In the weekly Republican message, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is calling for a "timeout'' on federal regulations that many in her party say are hurting the economy. Collins promoted ideas for taming what she called a "regulatory behemoth.''
Jack Lew today couldn’t say how an additional tax on millionaires and billionaires will create jobs — and barely confirmed that he thinks such a tax will at least contribute to deficit reduction. The director of the Office of Management and Budget appeared this morning on Fox News’ “Happening Now” to defend the president’s just-announced proposals to trim the deficit — proposals that are a part of his overall jobs plan. Fox’s Jenna Lee asked Lew how the tax will reduce the nation’s high rate of unemployment.Well, now the video is available:
...Lee conceded fairness in the tax code is a laudable goal, but again pressed Lew as to how the tax will grow jobs. She wondered: Which of the president’s proposals specifically will improve the jobs situation? Lew didn’t have an answer.
Te Obama massive tax hike is so urgent - all his sycophants insist it must be passed 'this minute' - that the Democrat-controlled Senate is taking up the measure. Next month. After another Obama vacation. Via memeorandum: Obama's urgent jobs plan: Right now, ‘right now’ means sometime next month maybe
Budget Director Jack Lew went on Fox News to extoll the virtues of President Obama's new tax hike proposal, but couldn't answer a very important, fundamental question: how will this create jobs?
Everybody remembers the urgency of President Obama's attitude toward the awful jobs situation.More from Hot Air, Don Surber, Weasel Zippers and Right Wing News. Plus: Durbin: No Obama Jobs Bill Vote Until October
Back in early August, Obama said the jobs situation was so urgent that he was going to give another speech about it -- in a month or so, in September after his vacation on Martha's Vineyard.
And then in September the president announced he would give his major jobs speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7. But he neglected to check with congressional leaders first. And they suggested the 8th. So, since it was their House, the 8th it was.
"Tonight," the president said in the first 34 of his 4,021 words to a national television audience that night, "we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse."
The speech got panned as another political campaign one with Obama announcing, in effect, that....
...since the first stimulus spending plan of $787 billion hadn't really worked, maybe another $447 billion stimulus spending plan would.
This is the kind of thinking that can make sense within Washington. But since "stimulus" has become a laugh line, he didn't use that word anymore.
And, hey, the debt ceiling had been raised to $16 trillion.
(Speaking of which the president spoke on the deficit this morning in another speech because he's a Real Good Talker.)
So why not spend a half-trillion more to look like he's doing something about the terrible jobs situation with 14+ million unemployed?
Despite President Obama's urgent calls for his ojbs bill to be "passed right away," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) acknowledges that the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate will not bring the bill up for a vote until next month at the soonest.
On Thursday night, the president told a Democratic fundraiser in Washington that the Pass My Jobs Bill bill would create 1.9 million new jobs. What kind of jobs are created by this kind of magical thinking? Well, they’re “green jobs” — and, if we know anything about “green jobs,” it’s that they take a lot of green. German taxpayers subsidize “green jobs” in their wind-power industry to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars per worker per year: $250,000 per “green job” would pay for a lot of real jobs, even in the European Union. Last year, it was revealed that the Spanish government paid $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. I had assumed carelessly that this must be a world record in terms of taxpayer subsidy per fraudulent “green job.” But it turns out those cheapskate Spaniards with their lousy nickel-and-dime “green jobs” subsidy just weren’t thinking big. The Obama administration’s $38.6 billion “clean technology” program was supposed to “create or save” 65,000 jobs. Half the money has been spent — $17.2 billion — and we have 3,545 jobs to show for it. That works out to an impressive $4,851,904.09 per “green job.” A world record! Take that, you loser Spaniards! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!Ouch. Read the rest.
So, based on previous form, Obama’s prediction of 1.9 million new jobs will result in the creation of 92,000 new jobs, mostly in the Federal Department of Green Jobs Grant Applications.
In honor of Comrade Obama, maybe we should rename this Looting and Mooching Day, since under his regime, ever fewer Americans labor — as these numbers make clear:People tend to forget the interest since 100% of that money was borrowed.Zero: The number of new jobs added in the month of August…The total cost for Obama’s “stimulus” will reach $821 billion per the Congressional Budget Office, plus at least $347 billion in interest for a grand total of $1,168,000,000,000.00 — a number too large even to comprehend.
9.1%: The [official] unemployment rate for the month of August… From March 2009 (the month after the failed $1.2 trillion “stimulus” was signed) through August 2011, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent. Prior to President Obama taking office, unemployment had not been above 9 percent in 28 years.
31: The number of consecutive months the unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent — the level the president said unemployment would never reach if the “stimulus” was approved. …
13,967,000: The number of unemployed Americans looking for work in the month of August, an increase of 36,000…
2,431,000: The number of net jobs the economy has shed from February 2009 — when the Democrats’ “stimulus” was signed into law — through August 2011. …
45,183,931: The number of Americans receiving food stamps as of June 2011, only the second month in history with more than 45 million food stamp recipients. Today, 14.5 percent of Americans receive food stamps, an increase of 40 percent since President Obama took office.
The percentage of working-age Californians with jobs has fallen to a record low, and employment may not return to pre-recession levels until the second half of the decade, according to a research group.Just wait until the nonproductive outnumber the productive. It's on its way over there and soon. Then watch the continued disaster at the ballot box as the unproductive simply continue to vote themselves other people's money. A recent example of what's wrong with CA: Why California is Bankrupt (cont'd): $200,000 Lifeguards with Million Dollar Pensions! As it is, there are as many reasons for why California has a budget deficit larger than the entire budgets of most states in the nation as there are non-existent dollars in said deficit, which is in the tens of billions of dollars. But many of them center around one aspect of life in the golden State - unions are fleecing the taxpayers to live like millionaires. It's true. Public servants - an oxymoron in CA - have become lifestyle management firms that perform services on the side, poorly, and at a huge loss. This is just one example of that:
Just 55.4 percent of working-age Californians, defined as those 16 or older, had a job in July, down from 56.2 percent a year earlier and the lowest level since 1976, the Sacramento- based California Budget Project said in a report released late yesterday.
California’s 12 percent unemployment rate in July, the nation’s second-highest after Nevada, compared with 9.1 percent nationwide. The most-populous state lost 1.4 million jobs during the recession that began three years ago, and has gained back only 226,800, or about 17 percent, according to the report.
To show her support for American workers, President Obama's labor secretary, Hilda Solis, has junked the standard black limo and purchased a new Chevrolet Equinox to ride around Washington in. The problem: the crossover SUV is built and assembled in Canada from parts also made in Canada.The video:
Solis proudly arrived at a media breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today in the shiny silver vehicle, which she has dubbed the "bullet." She was asked about why she traded the standard-issue limo for the SUV. "What better example could I set if I encouraged my staff to go and purchase and seek how we could acquire a vehicle that would for me would send a signal that we're for supporting our American workers, American-made products, fuel efficient as well," she told the Monitor's Dave Cook, who provided this video of her answer.
Canadian car-driving Labor Secretary Hilda Solis — an apparent communist — is selective in her devotion to rule of law:Ain't that the truth though.Solis has overseen a number of signed agreements between U.S. agencies and foreign officials pledging to give migrant workers the full protections of U.S. workplace laws — regardless of their legal status — and she says her department will uphold them.That is, a high-level federal official is conspiring with foreign governments to circumvent our laws and to facilitate our invasion as part of a political strategy that calls for making Americans a minority in our own country.
“No matter how you got here or how long you plan to stay, you have certain rights,” Solis said at an event unveiling the latest agreements on Monday in Washington.
Solis says foreign workers need to know their rights, so that they can lodge complaints without fear that they will be fired or deported. She believes the signed agreements with countries like El Salvador and Mexico will serve to “remove those fears.” …
Within the lifetime of many still alive today, the reward for treason was a firing squad. Now it’s a cabinet position.
...An NBC Bay Area photographer on the scene reports security guards are not letting visitors on campus. He says "people are standing around in disbelief." The employees have been given yellow envelopes with instructions on how to get their last checks.If Solyndra sounds familiar to regular readers of this blog, it's because of this absurd situation last year: Obama tours solar panel plant in CA to tout jobs, workers FORCED TO STAY HOME WITHOUT PAY! Executives got to stay and cheer the President on. Workers were forced to stay home. Without pay. From my prior post:
Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs.
Solyndra received a $535 million federal loan guarantee last year to build a new solar panel manufacturing plant that now employs 1,000 workers, according to the White House. The Obama administration has touted the project as a major success story of the economic stimulus bill, which provided the funding. A second phase is expected to employ an additional 1,000 people, Solyndra officials have said.The employees got screwed by Obama a year ago:
Union workers have been told not to come back until Thursday because of security concerns associated with the President’s visit. Workers tell KRON 4’s Kate Thompson this day off means they won’t get paid.One year later, this:
"It’s with no pay and we have no choice," construction worker Adam Bracamontes told Kate. "We have to take a day off and come back Thursday. We don’t get to meet the President. We’re the workers and we don’t get to see him."
The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. "The GOP response was appropriate:
Some Republicans have been very critical of the loans. "I am concerned that the DOE is providing loans and loan guarantees to firms that aren't capable of competing in the global market, even with government subsidies" Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns told the New York Times.If there is no business plan for a sustainable operation outside of massive subsides, then IT'S NOT A BUSINESS!
President Obama faces political catastrophe in the form of Solyndra -- a San Francisco Bay area solar company that he touted as a gleaming example of green technology. It has announced it will declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. More than 1,100 people will lose their jobs.More from iOwnTheWorld.com, Campaign 2012, Weasel Zippers and Gateway Pundit. Recently from The New York Times of all places: Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises. And from Byron York: Key Dems: Obama's ‘green jobs’ plan a bust. And via Instapundit:
...It's not his statements the administration will regret; it's the loan guarantees. The President was celebrating $535 million in federal promises from the Department of Energy to the solar startup. The administration didn't do its due diligence, says the Government Accountability Office. "There's a consequence if you don't follow a rigorous process that's transparent," Franklin Rusco of GAO told the website iWatch News.
The President touted the federally back money as a way to create jobs. The President's opponents immediately jumped on the deal as Solyndra made its first layoffs.
Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns of Florida warned, "I am concerned that the DOE is providing loans and loan guarantees to firms that aren't capable of competing in the global market, even with government subsidies."
Another critic, Fred Upton of Michigan: "The unfortunate reality is that loan guarantee highlights many of the systemic flaws associated with the stimulus in the mad dash to spend hundreds of billions of dollars."
Plenty more from Pajamas Media, Hit & Run, Hot Air, Power Line, American Spectator and Gateway Pundit. Finally, I'll leave you with this video: GO GREEN NOW!! (Crazy Pete Returns)SHOCKER: Green Jobs Revealed As Fiscal Black Hole. “Pipe dreams eventually are revealed for what they are – unrealistic, wishful thinking. It didn’t take long for Spain’s touted green-job revolution to be revealed as a financial disaster, siphoning taxpayer subsidies and destroying 2.2 real jobs for every green job created. Domestic green-job pipe dreams similarly drain U.S. taxpayers’ money into economic sink holes. The millions of so-called green jobs promised by President Barack Obama and other champions of taxpayer-subsidized energy schemes not only haven’t materialized, many that did, already are disappearing. It’s truly a bad sign for the green-job revolution when failure becomes obvious even to acolytes.”
Household electricity bills will soar by 30 per cent to pay for “green” measures being announced this week by Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, according to experts.UPDATE #4: A flashback from Jennifer Granholm, of whom former MI Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop said "Jennifer Granholm was Barack Obama before Barack Obama was Barack Obama": A Clean Energy Triple Play
Other companies are following Dow Corning and Hemlock Semiconductor's lead. In Midland, Evergreen Solar opened a new solar plant last year, and is ramping up production of its new "string ribbon solar wafer" technology.Evergreen Solar also went bankrupt after getting a buttload of stimulus money...
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON “GREEN” SCIENCE FICTION: To Boldly Go Where Lots Have Gone Before. “The weak link in McKibben’s strategy is that like many greens he still seems to be trying to scare the public so badly that it will overlook the many obvious and frequently fatal flaws in the hodgepodge of dubious policy ideas the green movement floats. It’s all been done before, better, and it failed.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack again claimed that government food stamps have contributed to "17 consecutive months" of private sector job creation, arguing that the federal food aid puts money into the economy more quickly than anything else.Um - where did that money that gets 'put into the economy' come from? Same economy. So somehow, pulling money out of the economy, to put it back into the economy, and taxing it on the way through, creates jobs? The audio:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) said Friday that the “single biggest” thing President Obama can do right now to spur job creation in the United States is to allow more immigration.So let me get this straight- we have something like 14 million American unemployed and looking for work, and the cure for that is to let as many low-skilled, uneducated people into the country as possible. That will give jobs to those 14 million Americans... HOW??? Good grief, man!:
“Most importantly, we want to get immigrants from around the world to come to America,” Bloomberg said in an interview with the “CBS Early Show.”
“That’s the single biggest thing that the president could do with Congress, is open up the borders to those that will create jobs here.”
