Since I didn’t watch Obama’s speech last night, I can’t make an assessment. Mike Shedlock does a fantastic job pointing out the blatant lies, misinformation, and utter contempt for the truth in the Savior’s vacuous self serving speech. All is Well!!! Trust Obama. He knows what is best for you. Let’s do it for the children.
Hot Air and No Substance; Obama’s Plan to Destroy Jobs “Won’t Cost a Dime”
Here are a few ideas from his state of the union address and my comments on them.
On Health Care Quality
In reference to health care costs, the president claims “medical bills shouldn’t be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital – they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive.”
Mish says good luck with charging healthcare based on quality, because quality is impossible to define.
On Closing Loopholes
Obama says we can hit deficit targets and “save hundreds of billions of dollars by getting rid of tax loopholes and deductions”.
Mathematically speaking, one cannot save a dime by closing loopholes. Closing loopholes may be more fair, but that has nothing to do with “saving money”. Rather, closing loopholes simply spreads costs around in a different fashion.
On Tax Code Changes
Obama says “The American people deserve a tax code that helps small businesses spend less time filling out complicated forms, and more time expanding and hiring.”
I certainly agree with that, and a flat tax with no deductions would do just that.
Would Obama be willing to implement a flat tax structure and close “loopholes” like the mortgage interest rate deduction?
Of course not. The Real Estate industry would scream bloody murder. Obama is not really interested in closing loopholes per se, just the selected ones that he wants.
Hot Air and No Substance
Obama says “The greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next.”
I certainly agree with that.
The solution is to get rid of the Fed, end fractional reserve lending, and implement a balanced budget. Unfortunately, the president did not mention any of those action items. He is all hot air and no substance.
It Won’t Cost a Dime
Obama wants “Congress to help create a network of fifteen [manufacturing] hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is Made in America. He says “nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.”
That certainly would be excellent news (if only it was true). In reality, new manufacturing hubs in one city will come at the expense of existing manufacturing somewhere else unless more money is thrown at the problem.
Yet, if more money is thrown at the problem, why should anyone expect results different from Obama’s disastrous entry in various clean energy schemes that went bankrupt?
Climate Change Nonsense
Obama says “For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.”
I suggest that if we want to do something for the sake of our kids, we should eliminate the deficit, get rid of the Fed, and back the dollar with gold.
Regardless of whether or not anyone believes the hype over global warming, the notion that governments will do anything sensible about it is complete nonsense. Certainly every cap-and-trade proposal to date has been preposterous.
Obama speech got downright scary when he said “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
And somehow that will “not cost a dime”.
“The states with the best ideas to create jobs and lower energy bills by constructing more efficient buildings will receive federal support to help make it happen.”
Apparently, federal support to construct more buildings will “not cost a dime” either.
“Fix-It-First”
President Obama proposes a “Fix-It-First program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country.”
Supposedly that will not “cost a dime either”. Wait a second on that. His next sentence was “And to make sure taxpayers don’t shoulder the whole burden, I’m also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children”.
I have a simple question: What part of the burden will taxpayers shoulder?
This “partnership” sounds suspiciously like a plea for tax hikes with the money going to overpaid public union workers.
If the president really wanted to insure we rebuild America at a reasonable cost, he would scrap Davis-Bacon and all prevailing wage laws, implement national Right-to-Work laws, and end collective bargaining of public union workers.
Instead, the president appears willing to tax the rest of the county to death to help the unions who elected him.
Still More Tax Hikes
The tax hikes don’t stop with “Fix-It-First” either. Obama says “Right now, there’s a bill in this Congress that would give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save $3,000 a year by refinancing at today’s rates.”
If that does not add to the deficit, then it must be achieved by tax hikes.
Preschool
The president’s free money ideas roll on and on. Obama proposes “working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America”. Supposedly that pays for itself.
Job Destruction
The surest way to destroy jobs is for government to mandate businesses pay labor costs in excess of a natural rate. Yet, Obama pledges to do just that. Specifically, Obama wants to “raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour”.
He claims “This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead.”
Minimum Wage Seen and Unseen
The president ignores the “unseen” effect of those who do not get a job because companies choose to hire a software or hardware robot instead on overpriced human.
The problem is not a minimum wage, but rather how much the dollar buys. If Congress did not debase the dollar with massive deficits, the dollar would buy much more than it does.
The irony is Obama complains of “Factory towns decimated from years of plants packing up. Inescapable pockets of poverty, urban and rural, where young adults are still fighting for their first job.”
The US lost jobs because US wages were too high. Manufacturing is now returning, but to robots, not humans.
The president concluded “Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”
I conclude the president’s entire speech was one proposal after another that will destroy jobs, add to the deficit, and increase taxes.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/02/hot-air-and-no-substance-obamas-plans.html#DLu2BrriEiml1guY.99
Stucky says:
As I said, I watched the basketball games.
I haven’t yet decided if I will read ANY analysis/summaries … including what Admin posted. I just KNOW that Obama promised a lot of bullshit and lied a LOT. Why aggravate myself and read about it? Fuck him to hell.
I also got banned for a month from the IU website. Kentucky’s superstar, Nerlen Noels, fucked up his knee. Some dipshit on the IU site went into this “oh so sad, we’re praying for you” bullshit thread. I simply said, “Yeah, that’s to bad, I guess. But this is an IU site and I really don’t give a shit what goes on in Kentucky”. And I got banned for a month!!?? C’mon, it wasn’t THAT insensitive a comment. Fucking pussy moderators. I sent them an email and told them to go ahead and ban me for life … fuck them and their censorship and political correctness.
Damn … that does look painful though. I hope Kentucky enjoys the NIT this year.
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13th February 2013 at 10:43 am
sangell says:
Pre school. There’s a winner. Take the few years a child has to stay at home with his mother and put them into government facilities run by the same folks who have ruined a generation of children in failing public schools. Look, if Head Start programs had any value we wouldn’t have the same gaps in academic achievement 50 years on that we had when these programs began. I go back to the case of Jaycee Dugard. There is no more effective teacher a child can have than their mother. The only reason to take a young child from the mother is if the mother is no good.
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13th February 2013 at 10:55 am
Robmu1 says:
All SEC schools with the exception of Vandy are, well, not schools. They are sports factories and the 3rd choices for everyone else. Essentially, loaded with ‘students’ who should be cutting the grass and hauling shingles to the roof and such.
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13th February 2013 at 10:58 am
Eddie says:
That kid’s sports career is probably over, but that’s just a risk of playing the game. Head coaches aren’t real straightforward about giving recruits the odds of them having an injury that will plague them for life…but it wouldn’t matter, the hope of fame and fortune would win out anyway.
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13th February 2013 at 10:59 am
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
I didn’t watch the Vomit-A-Thon that is any Obama speech anymore, just can’t take it.
Who the fuck cares what he SAYS? It’s what he DOES behind the scenes, with EOs, regs, intimidation or just plain lawlessness, that matters.
Don’t worry, my friends. The people that actually make the country run are making their preparations and turning their backs on DC and all the insanity. I predict that 2013 and 2014 will mark the time of mass civil disobedience, not marching or trips to the ballot box (total waste of time), just a quiet turning their backs on all the rules/regs/etc. Fuck it.
Followed of course, with the eventual use of the 65.4 MILLION known gun sales since 2008, heh.
Seriously, reading the text of that speech must convince anybody with 1/2 a brain that our Dear Leader is just as delusional as I’m-a-dinner-jacket, Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Un.
I also predict that viewship of that speech will be so low that the MSM will not report it.
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13th February 2013 at 11:01 am
sangell says:
CNN knew where the ratings were last night. That’s why they put Anderson Cooper on with Nancy Grace to cover the Chris Dorner shootout rather than do the SOTU speech.
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13th February 2013 at 11:11 am
Eddie says:
It does sound like Obummer was smart enough not to promise a whole lot. That’s a good thing, since he can deliver nothing except higher taxes and more support for his banker owners.
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13th February 2013 at 11:14 am
Thinker says:
I watched, because I’m a firm believer in hearing the lies so that we can be prepared to fight them.
Hypocrisy overload… need to reign in the deficit, but going to spend trillions on preschool education programs, despite the fact that increasing expenditures on education has resulted in WORSE results, not improvements.
Need to reduce tax loopholes, but then plan to give tax credits/breaks to businesses so they hire people. Hello…
Climate change, gun control… all the things Mish writes above. Complete, utter bullshit.
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13th February 2013 at 11:59 am
Thinker says:
Oh, forgot the part early on where he says his party isn’t going to put up with Congress not delivering… that they’ll accomplish what they have to using Executive Orders, if Congress doesn’t come up with reform bills they all agree upon. He’s pulling a Lincoln, but it sounded like Stalin to me.
What the hell happened to my country?
Rhetorical, I know…
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13th February 2013 at 12:02 pm
AWD says:
No, it won’t cost a dime,
But it will cost $1.1 trillion per year, borrowed of course, that we don’t have. 100 million in the FSA must be kept quiet and complacent. Hence, HHS spending is the most costly government spending there is. Obama increased welfare spending 40% in his first term, and is increasing it by 40% again in his second term. Did he mention that last night? The rest is all lies and bullshit to keep the MSM satiated and babbling for months to come.
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13th February 2013 at 12:25 pm
underfire says:
What a surreal country we live in. Obama’s claims to achievements is beyond bizarre. Than on today’s news, a ten year old is arrested for having a toy gun in his backpack and a five year old is expelled for having a bubblegum gun in kindergarten. I truly wish I could find some sort of sane foundation in this country to show that these things are just anomalies, but this kind of thing is becoming the norm.
More conformation of my theory that humankind peaked out about 20,000 years ago.
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13th February 2013 at 1:31 pm
Stucky says:
I’m glad I did not watch Obama’s Bullshit Fantasy show. Now, I wish I didn’t read the below depressing article. I think I’m happier looking for stories about women who get 50 orgasims a day.
================================== =
Pablum From the Machine
Bread and Circuses at the State of the Union
by NORMAN POLLACK
The 2008 hoax has been repeated, successfully it would appear (given the sanctification bestowed on Obama’s performance last night by the New York Times), despite a four-year record, ranging from zero to absolute negation, on every policy approach raised by the speech. The friend of government? Yes, in its militaristic dimensions; yes, in its protection of major corporations, banks, hedge funds, etc., from its supposed charge of regulation; yes, in its pursuit of international (but not American) reputation for moral turpitude—how else characterize assassination?
But government as dedicated to the public welfare, government, embodiment of the principle of equality, government, vehicle for and guardian of societal democratization affecting class structure, distribution of wealth and power, business regulation, not on your life; quite the opposite, government, under Obama, as the public teat for corporate wealth, an image from the Gilded Age brought back to life, more blatant than ever.
Blatant, objectively, disguised beyond recognition, subjectively, so great the persuasiveness of liberal rhetoric in a society based on the destruction of political consciousness and critical awareness. Obama, publicist for the spoliation of America on behalf of its ruling groups extraordinaire.
What did the speech offer? A tribute to the “Middle Class” which, by its very designation, obfuscates the political-economic landscape of, first, an actual working, not middle, class, assuming its members are lucky enough to have jobs, second, structural poverty, from long-term unemployment to stagnant wages to first-timers seeking to enter the labor force to no avail, and third, even for those previously in the middle class, a decline of living standards via loss of home, equity therein, and savings, again when un- and under-employment hits—all of the above, as the incomes of the wealthiest skyrocket out of the picture. The State of the Union is really, the State of the (Bifurcated) Union, not Republican, Democrat, not red states, blue states, but, simply, the union of great wealth and the societal remainder, gradations here a matter of statistical convenience, but concentration at the top—hence the accuracy of the phrase “ruling groups”—at what is surely at or near an all-time high.
Let Obama chant about the middle class and “growing” the economy; the reality is, and will remain, underconsumption and undemocratic wealth sharing. Universal prekindergarten? Another phony, if Chicago be our model of “education reform,” in which Arne Duncan has fulfilled the two Obama priorities in that policy area: more charter schools and the weakening of the teachers’ union, a neat package which comes under the heading of privatization.
Research Institutes? Wonderful, but an actual drop in the bucket measured against the depth of unemployment (I include those who have given up, and are no longer counted in the labor force). And as for the remainder—why the SILENCE for four years, in fact, speak of Republican obstructionism, here is Obama doing the obstructing—as, for example, climate change, gun control, oil drilling, environmental protection in general, even the suddenly-discovered irregularities of the voting process?
Democrats stood on cue, Republicans similarly, sitting, as though America were torn apart by ideological cleavage, when in reality it is only this tightly-wound Rightist formation, including both sides, in which differences in kind become magnified as qualitative differences. Fundamental agreement holds on, obviously, capitalism, but also, within capitalism, deference to the big guns, the rejection of progressive taxation, facilitation of monopolization and consolidation generally, a labor policy prejudicial to organization and militance, “friendly,” not adversarial, regulation, and so on.
And in foreign policy, the provision of whatever it takes to keep capitalism as the world system, whatever it takes for unrestricted market penetration, whatever it takes for supremacy in trade rivalries—these in addition to the biggies of foreign policy in which Democrats seem particularly motivated to support: counterrevolution in the Third World, intervention, to secure strongholds region-by-region, and counterterrorism (Democrats, under Obama-Brennan, can claim ownership over targeted assassination, more so than Bush II), to keep alive the spirit of conformity and consent, as the machinery of permanent war ticks on, to both parties’ satisfaction.
As stage-managed events go, the speech went over well. It represented a blueprint for four more years of creative accounting, more in the spirit of Exxon, A.I.G., and Goldman, than the actual programs of the New Deal, such as CCC, WPA, PWA, all anathema to those last night—from the top down—supposedly favoring a positive role for government. And don’t forget those who experience genuine tragedy in the death of loved ones as shooting victims, yet are mercilessly trotted out for exhibition to demonstrate Obama the caring president—despite by his personal authorization more children have been murdered through drone attacks (regrettable “collateral damage’) than in all the gun massacres for some time. Verily, manipulation, thy name is Obama.
My Comments to the New York Times follow, the first, written before the State of the Union, concerns, among other things, the North Korean nuclear test (timing probably not coincidental) Obama would presumably address, and the second, following the speech, which seemed to me consistent with his effort to bamboozle the public while hewing to a conservative-reactionary course:
[New York Times Comment I, Feb. 12, 2013. Corporate ascendance and aggressive foreign policy]
North Korea’s nuclear test was a “provocative” act, but no more than, and perhaps in response to, the Obama-Brennan program, currently in the foregound of US foreign and military policy, of armed drones for targeted assassination. Obama has given us bounteous examples of liberal rhetoric before, all to no avail–not because of Republican intransigence, but because he doesn’t favor government-supported job creation, economic stimuli, and a strengthened social safety net.
Sen. Rubio can praise “free enterprise” and carp at Obama’s alleged progovernment stance, but the truth is, Obama, like Clinton before him, and a Democratic party slavishly enthralled to both, is the champion of deregulation, corporate ascendance in American life, and an aggressive foreign policy which centers on drone warfare as part of a global paramilitary posture, complemented by the heavy hand of his Pacific-first strategy to contain and isolate China.
(Some) troops out of Afghanistan, to pursue a Far-East encirclement policy via nuclear diplomacy (the Armitage mission to Japan to encourage nuclear armament as part of confronting China), military alliances in the region, and the “pivot” of military hardware and personnel to the new theater.
After earning his stripes as The Assassination President, who will take him seriously tonight in the State of the Union address? Gullible Americans, but not the rest of the world. Assassination is not a mark of constructive leadership.
[New York Times Comment II, Feb. 13, 2013. A reality of human suffering]
As a nation we have again been taken in, the political schmaltz of liberal rhetoric wedded to a previous four-year record of; a) the militarization and financialization of American capitalism; b) an all-out campaign of aggression via armed drones for targeted assassination squarely in the realm of war crimes; c) a pattern of deregulation which mocks his plea for a rising middle class (proportionately, a sinking three-quarters in relation to the upper one-quarter); and d) near-absolute silence until now on gun control, climate change, infrastructure, meaningful job creation and foreclosure relief. In sum, a con man up to his old tricks, meanwhile conducting business-as-usual with respect to assassination, placating and expanding the function of the CIA, pivoting US forces to Asia (Pacific-first strategy) to force confrontation with China, and appointments, e.g., John Brennan, which invalidate all liberal rhetoric by the contempt shown civil liberties and the rule of law.
Obama offers crumbs; whether his less-government address affects the secrecy, his personal obsession, of whatever remains, is doubtful. He is running a National Security State–surveillance et. al.–not even noticed by the present chorus of approval. Wall Street has sense enough not to appear gleeful. Defense contractors, health insurers, Big Pharma, ditto. However, the rosy report on putting the hard times behind us flatly contradicts a reality of human suffering in America, if anyone cared to look.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/13/bread-and-circuses-at-the-state-of-the-union/
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13th February 2013 at 2:47 pm
Llpoh says:
I read a couple of articles re the SOU. More interesting is the comments that follow the articles. The comments appear to show that the vast majority of folks love Obama, agree with him, and believe he has done a great job.
There you have it. We are doomed.
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13th February 2013 at 3:14 pm
Maddie's Mom says:
Obama is a masterful liar and con man. I think it’s precisely why he was selected for the job.
I also think the day is coming soon when even uttering the word “gun” in a school will be forbidden and punished.
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13th February 2013 at 3:39 pm
Maddie's Mom says:
@llpoh,
We can hope most of those commenting were drunk out of their minds.
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13th February 2013 at 3:42 pm
Pirate Jo says:
I finished the ‘Dragonborn’ DLC for Skyrim. I won’t give away the ending, but it was way better than listening to the jug-eared dingbat in chief.
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13th February 2013 at 3:51 pm
llpoh says:
Maddie’s Mom – unfortunately, I believe that those folks are dead serious. Some would be paid plants, a sure. But fact is, never underestimate the stupidity of the American people.
The perfect example of this is SSS/Stuck’s figure that 95% of all incumbents get re-elected.
95% of elected officials are doing such a great job, they deserve to be re-elected, you know.
D-O-O-M-E-D.
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13th February 2013 at 5:59 pm
Anonymous says:
All in all, a splendid time was had by all, as Dear Leader enthusiastically, but firmly – let me be clear – explained how more government, more taxes, and more spending will solve every problem known to man (and womyn) during his second term, if the Rethugglikkkans will just get out of the way.
The only highlights of last night:
Ted Nugent’s ears bleeding from being pierced with bullshit bullets:
Obama’s hour long delivery of shit sandwiches and lies
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13th February 2013 at 7:16 pm
sensetti says:
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13th February 2013 at 8:07 pm