oh, damn forgot the magic fairy dust."
Rockerbabe| 12.15.11 @ 12:52AM
According to Webster's Dictionary, enlighten is defined as instructed, learned, informed, educated and aquainted. You aren't as smart as you protend; must have been one of Gingrich's student?
There is nothing new age about stating the facts. . .Congress makes the laws and makes the decisions on how our tax money is spent. The President's job is to propose and has very limited spending discretion as per the Constitution.
Make fun of someone else; you are not in my league and probably not in anyone else's either. As for fairy dust, well, I'm fresh out so you will just have to muddle by without your fix.
tonypal| 12.16.11 @ 10:45AM
Of course, no one could possibly be in the same league of someone who uses complex terms like "protend." Thank you master.
JmsA| 12.15.11 @ 12:00AM
Child please!
JmsA| 12.15.11 @ 12:01AM
That was meant for the liberal child above, Melvin.
bruce108| 12.14.11 @ 3:06PM
This certainly is a great example of just how much total control certain elites have over the corporate media. They were able to conceal the fact that the Democratic candidate was a stalinist communist who would utterly destroy the US after his election.
JimP| 12.14.11 @ 3:26PM
As usual, dead on accurate. Thanks for another great column, Mr. Ferrara.
Why Fox 'News' doesn't have you as a regular contributor or host of some kind makes me wonder about them. Well not really. Well all know Fox is more about "infotainment" disguised as news reporting with lots of beautiful blondes to attract and distract us guys from all the missing factual info they don't report on.
GaltFan| 12.14.11 @ 4:18PM
"The policies that got us into this mess included primarily the so-called "affordable housing policies"...
The other major factor was the Fed's loose monetary policy..."
This is backwards. While monetary policy was further loosened by Greenspan, it is only because such a mechanism was available that the "affordable housing policies" could be enacted in the first place.
William L. Gensert| 12.14.11 @ 5:29PM
Mr. Ferrara and I think alike.
http://www.americanthinker.com.....ecord.html
Radioman777| 12.14.11 @ 7:30PM
He's a communist appratchik, that much is certain. He also appears to have more than a little totalitarian dictator thrown in.
Caroline| 12.14.11 @ 9:55PM
"His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya."
He may have been born in Kenya, but Obama Sr. may not be his true father.
Bâri′, Barry, Barack by Martha Trowbridge http://terribletruth.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/bari′-barry-barack/
Barack Hussein Obama and Malcolm X Like Father Like Son? http://octaman.com/comments/MalcolmO.html
Is Putative President Barack Hussein Obama II Really Bari Shabazz, Fugitive from Justice For 21 Years Following An Auto Accident in Honolulu County, Hawaii on March 12, 1982? http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-obama-really-bari-shabazz-fugitive.html
Rockerbabe| 12.15.11 @ 12:55AM
You must be absent from you creative writing class; I wonder if the instructor knows his idiot is missing!
President Obama is a natural born American citizen as was his mother and grandmother. And he was born on American soil, so all of that makes him very American. You wouldn't know a socialist or a marxist if one came up to you and said hello.
What a sad sack of looniness.
ARay| 12.15.11 @ 12:07AM
Obama won 53% of the vote not 57%. You're probably thinking of the 57 states we live in.
Rockerbabe| 12.15.11 @ 12:57AM
No, he won with either 56 or 57% of the vote when all of the votes were counted. You see, he did not try and stop the vote counting. That's what has you confused. And, we only have 50 states and 57. You must be thinking of all of the territories and protectorates we have.
Mike Hawk| 12.15.11 @ 6:06AM
You are woefully ignorant.
bob| 12.15.11 @ 12:40PM
Typical of liberals.
His grandmother loved communists, yet she was a bank vice president... typical.
Sunnyr| 12.15.11 @ 2:02PM
This pathetic excuse for a "president" has great disdain for the United States and he shows it every time he gets a case of oral diarrhea. He is an embarrassment to this nation and I am counting the days until he is gone for good. I still cannot believe we have a "Commander in Chief" who does not know how to pronounce the word, "corpsman." Unbelievable. He is so finished!
Rebecca| 12.15.11 @ 4:43PM
I am at least relieved to know there are all these patriots who feel the same as I do about Obama.
I feel as if I have been watching a loved one suffer through a terminal illness for the last three years..and maybe I have ... my country.
Richard Baker| 12.15.11 @ 5:19PM
The President hates the idea of the United States and it's Constitution and it shows. What he wants, it appears, is to be King of the World in his megalomania and that we should all kowtow in his Exalted Presence. That he was mostly raised overseas tells me that while a citizen of this country he doesn't think like an American. The man is a dictator at heart and a Communist to the core. His class warfare mentality is straight out of Karl Marx and his ilk. A $2,000+ suit just means that he's a well-dressed Communist unlike Nikita and the baggy suited Communists of the 1950s. Their motivations are identical, regardless.
The Obama Timeline | 12.15.11 @ 6:01PM
Not only is Obama a Marxist Wizard of Oz, his speeches contain more straw men than 50 viewings of the film.
Questionman| 12.16.11 @ 6:31AM
The haters will believe anything, negative, posted about Obama. It not only applies to the RWNJ haters, it also applies to the RWNJ candidates. Romney takes an Obama quote COMPLETELY out of context, uses it in a political ad, is caught red handed by every media outlet, and he and his cohorts are totally unapologetic. They've fostered an environment where facts mean nothing, and the more outrageous the rhetoric, the better. It's f'ing pathetic, and has made a mockery of our political system. The lunatic fringe rules.
Richard Baker the racist proves my point!
Obama is not a marxist. Neither is he a socialist. He is basically the best moderate Conservative President since Clinton. There is no proper left left in American politics. There is a moderate conservative party and a radical conservative party. That's it. Anyone who thinks Obama is a Marxist is basically a brainwashed moron suffering from decades of red scare propaganda. Spud used to hate such fools but now finds only pity, just like Doug the racist over there.
by the way! Nope. He's just stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can't get anything done with the disfunctional congress and the republican party would rather destroy our country than to allow Obama to succeed. BTW, I'm not an Obama supporter. I'm just calling it like I see it. clearly the republicans are better at destroying the economy than Obama is at fixing their messes-so vote republican, right?
The right is going crazy wearing tea bags and making wild-eyed accusations that Obama is "anti-American," that he's endangering the safety of the nation, that he's out to destroy Christianity, and that shaking Hugo Chavez'es hand threatens the sanctity of private property. It's enough to make your head bleed. But that's what racists do. They irate people! I'm now believe anyone who hates Obama is a racist, bigoted loser!
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 12.16.11 @ 2:59PM
Fuck off!!
Tenn Slim| 12.22.11 @ 10:03AM
Ignore the plain, unvarnished truth at your and my peril.
Obama is just what he says he is. Out to Fundamentally transform this US into HIS vision.
G.. help us.
Semper Fi
Richard Baker| 12.16.11 @ 5:25PM
Questionman:
If he quacks, walks, and acts like a duck then he must be a duck. Substitute the word Communist for duck and that's the crux of the matter. Also, his friends, by his own words, in college and his mentors were predominantly Marxist which is the root of Communism. Obviously, disagreeing with him on ANY specifics engenders the tired, old call of racist. I also heard that when someone goes for cursing and yelling, as you do, that that signifies a tired mind. Rest, you really need it.
Dan| 12.22.11 @ 12:29AM
President Eisenhower had a 90% tax rate on the wealthy, with a republican controlled house and senate... was Ike socialist?
Tenn Slim| 12.22.11 @ 9:59AM
Understand clearly. The Obama Leftist Agendas espoused in 2008 are STILL the front burners of his re election campaign. Class War fare, OWS 99%.. All are pages out of his hip Ayers play book.
The same advisors still camp out in the West Wing of the Oval office, Axelrod, Waters, all the rest are still there. NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
2012 elections, if held, will end up in the Supreme Court via Soros Secry of State project, the final battles will be fought out in Congress and the US will suffer mightley.
We are in for the roughest year of this Republics life.
end
Semper FI
Matt| 12.30.11 @ 4:02PM
Yes, yes and yes. And oh, yes, Obama's picks for the three most important cabinet posts, Defense, State, and Treasury, we all wild-eyed, Che-inspired Marxists: Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner.
Questionman| 12.31.11 @ 8:04PM
Any moron knows that 30 years of Reaganomics was the real policy disaster.
Why does Mitt say it’s Obama’s policies?
Obama’s policies are working to correct the disaster of Republican failed ideas.
Letting the exploiters police themselves will always fail and only creates suffering for the 99%
President Obama, which by any objective measure was innocuous, was branded as "Marxist" and "socialist" propaganda by conservative critics, even before the speech was written. When a president asks students to "put your best effort into everything you do," and this is considered an insidious act of indoctrination, you know something is out of whack in America.
Many people are indeed racist and are afraid of having an African American president. What they do to get over it is blame him for being a terrible person but it still comes out racist. He may have been raised in a Muslim household but it doesn't mean he's a terrorist. After all this, people who don't like him and his ideas and plans add things such as "he's a communist" "he hates the caucasian race" "he's not from the U.S, he shouldn't be president." These are all lies to get him either impeached or kicked out of office next term. If you hate being called racists, then stop being racists!
POST American| 1.12.12 @ 1:20AM
---------------------FINAL WORD-----------------------
"Understand, 'Free Trade', Globalism,
USURY, TREASON and EUGENICS
are ALWAYS intertwined. -----ALWAYS."
----------------------------------In a nutshell.