DC – i.e., government employees – got richer compared to the rest of America. What also happened back then was a newly-Democrat Congress adding hundreds of billions to government spending, followed of course by President Obama and his 2009 “Porkulus”.

Via Zero Hedge, who suggests that Obama should maybe keep this in mind when he gives his speeches on inequality.

UPDATE (from Dan):  Here’s something to chew on, Jeff, the difference between the governing class and Americans may be considerably greater than this graph suggests.  Bear in mind the vast differences in income in the District itself with many blighted areas in the North- and Southeast quadrants of the city.  And if incomes there would be pulling down the overall average, some folks living in Northwest (and the gentrified areas around Capitol Hill) would be earning far more than this graph suggests.

Current Yahoo! headine, Obama: Economic fairness ‘frayed’:

President Barack Obama prodded Congress to raise wages and secure the social safety net as he issued an overarching appeal Wednesday to correct inequalities that he said make it harder for a child in the United States to escape poverty. “That should offend all of us,” he declared. “We are a better country than this.”

Obama argued that the dream of upward economic mobility is breaking down and that the growing income gap is a “defining challenge of our time.”

“The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” the president said…

This is an example of the Left’s classic tactic, “poison as food, poison as antidote”. First the Left creates/worsens problems with their dysfunctional policies; then they position themselves (or, even more dysfunctional left-wing policies) as the supposed solution.

In this case, President Obama’s own policies create/worsen the inequality he decries. As I’ve discussed in my “Recovery for the One Percent” series here, here, here and here.

For any lefties reading this, who need the reminder:

• Raising the minimum wage costs people jobs.
• Big Government denies opportunity to the working poor.
• High government spending hurts the economy and stops new businesses from being formed, as do high regulation and taxes.
• Quantitative Easing bails out (or subsidizes) the One Percent, at the expense of the poor and middle-class.

All policies increased, maintained or advocated by Your Obama.

To be clear, the problems didn’t start with Obama; but he has worsened them.

From Mona Charen’s new column:

Remember President Barack Obama’s mother? …The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a “pre-existing condition” and refused to pay…In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president’s mother, she discovered letters proving beyond doubt that Cigna never denied Stanley Ann Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan…

The White House did not deny Scott’s account, but shrugged it off…

The Dunham tale was meant to personify the hundreds of thousands — or millions — of Americans who were “dumped” by insurance companies when they became sick. This is an invented tale, and might have been rebutted by the insurance industry if they hadn’t gotten into bed with Obama in 2010 in return for millions of coerced new customers…

There’s more; RTWT.

Charen touches on a great point: The insurance companies are at fault, but not for the Left’s mythical reasons. The real fault is that Obamacare is based on coercion: forcing people to do business with the insurance companies, when people might choose not to. That is immoral. Obama was wrong to propose it, the Democrats were wrong to impose it, and the insurance companies were wrong to go along with it.

We know that the Obama administration lied to America during the 2012 election, about Benghazi. And about “If you like your plan you can keep it”, and many other matters, such as the fact that the IRS was helping to stifle Obama’s grass-roots opposition.

Now the New York Post alleges that the declining unemployment rate (announced in the last few weeks of the election) was faked.

It looks like lower-level employees did it; probably tough to blame it on Obama directly. But that touches on a classic ethical question. If the guy at the top is kept in a bubble by people who cheat and lie extensively on his behalf (and don’t usually tell him), is he culpable? At what point?

Also, how much election-year lying does it take to de-legitimize a Presidential election? (If, or since, he only won by giving people false information.) Did President Obama reach that point in 2012?

Via ZH.

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

– Barack Obama, June 3, 2008

Via The Other McCain.

A thief takes your car. You know each other, so the next day, he drives up – in your car – to apologize for the inconvenience he’s caused you. He doesn’t return your car; he drives off in it again.

Was his apology sincere? Of course not. Had he been sincere, he would give back your car. He just wanted to blunt your well-justified anger, which could inconvenience him in the future. He hoped to manipulate your good nature.

Have no fear, kids: President Obama is here to show us how it’s done.

President Obama said Thursday that he is “sorry” that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.

“We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

Here are a few of the things Obama *didn’t* say, any of which would have made it a sincere apology:

• I admit Obamacare was a huge mistake, and I’ve asked Congress to repeal it.
• I admit Obamacare was a mistake, and I’m letting Republicans write the bill now to solve its huge flaws.
• To give people immediate relief, I’ve agreed to delay Obamacare by six months.
• I’m not delaying Obamacare; but, to give people immediate relief, I’ve signed an order that will re-grandfather all plans that existed as of Oct 1, 2013.

But he said none of them. His “apology” was geared to one purpose only: trying to gain a few points in opinion polls for Barack Hussein Obama.

RELATED:

• Young people Just Say No to Obamacare. As well they should; it rips them off.
• By driving doctors to retire and squeezing out small practices, Obamacare is increasing the doctor shortage.
• Even The New Republic admits that Obamacare kicks people off of good plans, pushing them into worse plans with higher costs and less doctor access.
• Even the Washington Post agrees that people’s cancellations should not be blamed on the insurance companies.
• Obama was lying about Obamacare’s impacts on people as recently as Sep. 26, 2013.

Well covered on Ace and HotAir, but I can’t let this pass without note.

Recently on November 4, President Obama said:

If you had one of these plans before the ACA came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was, you could keep it *if* it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.

The emphasis is Obama’s, in his delivery; here is the clip.

The rules/mandates/costs of the ACA are such that it is nearly impossible for any plan to not be changed by it. But Obama has an even greater problem: what he said in the past, dozens if not hundreds of times in public speeches, had no “If…” qualifier and was much more like this example (from 2009, quoted previously):

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, *period*. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, *period*. No one will take it away, *no matter what*.

Emphasis was probably also in Obama’s original delivery, but just to keep things easy, let’s say that I’ve added it.

So, let’s see. First Obama lied about whether people could keep their plans under Obamacare. (And he lied about most people seeing cost reductions – rather than the reality of cost increases – and about much more.) And now, Obama is lying about his lies (claiming he had always said something different).

Lies require intent to deceive; otherwise they are only mistakes. Obama has lied, because (1) the White House knew people would lose their plans at least as far back as 2010, and (2) unless Obama is mentally incompetent, he must know today that he didn’t put in those “If…” qualifiers when he was out stumping for Obamacare.

Will the Left swallow Obama’s new lie? Probably, along the lines of Orwell’s _1984_, where the devotees of Ingsoc (English Socialism) believe The Party’s newly-invented claim to have raised the chocolate ration when they’d actually cut it (page 51 of the old Signet paperback).

But the Left is not America. Will America swallow it?

RELATED: Obama’s approval rating is a point lower than Bush’s was at this same time in their presidencies (1st week of November in their fifth years).

And if you want a glimpse into America’s future under nationalized health, here it is: Venezuela’s health care system is collapsing.

Via HotAir.

My thoughts: Glad to see Romney in decent form and telling it like it is.

Your thoughts?

A pithy, logical column from Kyle Smith. Key ideas:

Bulls–t is airy, meaningless drivel, the stuff that campaigns are made of. Or it’s a misleading oversimplification with hidden qualifiers. Not only do we forgive bulls–t, we like it…

This week was something new…

Some 10 million Americans are going to lose their health insurance as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act. [But] On June 15, 2009, Obama said, in one of hundreds of similar statements, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

This wasn’t just bulls–t. This was a lie…

What Obama said wasn’t true and that’s all there is to it. To the American public, he is a different man…Obama has rebranded himself as a liar…He will carry this new label to his grave.

UPDATE (well, more a REMINDER): Per NBC News, the Obama administration knew at least as early as 2010 that 67% to 80% of Americans who buy health coverage themselves would not be allowed to keep their plans. And that doesn’t count Americans who are losing their employer-sponsored plans, job hours or jobs because their employers simply can’t afford Obamacare’s pricey coverage mandates.

The administration lies about its pricey coverage mandates now, via Orwellian language. It claims to have made insurance companies “offer more benefits” (NBC’s phrasing). What it has really done is deny companies the ability to tailor plans to consumers’ needs, and deny the consumer the opportunity to buy a plan that is affordably tailored.

UPDATES via The Economic Collapse blog:

• A partial (but still lengthy) list of employers who have cut work hours or jobs, because of Obamacare.
• According to CBS, Americans losing their health plans due to Obamacare far outnumber Americans who have signed up for Obamacare.
• Doctors don’t like Obamacare; in New York, fully 77% of doctors either know they’ll be refusing Obamacare patients, or are undecided.

UPDATE: Even Anderson Cooper wore his ‘concerned face’ last week on hearing that the Obama administration has told insurance companies to stay quiet about what is really going on.

Via HotAir, just a reminder: “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

In Minnesota alone, at least 140,000 can’t keep their plan.

UPDATE: Fine columns on all this from Mark Steyn, Larry Kudlow, Charles Krauthammer.

UPDATE: From The Burning Platform (via ZH):

I haven’t had time to blog lately (and guess the others haven’t either), but this can’t pass without comment: As reported by the intrepid Sharyl Atkisson of CBS, in its first 24 hours, Obamacare had 4.7 million unique visitors and…six enrollments.

Within a few more days, they had…a few hundred enrollments. That’s why they haven’t been telling us the enrollment numbers. They need 7 million by March 1 (for some reason), and aren’t going to come close.

UPDATE: More complaints about Obamacare’s high cost, along the lines of “Most…are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act. We just didn’t realize that…we’d be the ones paying for it.”

Evidently, tens of millions of young people have been so mis-educated that they thought Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy would be paying for it. Or perhaps the Federal Reserve?

UPDATE: For South Park fans.

UPDATES:

• From The Federalist, The Obamacare Losers: “A 27-year-old in Austin, for example, could have bought a catastrophic plan for $59 a month before the ACA. On the exchange, the cheapest catastrophic plan is $153 a month.”
• America’s top hospitals don’t want Obamacare patients.
• In New York and New Jersey alone, hundreds of thousands lose their insurance due to Obamacare.
• Even left-wing media admit that Obama must have lied knowingly about how Obamacare would affect people.

UPDATE: Democrats, you will recall, created and passed Obamacare in a hideously divisive and arrogant fashion: shutting the GOP out of the legislative process; ridiculing critics’ predictions (that are now all coming true); implying that political opponents are racists, terrorists, etc.; railroading Obamacare through Congress on a mix of party-line votes, lies, and legislative twists that were even more constitutionally suspect than usual; and generally misbehaving in a manner to all-but-ensure a bad program with years of continuing opposition.

Via Ace, now Politico brings us the new lefty meme: that the opposition to Obamacare, which would be considered normal for American democracy in any other political era, is a GOP “conspiracy” that has “sabotaged” Obamacare. Welcome to the Brave New World.

MSNBC Contributor Tells Hugh Hewitt Obama Deliberately Lied About Obamacare (Via Instapundit)

Wonder what Mr. Page said about George W. Bush’s alleged dishonesty

First, the facts.

• October 16: U.S. national debt is $16,747,370,534,090.62.
• Then they raise the debt ceiling.
• October 18, at 3pm: U.S. debt is at $17,075,590,107,963.57.

That’s a $300+ billion increase, in two days. It’ll continue (albeit, at a slower pace). It moves the U.S. mathematically closer to its coming default, and the added interest will cost taxpayers (especially if interest rates rise in the future).

Now, here’s what Obama said during the shutdown. October 3:

I want to spend a little time on this. It’s something called raising the debt ceiling. And it’s got a lousy name, so a lot of people end up thinking, I don’t know, I don’t think we should raise our debt ceiling, because it sounds like we’re raising our debt. But that’s not what this is about.

It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn’t grow our deficits by a single dime…it’s not something that raises our debt.

Or, October 8:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt.

‘Nuff said.

In recent days, I’ve ridiculed President Obama’s claim that not giving him a debt ceiling increase would somehow force him to default on U.S. debt payments. (Since current revenues cover the minimum debt service many times over, making any debt default the president’s choice.)

But over the longer term, U.S. default is inevitable – if we keep raising the debt ceiling.

If you’ve ever seen a bankruptcy, you know that the path to default is to take on ever more debt – to supposedly “pay your bills”, in Obama’s expression – as you fail to cut your spending down to what you can afford.

By raising the debt ceiling so that Obama can borrow even more, America comes closer to default. NOT raising the debt ceiling – that is, giving up the deficit habit now, and running immediate balanced budgets – would postpone or prevent America’s coming default.

Some may answer “Ah, but letting Obama borrow more will keep things smooth and buy time to fix our other problems.” All I can say is: People told me that in early 2009, some six trillion dollars ago (of U.S. debt). Bullhockey. It’s how an alcoholic or drug addict thinks: tomorrow is always the day to officially clean up; never today.

Under present leadership, a U.S. default is inevitable. The only question is what form it will take.

• Less likely: We could yet have an ‘honest default’, where we admit that we can’t repay our creditors and we negotiate cutbacks to our debt – and to our spending.
• More likely: We will have a ‘dishonest default’ where we borrow, spend and print money until the dollar is confetti, and we never officially default, but we pay our creditors in dollars that buy far less than the dollars they loaned us (or were promised).

Either way, it’s a default (our debt is no good; our creditors don’t get what they were promised). And it’s the road we’re on. “Thanks, Obama!”

More details:

• Niall Ferguson on why “the fiscal position of the federal government is in fact much worse today than is commonly realized”.
• Jim Grant on America’s past defaults – honest and dishonest – and the one that’s coming.
• Seeing the inevitable, China has called for the dollar to be overthrown (removed) as the world’s banking reserve currency. Read about it in the IB Times, the New York Times (which twists the facts to blame the Tea Party, natch) or the LA Times.

UPDATE: Obama has just called on America to stop listening to ‘the bloggers’, by a strange coincidence!

While hopes of a government budget deal today flicker on and off, you surely heard the latest example yesterday of President Obama threatening a default:

Talking to reporters at an event in Washington D.C. Monday, President Obama said the U.S. faces “a good chance at defaulting.”

“This week if we don’t start making some real progress, both the House and the Senate, and if Republicans aren’t willing to set aside their partisan concerns in order to do what’s right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting. And defaulting could have a potentially have a devastating affect on our economy,” the president said.

Remember, default would be Obama’s choice because he has two Constitutional ways to avoid it:

1. He could negotiate his differences with the GOP in good faith, like a leader.
2. Failing that, he could prioritize debt service spending (the U.S. “minimum debt payment”) ahead of other government spending. Tax revenue alone is enough to cover it many times over. If there is a legal issue, he could ask Congress (Democrats) to help.

Thus, Obama talking about any serious possibility of default is Obama planning to default if he doesn’t get his way 100%. That is a very bad threat to be making; in no way fitting for a President of the United States.

In effect, Obama has put U.S. creditors on notice that he will prioritize them last in any real budget crisis. That means U.S. debt (the Treasury bond) is unsafe and unsound whether or not he defaults this time, and investors are fools to hold it (unhedged).

UPDATE via HotAir: Sen. Rand Paul agrees, and pushes the idea of a Full Faith And Credit Act to make prioritization explicit. And even liberal Cokie Roberts (NPR) admits that Obama has been trying to talk the stock market into crashing. “Thanks, Obama!”

UPDATE: Nice piece a couple of weeks ago from Jeffrey Dorfman at Forbes. Key idea: Not raising the debt ceiling means simply that the government must live within a balanced budget until these issues are worked out.

And that, to Democrats, is “a fate worse than default”. Literally. Democrats would literally rather choose default (which means, according to them, the collapse of our economy, the end of the world, yadda yadda) than a 20-25% net spending cutback to live within a balanced budget.

No discussion is grownup, if the participants don’t know/acknowledge certain facts which President Obama, the Democrats and their media try to have people forget:

1. The government is supposed to spend by a budget.
2. Between April 29, 2009 and March 23, 2013, Harry Reid’s Democrats didn’t even bother to pass a budget. Nearly four years!
3. Under the U.S. Constitution, the budget is supposed to originate in Congress and particularly the House of Representatives. Which means,
4. The House IS supposed to be able to impose its budgetary will on the President, including by shutting down the government, as Democrat Houses have shut down the government many times before to successfully impose their will on GOP Senates and presidents.
5. On a district-by-district basis (as required by the Constitution), the American people elected a GOP House in 2012. To coin a phrase, “they won”.
6. The current so-called “shutdown” only affects 17% of the government. (83% is still open.)
7. The current House has passed many bills to keep most of the remaining 17% open – bills which the Democrats have rejected.
8. Obama has given us more debt than any president in U.S. history.
9. Contra Obama, raising the debt ceiling does indeed mean raising our debt further. And it does cost taxpayers a lot of money.
10. Contra Obama, there is no reason for the government to default on its debt, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. You default only if you fail to make your minimum debt payment. Our ongoing tax revenue exceeds our minimum payment by many times over, leaving lots of money for the rest of government spending after debt service. (Just not as much as Democrats want.)
11. Which is probably why Obama and the Democrats are the only side talking about having a default happen. (They want to at least dangle the threat – and they might carry out the threat – even if it’s unnecessary.)
12. Contra Obama, our future spending isn’t “paying a bill”. Spending that Congress has budgeted or authorized (but not yet actually spent) can be stopped or cut any time Congress says so, or under-spent if the money simply doesn’t exist for it.

The people who run GayPatriot welcome intelligent disagreement with our views. If your disagreement ignores the above facts, sorry but it’s not intelligent.

As the adage goes, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

NB: Originally, point 2 stated incorrectly that the Senate hadn’t passed a budget since 2009. Error fixed. (thanks Kurt!)

ADDENDUM: 13. Contra Obama, borrowing money “to pay our bills” is NOT paying our bills. When you buy something on credit, have you paid you bill? No, of course not. You’ve merely changed to whom you owe the payment (and perhaps when).

Now we’re being given the Nuclear metaphors. Current Yahoo! headline: Obama: Default like ‘nuclear bomb’ hitting economy.

President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that Congress would be dropping the equivalent of an economic “nuclear bomb” on the country if it failed to raise the debt ceiling, triggering a first-of-its-kind default…

Obama also described the consequences of a default as dire, quoting economists as saying it would be “insane” or “catastrophic,” spreading “chaos”…

But, as I explained yesterday, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, a default is entirely optional. It would be President Obama’s choice. By denying the choice, Obama effectively promises to deliver a default. That is, he threatens us with it (while pretending not to).

In the let’s-break-the-irony-meter department, we also have this:

Obama also pressed Republicans to reopen the government without conditions…

But Obama is the one pressing for conditions: He demands that the Republicans give away every bit of their negotiating leverage, before he’ll sit down with them.

I haven’t seen a full review of Obama’s press conference today, but I’ll bet lunch money that he also couldn’t resist repeating his outright lies about the debt ceiling (that raising it somehow doesn’t increase our debt, or cost us anything). And about future spending (that future spending is somehow all-or-nothing and unchangeable, like “paying our bills” for past spending).

UPDATE: They’ve added to the Yahoo! article.

“I’m not budging,” said the president…

Boehner reiterated his call for the president to negotiate…“The long and the short of it is, there’s going to be a negotiation here. We can’t raise the debt ceiling without doing something about what’s driving us to borrow more money and live beyond our means,” Boehner said. “The president’s position that we’re not going to sit down and talk to you unless you surrender is just not sustainable. It’s not our system of government.”

Good on Boehner!

UPDATE: Transcript here. Obama did keep up his lies about his profligate spending somehow being the equivalent of “paying bills”, and his debt -ceiling- increase somehow not meaning a debt increase. Here, he twists them together:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt. It simply says you pay for what Congress has already authorized America to purchase…Whatever it is that Congress has already authorized, what this does is make sure that we can pay those bills.

Lie, lie, lie.

1. The whole reason Obama wants a debt ceiling increase is precisely so he can add to our debt.
2. He will add A LOT of debt (hundreds of billions) within days of the ceiling increase, costing taxpayers a lot of money.
3. Budgets, made by Congress or otherwise, are not “bills to be paid”. They’re future spending plans. It would be right to under-spend our budget from this point forward, and we badly need to.

This graphic was probably constructed for fun – except that the words, from then-Senator Obama, are quite real:

h/t Zero Hedge. Obama’s longer, original speech is here in the Congressional Record, 3/16/06, p. S2237.

FROM THE COMMENTS: EH tips us off to some info at Fraters Libertas and Powerline. It appears that, while Senator Obama carefully inserted his fiscal-responsibility speech into the Congressional Record, he never said it out loud to his colleagues. Yet he began it with a flourish to make it sound like he had: “Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem…”

Today from CBS:

Mr. Obama…called on Congress to extend the nation’s borrowing authority beyond the current $16.7 trillion limit. Republicans have asked for negotiations…Mr. Obama reiterated a promise to negotiate…only after the government is reopened and the debt ceiling increased.

“We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy,” he said.

But who is the one actually harming, or threatening to harm, our economy? Answer: President Obama.

First, there’s Obamacare which, as is widely discussed/known, is presently killing people’s insurance plans, job hours, and more. The GOP should refuse to negotiate under the continuing threat of economic harm from Obamacare.

Second, Obama and his minions are fond of warning of ‘disaster’ if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. As Obama said last week:

“As reckless as a government shutdown is … an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse…”

So, in Obama’s mind, hitting the debt ceiling means automatically that the U.S. shall default on its national debt. But, in reality, default is a choice. You are only in default when you stop making your minimum debt payments. Our ongoing tax revenues of about $2.3 trillion per year are many times greater than needed to make our minimum debt payments.

The deficit is now about $700 billion per year, or roughly 23% of spending. Obama can avoid default by simply under-spending the budget that much. That percent less on federal salaries, Social Security, Medicare, defense, discretionary items and Obamacare all together.

It would be painful for some, but as far as the laws of the Universe are concerned, it’s entirely possible. It could be done. If Democrats are as constructive and helpful as they want the rest of us to believe, they could help minimize or remove the obstacles.

So let’s be clear: When Obama or his minions talk about the dangers of default, they’re actually threatening America with the optional default that they would choose to impose – because they are so far opposed to under-spending any part of the federal budget.

In doing so, they signal the world that U.S. credit is not trustworthy. They signal that, if the U.S. ever has a serious budget crisis, U.S. debt holders will be screwed first of anyone; that Obama & co. intend to hold U.S. bond owners in lower priority than anyone or anything else in the federal budget.

That damages our economy. Conclusion: The GOP should refuse to negotiate under Obama’s (needless) threat of default.

I know that refusal is not going to happen; the GOP feels it’s best to stress their willingness to negotiate. But if the world were more sane – or, at the very least, if the GOP were something more like Obama and the Democrats are – it would happen.