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Letter to the editor:
Monday, Nov. 12, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.
The citizens of the U.S. need to thank Sheldon Adelson, Bob Perry and the Koch brothers for their election efforts. In donating their millions of dollars to losing campaigns, they provided a significant financial stimulus to our economy, particularly that of the “liberal” media. This came from people who had opposed President Barack Obama’s successful economic stimulus packages.
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Hey Henkelman,
The 2009 Obama $867 billion dollar stimulus was suppose to bring our unemployment rate down to under 6% by now according to Obama's own economic team when the stimulus passed. Our unemployment rate, again, according to Obama's economic team was not suppose to clime above 8% but did for several years. Now? Our unemployment rate is still hovering around 8% at 7.9% What happened Henkelman? Did big government spending not solve our economic woes? Obama presented unserious budgets in 2011 & 2012 that did not get one single democratic vote. It's clear to many that Obama doesn't have the right solutions. Even many of his fellow democrats up for re-election this month did not ask Obama to campaign for them. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because of his failed economic policies like the stimulus?
Hey, Freeman...
Nice propaganda piece.
Here's another view;
If the Republicans hadn't been so Hell-bent on 'defeating Obama', we'd have succeeded in getting that unemployment rate down to a more manageable number by now.
The Truth About Jobs
Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/opinio...
Being pounded daily with misinformation and lies is not fun.If the billionaires club did stimulate the economy the benefit was not worth that price.
Gmag39,
I would suggest sticking to the education LVS forums as you seem a little light on your facts.
We have 58% of our population working for the last three years but during the previous 20 years we averaged 62%-64% of the population working. Obama started his first term with 59.3% of the population working but now has only 58.8% working.
http://bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea01.htm
By this point, the average job growth in the past 10 recoveries was 6.9%. Under Obama, jobs have grown by just 1.9%, according to data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
Had the current recovery kept pace with just the average recovery over the past 60 years, there would be 6.5 million more people with jobs today, and the unemployment rate would be below 7%, instead of above 8%. That assumes several million more Americans would have joined the workforce. If the current anemic labor force were unchanged, those 6.5 million jobs would drive unemployment to 4%.
GDP growth: The Obama recovery has also performed far worse than average when it comes to GDP growth. After 11 quarters, the economy is still only 6.8% bigger than it was when the recession ended. In contrast, GDP was 16% bigger, on average, by this point in the previous 10 recoveries, the Minneapolis Fed data show.
Obama spent $867 billion on a stimulus for these results.
Below are the projected unemployment numbers given to us by Obama's economists with the stimulus spending applied. The unemployment rate has been mostly above 8% since 2009. What happened Gmag39? Where did the money go and why did the stimulus not lower our unemployment rate as promised?
Projected Unemployment Rate with Stimulus
2009 Q3 = 7.9%
2010 Q1 = 7.7%
2010 Q3 = 7.5%
2011 Q1 = 7.3%
2011 Q3 = 6.9%
2012 Q1 = 6.5%
2012 Q3 = 6.1%
Obama's trickle down big government spending didn't reduce unemployment as they advertised so now our children & grandchildren will be saddled with even more debt and lower prosperity prospects.
There's an old saying about economists that says "If you must predict, predict often." Economists in the last year of the Bush Administration predicted a short, shallow recession if any at all. I guess they too "misunderestimated".
The across the board tax cuts (twice) of the Bush administration did not create jobs, acerbated the national debt and put the country in a deep recession. Obama did not help the situation by extending the tax cuts. The "super committee" abrogated their duties, and left us ALL in the lurch with the Budget Control Act (sequestration). Now, the administration wants only the tax cuts to remain for those making less than 250k per year, and increase taxes on those making more than that per year. It's the same jam we've been in for far too long. The only saving grace of the BCA is that it should bring cooler heads to enact some sort of compromise. Nobody wins if the BCA takes effect, and all the tax cuts are allowed to expire. We all lose with that scenario. We can't tax our way out, and we can't spend our way out of this economic hole we're in. If Obama and Boehner cannot come to an agreement, December 31st will be more than just New Years Eve.
Obama had $100 Million to wage a smear campaign against Governor Romney long before Romney won the nomination and was able to raise funds to fight back.
That's politics. Those are the rules. The Governor knew that before he signed on.
But here's the rub. Now Obama has 4 years to deliver. Do we get 4 more years of the same old same old putrid economic growth and leading from behind. Or real hope and change?
The answer is in Obama's hands.
CarmineD
Gary,
The goal of the Bush tax cuts was to pull us out of recession. From 2001 to 2008, Bush maintained between 62%-63% of the population working starting with 136 million in 2001 and 145 million in 2008, a difference of 9 million.
Obama? 139 million to 143 million today, a difference of 4 million after nearly 4 years in office. The percent of the population working during Obama's Presidency? It started with 59.3% and has since dropped to 58.8%.
During the recession, the 2001 indicators showed consumer debt was at an all time high at 17% of disposable income, the personal savings rate was near record lows between 2% and 3% and consumers were purchasing less as indicated by GDP growth slowing to 1.09. Based on this information, Bush decided to cut taxes to put more money into consumers hands. The recession lasted just 8 months and GDP started to rise again the following years with a GDP growth rate of 1.8%, 2.5% and 3.59%. Tax receipts started to climb again as well to 17.3% and 18.2% as a percent of GDP two years after the recession. Bush, did the right thing by putting more money into the economy with lower tax rates, it shortened the recession and tax revenue started to climb back to at or above the historic average two years later. Later in his term, the housing bubble was unavoidable as consumers continued to over-extend themselves financially as the personal savings rate dropped again to under 2% while household debt climbed to a record 18% of disposable income in 2006-07. At that point, government couldn't stop the recession and consumers had no other choice but to curb their spending.
Bush added $4.8 trillion to our national debt while Obama has added $6 trillion to our debt.
Since the 1930's, government spending has grown from 19% of GDP to 41% now. There are not enough rich people to tax to close the gap between government spending and revenue. Something has to give.
Gary, Jim, and gmag,
Good luck getting facts into the conservative bubble surrounding "RefNV" and Carmine!
Mark - You're right. The class welfare nuts are hard to crack.
"Good luck getting facts into the conservative bubble surrounding ....and Carmine!"
The only time luck has anything to do with facts is when the lamestream media and their liberal backers get them right.
Hillary Clinton on Benghazi: Missing in action. Susan Rice on Benghazi: Missing in action. Leon Panetta on Benghazi: Missing in action. Former D/CIA Petraeus on Benghazi: Missing in action. Connect the dots. It's not rocket science. President Obama can bob and weave, duck and run BUT he can't hide. The buck stops with him. And the US House and Senate Intell Committees are going to investigate. What did the President know and when did he know it.
CarmineD
Think about it. Up until votes were being counted republicans actually believed they would win the WH and pickup seats in Congress.
This is proof that they're either smoking something or that the Rightwing Bubble of Denial is indeed a very powerful barrier separating conservatives from the actual physical world that most of us live in.
It's eerily similar to the 2002-2003 run-up to the Iraq invasion when daily GOP propaganda sounded a dire warning about mushroom clouds and stockpiles of WMD that were all just a figment of Dick Cheney's vivid neocon imagination.
Whatever the issue -- environmental (global warming), economic (tax cuts for super-rich 'job creators' that create no jobs), the right has an allergic reaction when presented with evidence, facts and arithmetic that are contrary to their made-up reality.
Defeated GOP senate candidate Todd Akin said a woman's body has an internal mechanism that stops unwanted rape pregnancies. Akin would be a senator-elect today if he hadn't spoken publicly about that issue. That thought should scare all sensible people.
Repubilionaires should now build sanitoriums for their fellow republiklan teapotties
The letter writer fails to thank the party that spent the most, the Democrats, in this election. Their total of over $874 million surely helped boost the economy, and while I am not sure everyone thinks President Obama's stimulus packages were successful, his parties spending money from special interest groups certainly was, it got him reelected.