Detailed Abstractions

This morning, news outlets everywhere carried recent news out of the Treasury Department.  The Pay Czar, who is certainly living up to the moniker Czar, announced today (WallStreetJournal):

The U.S. pay czar will cut in half the average compensation for 175 employees at firms receiving large sums of government aid, with the vast majority of salaries coming in under $500,000, according to people familiar with the government’s plans.

As expected, the biggest cut will be to salaries, which will drop by 90% on average. Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master for compensation, also intends to demand a host of corporate governance changes at those firms….

Even without bothering with the fact that the government is not in any position to understand what kind of compensation any single employee should have, this is still a radical and arbitrary move that if continued can work to destabilize the economy.

Beyond that, this decision is an anathema to a free society breaking not only the contract rights of ordinary citizens, but also violating all individuals by pushing a blatant ex  post facto punishment.

In a free society, within reason, individuals should be able to contract for any reason they want.  In this case, you have employees who have privately contracted with their employers for certain remuneration based upon their perceived worth to the company.

I say perceived work, because obviously not all hiring decisions work out for the company even if the employee does very well at their job.  Personality conflicts, culture conflicts, and even performance problems are some of the reasons why a new hire might not work out as expected.  Unless specifically stated in the employment contract, even in these cases the employer’s general resource is firing, not taking back pay.

Adding to this is the simple, real, true fact that this is by its very nature an ex post facto punishment for perceived mismanagement.  It has been a legal tradition for centuries, a that passing laws, which retroactively punish people, is against a free in democratic society.

In fact it’s in the US Constitution and universally recognized by a number of treaties including Universal Declaration of Human Rights and American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (from Wiki):

…no person be held guilty of any criminal law that did not exist at the time of offence nor suffer any penalty heavier than what existed at the time of offense. It does however permit application of either domestic or international law….

To be fair, there are some uses for ex post facto laws which have been recognized by our supreme court including allowing for Congress to grant administrative agencies the ability to do just this thing.  So legally speaking, this might be ok, however to anyone who proposes to value freedom, it should be obvious that even allowing administrative agencies this power was a massive failure of all branches of the government.  They are supposed to protect our freedoms, not remove them one at a time.

Either way – it’s intuitive that both contract rights & ex post facto laws are required for a free society.  If the government can interfere at will in private contracts and retroactively punish you for perceived wrongdoings, you have no ability to make relevant decisions for your life as you have no ability to be secure that those decisions will continue to hold true.

This insecurity is what creates instability in most third world countries today.  This lack of basic economic & legal foundation is what continues to plague most of the planet and yet we seem to be moving on the same path.

A week ago or so, a Democratic non-profit held a focus group of GOP members & Independents (here).  Among other interesting things they found, they noted how the GOP members opposed the President because they felt he was attempting to fundamentally move away from our founding principles.

They went further to note how this differed from Independents “underscoring the extreme disconnect of the conservative Republican base voters”.

I will say this move is absolute proof that the GOP members have it right.  If the administration allows this travesty, it is without a doubt a complete move away from not only our founding principles, but away from freedom in general.

For more than 20 years now, with legislation leading back almost 40 years, the United States government has been pushing the idea that every citizen should have a home.

Based upon several studies showing high correlations with positive societal behavior for homeowners, politicians, leaders, non-profits, lots of people pushed for easier access to affordable housing.  In a Federal Reserve report published in 1999, they state:

A number of recent studies attempt to measure whether there are nontraditional benefits to homeownership, such as increases in the success of children (Green and White [5]), citizenship (DiPasquale and Glaeser [3]), and a variety of family outcomes and attitudes (Rossi and Weber [11])….

This is only 1/2 the story of course.  What these studies, our politicians, our leaders, & the rest of them  can’t conclude from this data is whether home ownership actually affects any of these additional traits.  The study itself hints at this:

…Because of the preferential tax treatment accorded homeowners, particularly low-income homeowners, and the large degree of wealth accumulated in housing, these authors argue that it is important to know the full range of homeownership benefits and costs. However, given the difficulty of credibly assigning causality to housing externalities, it is not surprising that such factors have been previously ignored.

In one such paper, Green and White [5] find a strong statistical correlation between homeownership and the likelihood of dropping out of school or becoming pregnant. Yet a reasonable interpretation of their result is that of omitted variable bias. Clearly, homeowners are different from renters along a variety of dimensions. As a result, those factors that are latent in their work, such as parental skills, interest in the educational process, wealth, and family stability, potentially bias upward any homeownership effect….

In other studies, they show correlations between home ownership & wealth accumulation, to help give more force to the “everyone needs a home” meme (study dated 2004):

For many years the federal government has promoted homeownership as an important goal for low-income families. A primary motivation of this policy goal is the concept that owner-occupied housing can be an important means of wealth accumulation, particularly for those lower-income and minority families that are able to purchase homes….

They as well admit the difficulty with this assessment:

…However, very little has been done in the housing literature to determine the importance of housing and non-housing sources of wealth accumulation. This determination has been difficult to address for three reasons. First, detailed wealth information on families is seldom available on a consistent basis. Second, such information on wealth is even less likely to be available over time so that changes in wealth can be observed. Third, the process of housing wealth accumulation is dynamic. Housing wealth accumulation depends critically on how soon a family that is renting becomes a homeowner, whether or not the family graduates to more highly valued owned units over time, or becomes a renter again and never regains homeownership….

With the current practice of press & political standards however, you might be hard pressed to find any evidence that assigning non-traditional benefits to home ownership is anything but an unqualified good.  The majority of reports dealing with low income housing stimulus are positive  (here & here).

In some cases, overly emotional logic is used (here):

After business dried up in May, Jodi Morris’ employer, an insurance agent, stopped sending paychecks.

Since then, the 43-year-old single mother has had to sell almost all of her furniture – her kitchen table and chairs, bed frames, dresser and armoire, and living room set – to pay the bills.  Morris and her 7-year-old daughter, Karly, now sleep on mattresses on the floor of their two-bedroom Ahwatukee apartment. And with no table, the two eat dinner on their cream-colored couch.

An eviction notice that arrived this month threatened to put Morris and Karly out on the street.  But Morris could be the first Phoenix resident to receive a lifeline from the federal government that seeks to rescue those on the verge of homelessness….

& without exception, our government is not immune.  The US government is right now, before the housing crisis even fully contracts (I wrote about it here), spending money to help low income families purchase homes.

Even before the housing crisis though, economists, experts, non-profits, were asking whether home ownership should be considered an unqualified good.  Unfortunately, reports questioning these basic assumptions are a very low percentage compared to the constant noise.

In some cases, even questioning the wisdom of subsidizing low income home ownership has resulted in kill the messenger attacks from non-profit groups, community leads, and even Democratic leadership, by leveling charges of racism.  With a simple misdirection trick, questioning the basic assumptions is anti-low income & since low-income households are generally minorities, questioning these assumptions must be due to institutional racism.   Politicians and leaders everywhere have a grand ole time setting up straw men in a fields of hay while standing by with gasoline and matches, but we should expect more.  We should expect to be able to ask all relevant questions we can and to get answers to as many questions as possible.  Lastly, we should let the data lead to its natural conclusion.

Assuming we truly want the best answers we can get and the best progress we can have, we must be willing to ask tough questions and live with the answers reality presents.

Anything less is little better than just allowing random superficial rhetoric to control policy.  It’s almost like we never moved away from the world Richard Feynman spoke about in 1974:

…But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I’ve concluded that it’s not a scientific world.

Unless you were lucky enough to be traveling or otherwise unavailable on Sunday, you were likely deluged with Mr. Obama’s media storm to sell not only health care, but apparently many other items as well.

First, it should be noted that this WH is above all, extremely insecure.  The President could be seen on 5 Sunday news shows: NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Univision.   But he didn’t have time for Fox, the number one rated Sunday news show…

Regardless of the WH being extremely petty and worrying more about perceived injustices than an honest discussion with those who might disagree, what he actually said is far more serious.

When asked if a health care mandate was a tax increase on ABC’s this week, the President responded:

…”I absolutely reject that notion,” the president said….

“What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore,” said Obama. “Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance . Nobody considers that a tax increase.”…

Using flawed logic is nothing new for Presidents, but this one isn’t even close.  Hhe’s analogizing the privilege of driving with the “privilege” of being a citizen.

The difference of course as that by my very birth, I have a “right” to be a citizen, whereas driving has always remained a privilege with constraints.  You see, I can forgo auto insurance, so long as I don’t drive.  There are many ways around without a car in this day and age, but if I “choose” to drive, then constraints can be placed on me.

Health care on the other hand would be required simply because I existed and no other reason.  & If the government says, “You have to buy this” – it is a tax increase as not paying it can land you in very serious legal troubles.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, with an omnipotent sense of when health care, our fearless leader goes further:

…Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

“I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don’t make people healthier is part of the way that we’re going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term,” Obama said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…

Even ignoring the fact that this goes against his basic premise that more people need more health care, one wonders if there is anything our President doesn’t know.  So far, he’s taken over banks, car companies, told car companies with whom to merge, who to hire, who to fire, what to build… and now we find out he knows how much health care is too much.

But let’s not stop there.  Not only is our community organizer one of the smartest men in America when it comes to economics and health care, he’s also a brilliant strategist with respects to Afghanistan:

…”What I’m not also gonna do, though, is put the resource question before the strategy question,” Obama told NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” “Until I’m satisfied that we’ve got the right strategy I’m not gonna be sending some young man or woman over there- beyond what we already have.”…

I’m not sure exactly what happens to man to think he has the answers to every single last question. Maybe it’s just arrogance and ignorance, as Hayek stated:

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

Whatever the reason he believes so strongly in his ability to decide what’s best for our own good, history shows us without question where this inevitably leads.  Hayek again:

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

Let’s hope we begin to understand the value of humility before we do too much damage.

Unintended consequences.  An often used phrase for almost every piece of legislation pushed our politicians.  Whether it’s McCain-Feingold’s chilling effect on free political speech or whether bailing out banks which are “too big to fail” has actually decreased our long term viability instead of supporting it; the term seems to connote any consequence which wasn’t expressly mentioned by proponents of the bill.

Technically, that’s correct.  The definition of unintended consequences does not require the consequences to be unforeseen, though in common language we generally use the base meaning of “intention”.   Therefore the phrase has come to mean those consequences which were neither  intended nor unforeseen.

I submit however, that we should start changing our language and call known consequences intended consequences, because like the citizens in the face of the law our politicians should be held to the same standard: ignorance is not a defense.

Regardless of the human failing that pushes people to believe they, or their elected leaders, can ultimately control behavior which is already constrained by the marketplace, acting as if the results weren’t readily understood is disingenuous.

Looking more closely @ McCain-Feingold effects, we see the chilling of free-speech (here), where citizens can’t create a documentary on their beliefs about Hillary Clinton without it being subject to regulation:

…The case before the court, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, originated over whether a 2008 feature-length movie critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton could be classified as an “electioneering communication” subject to regulation.

The FEC contended it was, and that its sponsor, a conservative advocacy group called Citizens United, was barred from promoting the film. While nonprofits can be exempt from campaign-finance regulations if they limit their fund-raising to donations from individuals, Citizens United fell under McCain-Feingold because it accepts business contributions….

Now.  I haven’t seen the movie nor do I care to, but when individuals get together to use their own money, their own resources, to produce their own political speech, the government has absolutely no right to be involved.  In the marketplace of political ideas, that whole “congress shall make no law” thingy, seemed pretty straight forward.

Regardless of your reading of the 1st Amendment, some will contend this is an unintended consequence.  I contend it was a known consequence and therefore must have been intended.

I will even go further and say this was like a consequence well enough known by politicians who voted for the bill, that they had incentive to pass restrictions on others as this would help them secure the current balance of power.

Using banks too big to fail (here):

…Increased concentration is vexing for regulators. Because systemically important firms can borrow more cheaply thanks to implicit state backing, small and medium-sized banks struggle to compete. A recent Fed study put big banks’ funding advantage at more than 30 basis points. That leads to another possible problem: indiscipline. Private firms with a low cost of funds and the taxpayer behind them are prone to recklessness: just look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. America’s leading banks were too big to fail before the crisis. Now they are bigger still….

This was not only easy to foresee, but libertarians, conservatives, small business groups, think tanks, economists, literally, tens of thousands of people wrote and discussed that this is exactly what would happen.

Once you’ve effectively told the market that they will not be responsible for their failures, you’ve written them a blank check to become much more reckless than they would have otherwise.

Not only this, but that action, more reckless businesses, will have it’s own well understood consequence.  The banks will continue to make stupid decisions due to a perceived lack of risk.  As long as people allow it, the government will continue to bail them out until it becomes just too expensive.  Then during that emergency, we will see much greater regulation and control of the financial industry which might include a government takeover.

As Hayek stated and history has shown:

‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Maybe it’s time to start holding our politicians & leaders accountable for the known consequences & not just the stated ones.

This just seems to be a lie that won’t quit.  At the very beginning of the Obama administration we were told, by economists, business leaders, the WH, congressional leaders, and really most people that more stimulus was needed in order to avert a major depression of the economy.  We were told, incorrectly, that this bill would keep unemployment below 8%.  Indeed, the referred to the Great Depression as hyperbole on a number of occasions to push their point.

A minority of people continued to say that we didn’t need this or want it and most Americans weren’t for spending more money, but we know the fear tactic worked.  President Obama signed on February 17th a $787 billion dollar appropriation bill to further stimulate the economy.

Since it’s signing, we also been told it’s worked well.  According to the WH it will create or save 3.5 million jobs between now & 2010 (here):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus plan will meet previous estimates to save 3.5 million U.S. jobs by the end of 2010, but the unemployment rate at that time may be higher due to further deterioration in the economy, a senior administration official said on Monday.

Vice President Biden also got into the discussion very recently (here):

He touted the administration’s accomplishments with regards to the stimulus packages. Biden said 500,000 to one million jobs have been created from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He noted that when the Obama administration took over in January, the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month thanks to the worst “bagel” in decades (yes, I’m newly addicted to the West Wing). That has slowed to 274,000 jobs.

Mr. Obama as well (here):

July 11 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.

& of course, we couldn’t have this debate without a Nobel Prize winning Economist weighing in.  Proving the Nobel Prize isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Paul Krugam weighs in (here):

Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy is stabilizing and may have bottomed out, as the government’s stimulus plan probably saved a million jobs, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman said today.

Mr. Krugman wasn’t satisfied with just praising of the administration.  Lone ago giving up up using true economic theory as it refutes his political agenda, he went further:

A second stimulus package for the economy is still needed, and should be directed at state and local governments as well as infrastructure spending, he said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. The world economy may face several years of weak growth without falling into a “double-dip” recession, he said.

What’s the issue with all these pronouncements?  Simply said, they have no proof in reality.

Currently only 15% of the money has been spent.  That deserves repeating, only 15% of the stimulus has been spent.  According to everything we’re hearing though, this prevented a depression by creating/saving jobs (here):

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama nearly six months ago contained $288 billion in tax cuts and $499 billion in new spending. So far, the administration has spent $76.3 billion — 15% of the total available.

However, even taking the 15% amount isn’t necessarily a true reflection of the spending.  One must then ask, what was the money spent on and can those expenditures be tied to jobs?

Even the answer to that is a resounding no.  Almost all of that $76.3 billion wasn’t spent on anything one would typically associate with creating wealth.  $57.3 billion being was spent on safety net, food stamps, medicare, unemployment benefits and other social programs.

Please note, this is not a refutation on social spending, that would be a completely different discussion.  Having said that, it seems obvious that paying people to stay at home is not going to create or save jobs.

The analysis can’t stop here though.  With a very small percentage of the stimulus itself being spent, the total spent also represents a very tiny fraction of the economic activity in the United States.  According to current estimates, we expect the US economy this year to produce about 14 trillion dollars in GDP.  This is lower than previous years of course, but still a staggering amount of money.

Using all the numbers we have, we can inject some very simple math.

If we assume that the in the last 6 months, economic activity is around 7 trillion dollars, 76.3 billion dollars a only a little over 1% of total economic activity.  Which means it will be about 1/2% of the economy at the end of the year, unless of course the government actually starts spending the money.

Even as small as that is, if you remove the  $57.3 billion spent on social spending, then you have a total of $19 billion, which is less than 1/2 or 1% of the economic activity generated over the past 6 months.   & that is being very nice, by assuming that all $19 billion actually went to job creation.

Luckily, most Americans already know this (here):

A USAToday/Gallup poll released Monday found that 41 percent of Americans think the spending has made the US economy better, but 57 percent believe it has either made no difference or worsened the recession that began in 2007.

But the idea is still worth repeating since administration officials continue pushing the economic changes as a success for their policies.

Simply stated, the idea that by adding 1% to the current level of economic activity to the US economy would effect it in such a way as to prevent a Great Depression is a fallacy.  A fallacy which needs to be defeated.

As we all know, Congress, the Senate, and the President of the United States is pushing hard for health care reform, which they promise us will lead to lower costs and will be completely revenue neutral.

To take their claims into context, these are the exact same individuals who brought us a really good program, Cash for Clunkers, only to bankrupt it in 1/11th the promised time.

The program, which was intended to remove older, less fuel efficient cars off the road, started on July 24th, 2009, with a total of $1 Billion dollars in assets (here):

…Approved last month, the program known officially as the Car Allowance Rebate System offers rebates of $3,500 to owners who relinquish cars rated at less than 18 miles per gallon to purchase ones getting at least 22 m.p.g. If the new vehicle gets at least 10 m.p.g. more than the trade-in, the rebate is $4,500. For SUVs, minivans and pickups, a 2 m.p.g. improvement is required, while a 5 m.p.g. gain nets the full rebate…

…The program is expected to run four months, or until the $1 billion is depleted. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has until July 24 to issue the final regulations, putting most transactions on hold until Friday…

It was supposed to last 4 months, but is now almost out of money (here):

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Sunday that unless the Senate approves $2 billion in additional funding, the Obama administration could be forced to halt as early as Tuesday the “cash for clunkers” program that has become one of the most visible and fast-acting of the government’s economic-stimulus programs.

& the analysis itself wasn’t a simple mistake or a black swan.  We didn’t run into any unknown situations or start out with bad numbers.  The reason the initial analysis was wrong was negligence:

…U.S. auto sales have been running at an annual pace below 10 million a year since January, a steep drop from the 16 million annual sales levels normal earlier in the decade. That sales collapse has led to tens of thousands of layoffs at auto companies and the manufacturing and service firms that support them…

Using just those numbers alone, we expect 3.2 million cars to be bought in the next 4 months, but Congress allocated money for just  8% of expected sales, without apparently contemplating the obvious increase in demand.

Of course this is a minor example when comparing the relatively small number of $1 billion dollars (or $11 billion) against a $3 trillion dollar budget, but it’s clearly instructive.

Time and time again, the government had lead us down a path with promises of this and that kind snake oil, this and that kind of freedom.  Yet almost every single time, they have proven their inability to fully understand the consequences of legislation.

The amount of willful ignorance it mush take to be consistently wrong, but still think you’re helping now or will be helpful in the future is simply astounding.

But shooting fish in a barrel will only get us so far.  In our system of government, the end result is that the voters are truly responsible.  Politicians run on incentives like us all & as long as voters don’t hold them accountable for their mistakes, they have no obvious reason to change course.

If we as voters show, by our very actions, that we are ok with a system that rewards incumbency without contemplating actual results, rewards style over substance, rewards politically correct talk as opposed to direct debates, we are contributing to a system which will allow these actions to continue.

But since there doesn’t seem to be any grassroots effort aimed at actually changing the system itself instead of ensuring “our team” wins, we might as well ask the question:

How much did they say health care would cost?

A mere 10 days ago, we were told by our President, that his recovery act has diverted a disaster (here):

Good evening.  Before I take your questions, I want to talk for a few minutes about the progress we’re making on health insurance reform and where it fits into our broader economic strategy.

Six months ago, I took office amid the worst recession in half a century.  We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month and our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

As a result of the action we took in those first weeks, we have been able to pull our economy back from the brink. We took steps to stabilize our financial institutions and our housing market. And we….

…passed a Recovery Act that has already saved jobs and created new ones; delivered billions in tax relief to families and small businesses; and extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have been laid off.

Of course, we still have a long way to go. And the Recovery Act will continue to save and create more jobs over the next two years – just like it was designed to do. I realize this is little comfort to those Americans who are currently out of work, and I’ll be honest with you – new hiring is always one of the last things to bounce back after a recession.

As I wrote previously, I’m not sure what a “saved” job is or how one goes about calculating a figure, but we do know the unemployment rate is 2% higher than predicted.  Additionally, when one is contemplating whether this or any other President is truthful, we should ask if any of their other projections were correct in the first place.

From Bloomberg:

July 31 (Bloomberg) — The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.

& for comparison, something we also know.  When Senator Kerry, then Senator Obama, and many other people, liberals and independents all, were dismayed by President Bush’s tax cuts during a recession and a war:

The revisions showed that the 2001 recession was less severe than originally estimated, reflecting a smaller decline in business investment. The economy actually grew 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2000 to the third quarter of 2001, erasing the 0.2 percent drop previously reported.

Of course Bush started us down our current road with the first stimulus bill, because something just had to be done… which I guess presupposes that allowing 300 million people to work to bring back the economy is “nothing”…

Either way – lastly, and most importantly, we know that this has been tried before.  It took several decades to move beyond the blindness people had due to FDR’s almost cult-like status to revise the books written at the time, but the New Deal did in fact lead to a longer Great Depression that was necessary (here):

The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a “new” New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR’s policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn.

The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn’t restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office. Total hours worked per adult, including government employees, were 18% below their 1929 level between 1930-32, but were 23% lower on average during the New Deal (1933-39). Private hours worked were even lower after FDR took office, averaging 27% below their 1929 level, compared to 18% lower between in 1930-32…

No worries though – I’m sure the government is telling the complete truth about how much health care will cost, what it will do to the current system (good & bad), and all the rest of it.  We just have to believe!

…Some other articles on this as well here @ Reason.com, article on economist research @ UCLA here, & detailed research paper here @ Cato.org.

Mr. President, are you kidding?

I listened intently to your entire speech and for a gifted speaker, all I heard were disjointed platitudes, class warfare rhetoric, and a little political bashing just for good measure.

Let’s start at the top (all quotes are paraphrased, not direct quotes):

Obama:  As a result of the actions taken in the first weeks of  my administration, we stabilized the housing market, saved jobs – created new ones, and gave tax relief to millions.

Wow!  I wasn’t aware the government was this powerful.  Maybe unicorns really do exist?

Seriously though, first, the housing market is still declining.  It is not stabilized yet and in some parts of the country is still losing quite a bit of value.

Second, I’m not sure what a “saved” job is or how one would go about calculating it, but what we do know is that on net, jobs continue to be lost.  So growing jobs is absolutely incorrect and saving jobs is a feel good phrase that would be impossible to prove (or disprove).

But who cares about little things like facts when you’re trying to take credit.  By the way, who’s really to blame?

Obama: Through the last few decades of unprecedented growth, only a small minority of wealthy people actually saw their incomes grow, while the economy was not making good paying jobs or green jobs like it should’ve.

Oh, ok.  So it’s the rich’s fault?  They should have to pay!

Come on Mr. President, this is class warfare and theoretically beneath someone who promised to usher in “Hope & Change” and a new kind of politics.  Just to clarify for you Mr. President, class warfare has existed for centuries.  It’s not new and it’s not built on a foundation of “Hope & Change”.

But why do we need this Mr. President?

Obama:  Because middle class families have been struggling due to the constant rise in health care costs.  They have had wage increases, but due to increasing health care costs, the wage increases were offset.  This is also causing employers to not be able to afford health insurance anymore either.

So, the government medaling in health care through medicaid, medicare, FDA, and the myriad of laws that cover things such as, what qualifies a surgeon, what kind of needle can I use to draw blood, what drugs have to be based on prescription, and ever other intrustion they’ve made have pushed costs higher and  higher.

Additionally,

Obama:  I’m confident that when people look to see the costs of doing nothing at all, the people will support me.

Mr. President, if you’re not aware of the current level of intrusion into the current health care system, then it’s possible GWB might have a lead in the IQ race.

We’ve tried.  & time and time again, health care has become harder to deal with and more expensive.  Each time the government does something like this, it costs more than they thought it would, usually by multiples of at least 10, and the savings they say they’ll get never materialize.  But this time will be different.  Why?  Cause I’m Barak!

How will we do it?

Obama:  First, the government will not get in between you and your doctor.  What we will do is pass a bunch of laws that change the way insurance decisions are made, work towards decisions on “end-of-life” care, put limits on the amount of money a person will pay out of pocket, and many other laws.

But this is definitely NOT government interference.

Mr. President, congrats.  I have to applaud you as I couldn’t have said all that with a straight face.  You deserve an Oscar for logic twists needed for this.

What will it cost?

Obama:  Nothing of course.  We will save billions by fixing existing inefficencies and taxing the top 1% just a little bit.

So, we get everything we want and it costs hardly anything?  Someone once told me about things too good to be true, but I’m so enamored now by his speaking ability that I forgot.  But basically he seems to believe that to fix government intrusion into health care, more government intrusion is needed.

He seems to believe that while every time the government has gotten into health care or retirement funds or any other social spending they’ve always gotten the numbers wrong.  But this time is different.

What’s stopping you?

Obama:  I heard a Republican strategist state that it’s better to go for the kill against Obama than pass meaningful reform.  I heard a Republican Senator state, we want him to fail.

So… you have the executive branch, the House by a good majority and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.  But the Republicans are causing problems?