The Obama Record Is Clear Now…
More Americans unemployed (15 million+ as of January, 2010) than any time since the Great Depression.
More Americans unemployed for longer (8 months vs. 8 weeks) since the Great Depression.
And now a new notch on his belt of Hope & Change: More Americans on food stamps since records began for the program.
A record 38.2 million Americans were enrolled in the food stamp program at latest count, up 246,000 from the previous month and the latest in record-high monthly tallies that began in December 2008.
Food stamps are the primary federal anti-hunger program, helping poor people buy groceries. The Agriculture Department updated enrollment data on Friday with a preliminary figure for November.USDA estimates up to $58 billion will be spent on food stamps this fiscal year, which ends Sept 30, with average enrollment of 40.5 million people. Food stamps were renamed the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in 2008.
Remember the $787B (now $860B) Obama Stimulus Package? That was SUPPOSED to help. It has made things worse by any measure. Except for the Democrat interest groups (Wall Street & union bosses) who got their taxpayer-funded payoffs in wheelbarrows.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
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Remember the $787B (now $860B) Obama Stimulus Package? That was SUPPOSED to help. It has made things worse by any measure.
Bruce, please at least try to make it hard for me.
So, “worse by any measure”? Does the NASDAQ-100 count as a measure? That bottomed-out in late 2008/early 2009, it’s damn near back up to pre-crash levels now. If that’s worse, what the hell’s better?
How about the Dow Jones Industrial Average? That doesn’t look like it’s falling right now. Oh, and how about we look at the Dow Jones over its entire history? Is that a crash at the far right of the graph, or is my monitor just a bit dirty?
Of course I know unemployment and national debt is going to brought into this at some point. But talk of the ‘jobless recovery’ is pretty bloody disingenuous given that reductions in unemployment have been known to lag behind economic recovery by about six months in every recession in US history. No matter if it’s a Democrat or a Republican behind the recovery, the lag is simple economic fact, and it seems churlish to blame Obama because he was unable to break a fundamental law of economics.
I’ve also seen predictions on the national debt range from the sober (the CBO predicts the debt to peak in 2012, and slowly fall afterwards) to the hysterical (the Heritage Foundation predicts a parabolic curve, with debt peaking at 188% of GDP by 2035). I tend to believe the non-partisan CBO myself on this, but I just read in the newspaper today that Japan’s national debt is 192% of their GDP right now, and they’re spending even more. I’m supposed to believe 188% would be armageddon when Japan is dealing with 4% more today?
Comment by Serenity — February 7, 2010 @ 10:05 am - February 7, 2010
Somehow I think these numbers fit Mr. Obama’s plans..
Delay the onset of the jobs recovery until late summer, early fall.
Increase the debt, to decrease the debt around the same time.
More federal assistance means more scare tactics if someone suggests taking them away. Watch this to be a political point for liberals in the fall.
Serenity : The market indices have nothing to do with increased revenue. They are a result of decreased expenses (mostly labor). I am sure the millions of families facing foreclosure will take comfort in the fact that market is doing okay, not great, just okay.
Mr. Obama needs to either pass or kill health care. The uncertainty for small business owners is adding to the lag of hiring. Why would they hire when they have no idea of what the insurance costs are going to be for new hires.
I also like that Mr. Obama is now going to outsource some of the best jobs by shutting down manned space flight.
I see no mention of your concern for minority unemployment. The numbers there are catastrophic. But we really don’t want to mention that do we?
Comment by TnnsNe1 — February 7, 2010 @ 10:28 am - February 7, 2010
“Delay the onset of the jobs recovery until late summer, early fall.”
Sorry, but President Obama has shown he has about as much power to create jobs as I do to crap Godiva Chocolate. Don’t give him credit for the ability to delay that which he has no power to do in the first place.
“Increase the debt, to decrease the debt around the same time.”
The first clause of your statement: Yes…now you’re talking about the only true power Obama has shown any inclination to use…and use it he does. As to the second part…decreasing debt…well, I’ll believe it when I see it. May I interest you in some Godiva Chocolate?
In total agreement with the rest of your points TnnsNe1.
Comment by AF_Vet — February 7, 2010 @ 10:42 am - February 7, 2010
Mr. Obama needs to either pass or kill health care. The uncertainty for small business owners is adding to the lag of hiring. Why would they hire when they have no idea of what the insurance costs are going to be for new hires.
Fine, tell the Republicans in congress to stop opposing every effort at reform then. He’s been trying, but the Republicans and handful of Democrats (plus Joe “Backstabber” Lieberman) have got behind efforts to filibuster every single attempt. Given that the bill now is literally as small as it can be and still be reform, now’s time to stop obstructing and get it over with.
Comment by Serenity — February 7, 2010 @ 10:42 am - February 7, 2010
“Fine, tell the Republicans in congress to stop opposing every effort at reform then.”
Fine… Tell the Democrats to present a health care bill that the majority of American people actually want. To me, the Republicans have been presenting the views of the American people. We do, after all have representative government don’t we?
Fine.. Tell the Democrats to actually include a Republican in the drafting of a bill. Seems only fair that if you want me to vote on a bill I should have a say in the creation of it.
“Sorry, but President Obama has shown he has about as much power to create jobs as I do to crap Godiva Chocolate. ”
Ah, you forget how easy it is to create government jobs.
““Increase the debt, to decrease the debt around the same time.””
My thoughts being… increase it to such high amounts then announce a plan to decrease minimally to be able to announce a decrease.
Just like the cash-for-clunkers was to help ensure a positive growth number for the 4th quarter. How many consecutive quarters of positive growth does it take to announce the end of a recession?
Comment by TnnsNe1 — February 7, 2010 @ 10:52 am - February 7, 2010
Uhhh….Serenity? You DO realize that the Dems didn’t need a SINGLE GOP vote to pass any of their precious ‘reforms’ all of last year right? I’ll give Jon Stewart credit for pointing this out: Just how many votes do the Dems need to get anything done? 80 vote majority in the House and a SUPER MAJORITY, Filibuster-Proof Senate? What the hell do you guys NEED to get anything done?
Stop blaming Dem ineptitude and impotence on the GOP. They’ve been powerless to stop anything, and Scott Brown’s election does only one thing: Puts the filibuster back into play…not that that will matter if the Dems play dirty and abuse the Reconciliation rule. Face facts: the only reason the GOP is being blamed for not voting for any of the Dem’s crappy bills, is that the Dems know the bills are toxic, and they want to be able to share the blame with Repubs when elections roll around. The failure belongs to the Dems, and Dems alone.
Man, Bush is looking far more bi-partisan all the time…
Comment by AF_Vet — February 7, 2010 @ 10:53 am - February 7, 2010
“have got behind efforts to filibuster every single attempt.”
Precisely when was there a filibuster in the filibuster proof Senate regarding healthcare. I must have missed that on C-SPAN. haha.. What MSNBC much?
Mr. Reid/Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama were counting on the bluest of blue states to come through for them. They booted it…
Comment by TnnsNe1 — February 7, 2010 @ 10:57 am - February 7, 2010
Well said, AF_Vet
Comment by neko — February 7, 2010 @ 11:15 am - February 7, 2010
Government spending drains off private spending. You know why banks haven’t been lending to small/growing businesses lately?
(1) Obammunism has shown its willingness to confiscate or ‘regulate’ anything at any time, which makes all businesses unpredictable or much less worth investing in. Meanwhile,
(2) Obammunism runs $1.5 trillion annual deficts and expects banks to fund them. That is, banks are expected to buy the Treasury’s deluge of new bonds. And they have been.
Thus, Obammunism raises the risk (or destroys the expected return) of investing in business; while giving banks vast quantities of a ’safe’ (haha) alternative investment in the form of Treasury bonds. And the Obammunists have probably been pressuring banks behind-the-scenes to buy those bonds. If you were a bank, what would you do?
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — February 7, 2010 @ 11:23 am - February 7, 2010
Here is the graph that illustrates the jpb loss record that Bruce is writing about – LINK – figure out for yourself how well his words match reality.
Comment by Tano — February 7, 2010 @ 11:31 am - February 7, 2010
#10… seems you have some trouble with numbers.
The number of people out of work is what we call a cumulate number. That means adding up all the people who are unemployed.
Your number shows the number of job losses. That is not a cumulative number. You just compared apples to oranges. Same food group but still wrong.
The number of jobs lost and the number of people unemployed are not the same thing. A person who lost his job in November but then found one in January, shows up in your number but not the number of unemployed of today.
Typical….
Comment by TnnsNe1 — February 7, 2010 @ 12:18 pm - February 7, 2010
Seems to me that the goals of the bills has been the victim of hijacked syntax. By ‘helping’ – if the means ‘to get more people on government dole’, than by all means the stimulus is ‘helping’.
The media gave Obama a pass, and the independents fell for the ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ rhetoric – and those same independents are now distancing themselves, since they’ve seen the ‘change’ attempted.
Comment by Jax Dancer — February 7, 2010 @ 12:36 pm - February 7, 2010
Early in the liberal Obamas tenure there were 400,000 Americans who were discouraged and quit looking for work and had run out of unemployment benefits. Now 15 months after his election there are one million 300,000 souls who are wandering the country stunned by the Obama depression. Hope n change, this inept administration touts “improvements in an unemployment rate when the bleeding hasn’t stopped. These liberals are heartless and uncaring. Everything is sunshine and lite? Unemployment was revised from 7 million to 8 million. Stunning. Have another party Mr President.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvania — February 7, 2010 @ 12:52 pm - February 7, 2010
Here are the unemployment rates :
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?series_id=LNS14000000
Here are the unemployment numbers :
Jan 2009 – 80599
Jan 2010 – 83663
Numbers in thousands
That calculates to a 3.8% increase in the number of people unemployed since Mr. Obama took office and the stimulus package was started. Ya, that worked…
Comment by TnnsNe1 — February 7, 2010 @ 12:52 pm - February 7, 2010
Serenity – I don’t think stock values reflect reality right now… my guess is that there is a lot of “whistling past the graveyard” going on. At the risk of mixing metaphors: at some point the music will stop and there won’t be enough chairs to go around.
This train wreck has been a long time in the making – going back long before Barry was a gleam in his “father’s” eye. For years, politicians have been making promises with no idea how the checks will get written (that’s for the next poor SOB to figure out). At some point, the waiter shows up with the check.
There are still some economic bombs yet to go off (think Social Security). Moody’s is talking about lowering our bond rating which will result in huge increases in borrowing costs (already headed to $1 billion per day). Will we default on our debt? Or will we inflate our way out of it? Unlike Greece or Spain, there’s no EU to bail us out except the Chi-Coms.
My problem with Obama (and the Congress – past and present) is that they’ve created this mess and they don’t seem to realize what they’re doing (or it’s intentional). Bush shares the blame for this mess but no one has explained to me how Bush-level spending, multiplied, will solve the problem.
They’re not serious (Obama’s risible “spending freeze”? A $54 million “stimulus project” to refurbish 25 miles of RR track used once a day for a wine-tasting train in Napa? Puh-leeze).
The blame ultimately lies with the citizenry. We’ve been voting for these clowns (no offense to clowns) for decades – demanding the proverbial free lunch. Any pol who dares to tell the truth is toast.
Comment by SoCalRobert — February 7, 2010 @ 1:57 pm - February 7, 2010
There’s a growing scandal about how this administration is calculating the unemployed as well.
Bloggers dig into the numbers.
Start with the total workers used in the job market.
Like the climate gate scandal, liberals assume no one is checking their work. Using figures from earlier total workers in the job market, Jan unemployed is actually 10.6%. Obamas administration is lying.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvania — February 7, 2010 @ 4:56 pm - February 7, 2010
Obama and the Democrats are very worried about unemployment, health care for every American, and global warming.
They won’t rest until the country is on firm footing and employment is heading in the right direction…….well maybe…..
http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/02/05/obama-throws-super-bowl-party-at-the-white-house/
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvania — February 7, 2010 @ 5:21 pm - February 7, 2010
And how many social welfare programs are in place now that did not exist in the Great Depression?
How many people are living off the government dole who do not get counted in the 15 million-plus unemployed?
Furthermore, how many retirement, insurance, endowment funds are wrapped up in stocks and bonds with no place else to go that were not part of the 1929 market?
Anyone who is looking at the market numbers now had better have a clear understanding of the enormous collapse of equity in the real estate sector. The housing supply so far outstrips demand and the cost differential between used housing versus new construction has all but put construction in reverse and brought about a seismic decline in real estate values.
Japan does not have the huge real estate equity as part of the personal wealth accounting that has been so important in the US.
If you are reading the stock markets the way you read them 24 months ago, you fail to understand the fundamentals underlying the US economy. The Euro is about to implode and several sick nations are going to be pitched out of the European Union. Our own real estate market is full of people who are upside down in their home mortgages. Many of the huge state retirement funds are so under capitalized that like the states they are in, they will have to consider bankruptcy.
Old man inflation is around the corner. Therefore, even if the Dow hits 15,000 it is being measured against a very shaky confidence and trust index and it can fall to 6,000 in a heartbeat. This is certainly no time to whistle past the financial crisis sign posts.
Comment by heliotrope — February 7, 2010 @ 6:10 pm - February 7, 2010