President Barack Hussein Obama has set the Democratic Party back sixty years.
We haven’t had as bad a president since Kennedy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and then started the Vietnam War as an encore…
I’m thinking we could use another Bay of Pigs right about now.
Bill Clinton at least had the charisma to fool a majority of the people when he was lying to your face. He felt your pain when he cut welfare programs and co-opted the conservative plan.
He had the brains to understand focus groups and not vacation on Martha’s Vineyard during a great recession.
Why I’m a Believer
Obama seems to actually believe his programs will work — despite the fact that they have failed for decades.
Remember when he gave almost $800 billion for “shovel-ready” Keynesian pork? Ninety percent of it went to the states to keep the bureaucrats in power for another year.
Tonight, he will figure out ways to spend more of other people’s money in an effort to create jobs.
You might as well short the market now. And look for the unemployment rate to go back above 10 percent over the next six months as local governments run out of Federal largesse and finally fire all those people they should have dropped in 2009.
Watch your taxes go up as well.
Pork and Burn
In Baltimore, we got a shovel-ready Grand Prix race.
I heard there was a cool crash on the hairpin near Federal Hill.
I’m sure the Nicaraguans getting paid under the table made a few bucks putting up the fences. Sounds like a fantastic way to burn $6 million in federal stimulus funds nine days before the incumbent democratic mayor gets reelected…
Maybe you had something similar in your neck of the woods?
Hopkins Professors Steve Hanke and Stephen Walters wrote a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal outlining this strategy:
Away from the waterfront, this strategy’s failure is apparent. The city has lost 30,000 residents and 53,000 jobs since 2000, marking the sixth consecutive decade of population and employment exodus. About 47,000 abandoned houses crumble while residents suffer a homicide rate higher than any large city except Detroit. The poverty rate is 50% above the national average…
Ms. Rawlings-Blake (ed. note: the mayor by nepotism) promises an inconsequential cut in property taxes to 2.068% from 2.268%, spread over nine years. It would be “paid for,” she says, with revenue from a casino that doesn’t exist. Her reluctance to consider stronger medicine reflects not only poor economics but something more sinister.
You can read the whole article here. (To get by the WSJ-paid wall, just cut and paste the headline into Google.)
It’s the best article I’ve read about political machine’s willful destruction of a city.
In essence, the democratic plan has been to force smart, money-making people, business owners, and anybody with children and 5,000 bucks in their pocket to move away.
Baltimore is a great town… right up until your oldest child is ready to attend kindergarten.
Right down the way, we have a brand-new playground on Calvert Street. The sign says over $500,000 dollars was spent on it through public and private donations.
And I’ll tell you it’s nice, very nice. It has the coolest teeter-totter I’ve ever seen and a merry-go-round that will make you puke.
I have no idea what cost that much money, as it takes up the space of two row houses. It was a bum park before, so clearly the city owned the property…
Kids never use it. In fact Baltimore has a ton of nice new playgrounds that no one uses — the benefit of being the closest ghetto to Washington.
We have tennis courts that lie empty and more tax-exempt museums than you can shake a stick at. It’s a lonely feeling going to the BMA or the Walters on a Saturday at noon.
Every time a president wants to fight poverty, he shows up in East Baltimore and rains cash like a football player at a gentlemen’s club. And it works great…
We’ve had fifty years of failed democratic-machine government on the local level.
By that, I mean it’s failed the population… but it’s been a huge success for those in charge.
Obama the Organizer
On the national level, this method cannot work.
You can’t force the population out of the country. Corporations can pack up and leave — and they will if they find a better deal elsewhere.
And strong individuals with money and the knowledge to get a second passport can live like Jason Bourne. I know many people who spend their winters in New Zealand.
But for the most part, people will stay where they are and vote with their ballots rather than their feet.
Which is why in the latest Rasmussen poll, Obama takes a beating:
Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 22% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -22.
That’s bad.
It’s also why you should look for another down day in the market tomorrow, after Obama’s speech tonight…
Every time the president opines about the economy, the Dow drops 200 points.
Christian DeHaemer
Editor, Energy and Capital
