This is the money you could be saving if Obama weren’t president

Obama Shatters Spending Record for First-Year Presidents

$3.5 Trillion? Take this guy’s credit card away already. Enough is enough, and now he has the nerve to say we need to get spending under control? Here’s an idea; scrap the rest of the non-stimulus stimulus, cancel healthcare and Cap & Trade, and focus man, focus. Cut up the credit cards already. My great grand kids don’t want to pay for your irresponsibility.

Please leave home without it

The federal government spent $3.5 trillion during President Obama’s first year in office. This far exceeds the spending for any other first-year president. 

President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents — spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history. 

In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion — $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush’s term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama’s. 

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/24/obama-shatters-spending-record-year-presidents/

’09 Exit Polls: Voters Approve of Obama, Wary of Economy

How do up to 90% of the voters asked in the exit polls approve of Obama, but disapprove of the economy? I’d bet that in the coming months these people will come to realize that they are one and the same. Obama is the economy. He created this; he owns it. There is a clear disapproval of the policies and it is showing at the polls. Stay tuned.

Vast economic discontent marked the mood of Tuesday’s off-year voters, portending potential trouble for incumbents generally and Democrats in particular in 2010. Still the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey looked less like a referendum on Barack Obama than a reflection of their own candidates and issues.

Majorities of voters – 52 percent in Virginia, and 57 percent in preliminary exit poll results in New Jersey – approved of the way Obama is handling his job. Most in both states, moreover, said the president was not a factor in their vote.

Perhaps most striking – though simply confirmatory of national polls – were economic views. A vast 90 percent in New Jersey and 84 percent in Virginia said they’re worried about the direction of the nation’s economy in the next year; 55 percent and 50 percent, respectively, said they’re “very” worried about it.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/election-2009-virginia-jersey-exit-polls-obama-economy/story?id=8984551

Stimulus jobs overstated by thousands – What a shock!

Why shouldn’t we entrust our government with our healthcare, banks, automobiles, and the weather? And where’s old Joe (Don’t mess with Joe) Biden on all of this? Wasn’t he supposed to be the watchdog over the stimulus money? Old Joe says the stimulus is working exactly as planned? Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.

Taxpayer money - Up in smoke

WASHINGTON (AP) – An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program  pre=”program “>were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

For example:

– A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091029/D9BKMVMG0.html

Dismantling America Will the country wake up before it’s too late? You can’t say this author is racist.

There are not many people as brilliant as Thomas Sowell. He tells it like it is and makes the complicated simple. He speaks about the President’s policies without having to be labeled a racist. This is by far the best wake up call of the day.

Thomas Sowell

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government’s liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life-and-death decisions about your loved ones?

Read the rest of the article here:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDNlZTQzMGYzMmE0NjM3YzM1MjJkYzMwZDk4Yjk2MzE=

It’s His Rubble Now, And the American people want him to fix it. By Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan nails it with this piece. Stop blaming Bush. Stop being weak. Start listening to the American people. He won’t.

At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn’t hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held him responsible for everything after it. This is part of the reason the image of him standing on the rubble of the twin towers, bullhorn in hand, on Sept.14, 2001, became an iconic one. It said: I’m owning it.

Mr. Bush surely knew from the moment he put the bullhorn down that he would be judged on everything that followed. And he has been. Early on, the American people rallied to his support, but Americans are practical people. They will support a leader when there is trouble, but there’s an unspoken demand, or rather bargain: We’re behind you, now fix this, it’s yours.

President Obama, in office a month longer than Bush was when 9/11 hit, now owns his presidency. Does he know it? He too stands on rubble, figuratively speaking—a collapsed economy, high and growing unemployment, two wars. Everyone knows what he’s standing on. You can almost see the smoke rising around him. He’s got a bullhorn in his hand every day.

It’s his now. He gets the credit and the blame. How do we know this? The American people are telling him. You can see it in the polls. That’s what his falling poll numbers are about. “It’s been almost a year, you own this. Fix it.”

Read the rest of the article here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489530713762884.html

Obama: Excessive pay ‘does offend our values’

Do you want to know what offends me and my fellow hard-working Americans, Mr. President? Having a government tell people how much they should make and actually define what excessive is. It also offends me that we have a position of “Pay Czar” and that this person at his sole discretion decides how much people can make. Yet Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as $5.5 million, including a $2 million signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn’t have to follow the executive compensation rules because it is being paid outside the TARP. This is government hypocrisy at its finest.

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department on Thursday ordered seven companies that received billions of dollars in government bailouts to halve total compensation for their top executives. But the big reductions will not apply to pay earned before November.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury official leading the pay review, told reporters that average salaries for the top 25 executives are being cut 90 percent starting next month.

The action will apply to the top executives at Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve unveiled a proposal Thursday that for the first time would police banks’ pay policies to ensure they don’t encourage employees to take reckless gambles like those that contributed to the financial crisis.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33428472/ns/business-us_business/

Romer: Impact of stimulus will level off

Level off? I thought they said that only 14% of the money has been spent so far. Oh Christina, I wish you the best in your job search, although failure seems to be a resume enhancement for Democrats. I have an idea. The original stimulus was $787 Billion. Let’s subtract the $194 Billion already used and take the $593 Billion which is left, divide it the 250 million or so working people and give each of us $2,372. Now that will stimulate the economy.

 

I only lied thiiiis much

 

WASHINGTON — A top White House economist says spending from the $787 billion economic stimulus has already had its biggest impact on economic growth and will likely not contribute to significant expansion next year.

Christina Romer, the chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said Thursday that the $194 billion already spent gave a jolt to the economy that contributed to growth in the second and third quarters of the year. She told a congressional panel that by the middle of next year, the impact of the stimulus will level off. Romer said spending so far has saved or created 600,000 to 1.5 million jobs but warned that unemployment will remain high, above 9.5 percent, through the end of 2010.

Read the article here:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i-95E_TCyqYX0CBZ5xQAV_V3VWyQD9BG76902

Administration plans big pay cuts at bailout firms

Do you think this will set a precedent? Do you think your salary is safe? Do you trust this administration? Do you want to have even more hope and change? Hmmm?

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Obama administration plans to order companies that received huge government bailouts last year to sharply cut the compensation of their highest paid executives.

A person familiar with the decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not been announced, says the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the annual salaries of their 25 highest-paid executive by an average of about 90 percent from last year.

This person says the Treasury Department will announce the deep pay cuts within the next few days.

The seven companies are: Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BFM2KG2&show_article=1#

Higher jobless rates could be the new normal

So the free market is worthless, the government is our new daddy controlling banks, cars, insurance companies, the mortgage business, soon-to-be- healthcare, and the defacto journalism world, the weather, and now unemployment is at 9.8% with 15 million people out of work. This is the new norm? Really? Should we all sing the Hope & Change song now? Here’s a little flashback for you. Remember this nugget of hope and change? How’s that workin’out for you?

WASHINGTON – Even with an economic revival, many U.S. jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years.

That could add up to a “new normal” of higher joblessness and lower standards of living for many Americans, some economists are suggesting.

The words “it’s different this time” are always suspect. But economists and policy makers say the job-creating dynamics of previous recoveries can’t be counted on now.

Here’s why:

• The auto and construction industries helped lead the nation out of past recessions. But the carnage among Detroit’s automakers and the surplus of new and foreclosed homes and empty commercial properties make it unlikely these two industries will be engines of growth anytime soon.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091019/ap_on_bi_ge/us_vanishing_jobs