Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Compare and contrast:

Obama:

“We’ve always been, and always will be, a AAA country”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Compare and contrast that speech with what a guy on the floor of the exchange has to say:

Santelli:

“We would have been rated BBB!”

Who do you believe?

As of the writing of this post, the Dow is down 106 points, after Friday’s and Monday’s precipitous fall.

Indeed, this is A crisis of confidence in economy — and Obama

The stock market, already falling before Obama spoke, saw selling accelerate as Obama made it clear he had no new ideas to offer. And he certainly gave no hint that he’s ready to adopt Republican ideas such as cutting business taxes or slashing regulation. Instead of a pivot, Obama stayed firmly planted in the anti-growth policies of the past two-and-a-half years. He’s even keeping Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary, practically begging the poor guy to stay. (Indeed, it was almost exactly a year ago that Geithner penned his “Welcome to the Recovery” op-ed.)

Americans have seen this movie before.

And the movie is on a continuous-repeat loop.

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Fast and Furious from stimulus money?

Michelle Malkin had written about it back in March, and Hot Air is also posting on it now

You’ll find complete PDF and text versions of the final stimulus bill right here. Scroll down to page 16 (of 407!) in the PDF version and behold:

For an additional amount for ‘‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance’’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

Bob Owens points out that (emphasis added)

Please Keep in mind that Gunrunner is a long-term cartel weapons interdiction program that kicked off during the previous administration. there is no indication that Gunrunner has ever been anything but above-board. The program/project framework has long been used in business and government, with the program being the general vision, with individual projects.
…
Gunwalker/Fast and Furious was a specific secret operation or project within the much larger framework of Gunrunner. A list of all operations with the Gunrunner program is not publicly available, but I would be stunned if the total number of projects wasn’t several dozen, or more, with many or most of them being covert and unknown to the public.

Gunwalker and Gunrunner are not the same thing even though they are related. We have enough evidence coming in—at a pace “fast and furious,” one might say—and do not need to make leaps of logic. There is no need to jump the gun or make wild accusations.

How much of Gunwalker, then, was financed by the stimulus?

Related:
Honduras? Why would ATF walk guns to Honduras?

Dozens of ‘Fast & Furious’ guns were confiscated from illegal aliens in Phoenix

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Fed downgrades the economy

Slower growth, higher inflation even if you don’t count oil and food prices:
Fed on Hold Amid Slow Recovery

In updated forecasts released after the meeting, Fed officials lowered their growth forecasts and predicted core inflation would remain higher than previously thought. The economy is now expected to expand at a rate of around 2.7% to 2.9% this year and 3.3% to 3.7% in 2012. That is below estimates given after the last meeting in April for growth of 3.1% to 3.3% in 2011 and 3.5% to 4.2% next year.

The 2011 projection for underlying inflation—stripping out volatile food and energy costs—was raised to between 1.5% and 1.8% from April’s forecast of 1.3% to 1.6%, with core prices expected to ease to 1.4% to 2.0% next year instead of 1.3% to 1.8%. The unemployment rate is expected to decline to 8.6% to 8.9% in 2011 and 7.8% to 8.2% next year, versus previous expectations for a drop to 8.4% to 8.7% and then 7.6% to 7.9% in 2012.

The jobless rate increased to 9.1% in May, a level that would normally call for looser credit. But with underlying inflation also showing the biggest in almost three years, the Fed is in a challenging spot. Consumer prices net of volatile food and energy prices rose to a 1.5% annual rate last month, close to the Fed’s informal target of just under 2.0%.

About the only good news in this is that there won’t be a QE3.

Bloomberg, however, reports
Fed to Maintain Record Stimulus After Ending Treasury Purchases

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has said record-low interest rates are still needed to spur a recovery that remains “frustratingly slow” two years after the recession ended. Consumer spending has been held back by falling home values, accelerating inflation and an unemployment rate that rose to 9.1 percent last month. At the same time, Bernanke has said growth is likely to pick up as commodity costs recede and factories overcome disruptions of supplies from Japan.
…
The Fed left its benchmark interest rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent and repeated a pledge to keep it there “for an extended period.” The decision was unanimous. In his press conference, he said an “extended period” means the Fed is at least two or three meetings from an exit.

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Let’s name a station after Joe Biden,

since it’s $5.7 million over the initial budget

Not only did the White House cite the projected cost at $32 million, but Amtrak used that figure in a 2009 press release documenting its Delaware projects.

But Ms. Hunter, the Amtrak spokeswoman, said the company’s original budget for the renovation was actually $35.7 million: with $20 million from stimulus money; $12 million from Delaware’s Department of Transportation; and $3.7 million from Amtrak itself. Ms. Hunter said the final cost reached $37.7 million when Amtrak added $2 million worth of work that was not part of the original scope of the project.

In its official Recovery Act report, Amtrak gave a different figure altogether — $36 million to the dollar — for the refurbishing project. And it said the breakdown in funding was $20 million in stimulus funds and $4 million from a 2009 federal grant, in addition to the $12 million from Delaware DOT.

and then Amtrak’s CEO ended up having to drive to the ribbon cutting ceremony, because the Acela he was riding was delayed,

What the rail company’s CEO and his counterparts left behind was a train that remained stranded in Baltimore for more than two-and-a-half hours as Amtrak engineers scrambled to repair a broken transformer outside of Philadelphia. The train, like many others, lost electricity, including the power to flush toilets. Passengers were allowed to stretch their legs on the station’s platform.

Others followed the railroad officials’ lead — frantically arranging to rent cars or find transportation to an airport. The train that the three were riding, which left Washington at 9 a.m. began moving again at 12:28 p.m. — roughly 2 hours and 45 minutes behind schedule.

Money quote,

“As one of our country’s leading public servants, our ‘Joe’ sustains a momentum for Delaware while helping steer our nation down the right track,” said Governor Jack Markell.

Down the right track of bloated budgets and broken trains.

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So what else is new? UPDATED

Because adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the past two years alone wasn’t enough,

Obama to Push New Spending

President Barack Obama will call for new government spending on infrastructure, education and research in his State of the Union address Tuesday, sharpening his response to Republicans in Congress who are demanding deep budget cuts, people familiar with the speech said.

Mr. Obama will argue that the U.S., even while trying to reduce its budget deficit, must make targeted investments to foster job growth and boost U.S. competitiveness in the world economy. The new spending could include initiatives aimed at building the renewable-energy sector—which received billions of dollars in stimulus funding—and rebuilding roads to improve transportation, people familiar with the matter said.

Since spendulus worked so well at stimulating the economy and creating jobs, you mean?



UPDATE

He’s kidding, right? Didn’t we just piss away $862 billion we don’t have on the Exact. Same. Thing? Or are these different green jobs and infrastructure projects than those other ones?

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Housing market goes into depression?

Cindy Perman of CNBC thinks so,
Housing Market Slips Into Depression Territory

Home values have fallen 26 percent since their peak in June 2006, worse than the 25.9-percent decline seen during the Depression years between 1928 and 1933, Zillow reported.

November marked the 53rd consecutive month (4 ½ years) that home values have fallen.

What’s worse, it’s not over yet: Home values are expected to continue to slide as inventories pile up, and likely won’t recover until the job market improves.

And no thanks to the stimulus, either.

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Son of Spendulus: Lame-Duck Spendulus!

Over 6,800 earmarks, in a trillion-dollar, 1,924 page bill that funds Obamacare,

Senate Democrats have filed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that would fund the government through fiscal year 2011, according to Senate GOP sources.

The 1,924-page bill includes funding to implement the sweeping healthcare reform bill Congress passed earlier this year as well as additional funds for Internal Revenue Service agents, according to a senior GOP aide familiar with the legislation.

The pork flows freely as Senators load spending bill with earmarks

The $1.2 trillion bill, released on Tuesday, includes more than 6,000 earmarks totaling $8 billion, an amount that many lawmakers decried as an irresponsible binge following a midterm election in which many voters demanded that the government cut spending.
…
The bill includes $18 million for two nonprofits associated with deceased Democrats, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. John P. Murtha;

Pork for the swine!

$349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; and $6 million for a rural Iowa school program named after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Republican Mitch McConnell’s hypocrisy shines through,

But McConnell, like other new earmark opponents, stopped short of asking for his projects to be removed from the bill.

And I’d like to know, why should the Republicans consider at all any significant legislation proposed by the Democrats at this point? Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion has a plausible explanation,

The Omnibus Bill is Reid’s bargaining chip. Reid will agree to pull the bill and submit to a continuing budget resolution to fund government for a couple more months, in exchange for Republican cooperation in getting votes on New START, DADT, judicial nominations, and other non-budgetary legislation.

Republicans should not accede to this tactic under any circumstance. Call Reid’s bluff. Force Democrats to pass the Omnibus Bill if they can muster the votes, and Obama to sign that monstrosity.

Are you listening, Mitch?

PS,
That’s $575 Million In New Spending Per Page, in case you were wondering.

(post re-edited to add omitted items)

UPDATE
Via Betsy, Red State has the bill, which you can read in full.
Video of McCain’s Senate floor speech,

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Obama takes Congress for a ride UPDATED

Charles Krauthammer writes about the Swindle of the Year (emphasis added),

Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 – and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years – which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?
…
Some Republicans are crowing that Stimulus II is the Republican way – mostly tax cuts – rather than the Democrats’ spending orgy of Stimulus I. That’s consolation? This just means that Republicans are two years too late. Stimulus II will still blow another near-$1 trillion hole in the budget.

At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.

Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own reelection chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, Tea-Party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility.

And he gets all this in return for what? For a mere two-year postponement of a mere 4.6-point increase in marginal tax rates for upper incomes. And an estate tax rate of 35 percent – it jumps insanely from zero to 55 percent on Jan. 1 – that is somewhat lower than what the Democrats wanted.

Take a look at the pork:

-Research credit.
-Indian employment tax credit.
-New markets tax credit.
-Railroad track maintenance credit.
-Mine rescue team training credit.
-7-year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complexes.
-Accelerated depreciation for business property on an Indian reservation.
-Election to expense mine safety equipment.
-Special expensing rules for certain film and television productions.
-Expensing of environmental remediation costs.
-Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico.
-Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
-Temporary increase in limit on cover over of rum excise taxes to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
-American Samoa economic development credit.

Andrew Malcolm has more on the Congressional ship of fools,

Because after a few days of chuckling and gloating over taking the Obama White House to the cleaners with the deal to extend, among other things, the Bush era tax cuts of eight years of failed policies fame, a number of prominent conservative voices are now awakening in opposition.

They’ve added up the costs of all the provisions, including 56 more weeks of unemployment insurance for millions.

And they realize that the total bill of the bill is larger than the original Pelosi-Reid stimulus bill’s bill that accomplished so little. And they realize now that nearly a trillion new dollars will be added to the deficit that the newly elected GOP folks are coming to town to tame.

I hadn’t posted on this because I simply couldn’t find the words to crystallize my contempt for the Congressional idiots that went along with this spendulus. But they are not idiots, they are politicians. As Melissa points out,

The Republicans in Congress are also statists. That is, they absolutely love their power. They love spending your money, too. And they know the jig is up, or they at least have to pretend it’s up in January. So they have a small window to get through a massive spending bill where they can still blame the Democrats if the economy doesn’t turn around.

Same old, same old, politics. And the Americans are screwed, again.

I Have A Sinking Feeling That We Wuz Had.
Yup.

UPDATE
Something very, very weird is going on in Washington *UPDATED* – you can say that again!

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