Friday, January 30, 2015

BloggeRhythms

Fox News reports today that “President Obama called for an end to ‘mindless austerity’ on Thursday as he announced his desire to end ‘sequester’ spending cuts in his budget for 2015. The across-the-board cuts, agreed to by both parties, have been in effect since 2013.
 
At the House Democratic Conference in Philadelphia Thursday, Obama proposed $74 billion in added spending, about 7 percent, that would be split about evenly between defense programs and the domestic side of the budget.
 
He also needled Mitt Romney by saying, “We’ve got a former presidential candidate on the other side who suddenly is just deeply concerned about poverty. That’s great!  Let’s go!  Come on!  Let’s do something about it!”
 
What’s interesting about Obama’s challenge to Romney is that it’s his own policies that are the major cause of the poverty rolls increasing. And on top of that, his anti-business beliefs curb or eliminative the nation’s major source of revenue production, the economy, leading to the lowest work force size since Jimmy Carter, while the national debt already stands at $18 trillion.
 
Additionally, Obamacare has many tax increases, fines and penalties and has the unintended consequence of causing many people's health insurance premiums and deductibles to rise, taking hard-earned money out of many of their pockets needlessly.
 
Furthermore, all these changes to health care and taxes, along with more proposed changes, businesses are afraid to hire or expand because they do not know what rules or regulations are coming next.  
 
Then, successfully lobbying Congress to increase the top federal income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, has caused people to work less and businesses to expand less because more of their money is taken from them.
 
At the same time, unemployment benefits have now been given to people for 99 weeks, incenting them to stop looking for jobs and lose interest in returning to the work force afterwards.
 
His most prominent tax cut support was the reduction in the employee portion of payroll taxes from 7.65 percent to 5.65 percent for one year. However, while the idea behind the cut was to stimulate spending by putting more money in the hands of workers, by announcing that the cut was temporary, the administration informed workers that they should save the money, because taxes would increase the next year. Thus it never reached the economy.
 
And then, instead of structural reform, the administration proposed new restrictions on employers, helping unions to reduce employer flexibility. Therefore, at a time when many countries are improving their scores on indices of economic freedom, the United States is losing ground.
 
David Barker in usnews.com/opinion, put it this way, “While Obama's rhetoric is less harsh than FDR's, he has given business cause to worry. He has talked of "fat cat bankers," wealthy people and Wall Street executives "makin' out like bandits," the "unchecked power" of insurance companies, suggested that "now's not that time" to make profits and bonuses, and said that his goal after the BP oil spill was learning "whose ass to kick."
 
In summation, combined with new regulations on the healthcare and financial industries and constant talk of higher taxes on "the wealthiest," this rhetoric convinces businesspeople that if they invest and succeed, their profits might be taxed or regulated away. While probably the most serious shortcoming in Obama's economic strategy is the lack of a long term plan to reduce government debt.
 
On another subject, the Wall Street Journal reports that, “Gov. Scott Walker [R-Wis.] won a national following among conservatives for taking on pubic-sector unions in Wisconsin. Now, as he gears up for a presidential campaign, he also is talking about part of his profile that could prove equally important, his faith as an evangelical Christian. Given a Republican field that could include a dozen or more candidates, Mr. Walker’s newly hired political team believes that he has a chance to draw support from three of the party’s core groups, tea-party activists and business supporters who like his stance on fiscal issues, as well as the community of evangelicals."
 
What this indicates is, that on top of a rousing start to his probable presidential run Governor Walker’s also gaining strength in the party segment that’s refused to support unappealing candidates, perhaps causing losses of close elections. However, by adding this group to his backers, he’s making himself one of the strongest contenders and certainly someone to watch.   
  
On the other hand, Fox News says, “Among Democratic contenders for their party’s nomination, Clinton still dominates -- although her numbers continue to slip. She now comes in at 55 percent among self-identified Democrats, down from 62 percent last month and a high of 69 percent in April 2014.” 
 
Which means that Bill Clinton’s wife continues to lose ground even though she’s not running against anybody else. And therefore, she might wind up losing the presidential nomination to an empty chair, just like the one Clint Eastwood talked to at the last Republican convention.  
 
Nonetheless, if moveon.org, the organization that boosted Obama and funded by Soros, has it’s way, another candidate will surely enter the Democrat race for the White House.
 
According to the Washington Times: “The ‘Run Warren Run’ campaign, comprised of members from the groups MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and Ready for Warren, is planning more than 200 ‘organizing house parties’ in 46 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam to try to develop ideas for how they can convince her to run.” And, thus, with two years left, the fun has even started yet in the world of presidential politics.
 
That’s’ it for today folks.
 
Adios

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