Obama’s Precious Jobs Program

President Obama came off seriously resolute when he told members of Congress to pass his jobs bill immediately. (A transcript of his political speech is provided here.) The move was a ploy to buy votes and shore up political support for his re-election campaign, which has already swung into full gear. But then nothing what he says ought to shock anyone. It doesn’t for me, at least.

Here are the videos of his speech before the entire body:

Part 1

Part 2

and Part 3

And what is so special about his precious jobs program that he wants imposed upon the populace by federal edict? Nothing…that is, if you haven’t drunk the statist Kool-Aid and bought into his pie-in-the-sky rhetoric that it will “create” jobs and “boost” the economy.

Here’s the warped logic of his plan: he claims that his purported $447 billion package will “grow the economy” if Congress acts to pass it “right away.” (Notice that he echoed those words 18 times in a row.) But that’s not all of it.

According to him, the bill is laden with payroll “tax cuts” that will bring us out of the recession and boost the economy. (I put the pluralized term tax cuts in quotation marks because of the dubious, suspicious, and fallacious claim of his statements.) When one views cuts in payroll taxes, one sees that the cuts gut the Medicare and Social Security taxes that make up the FICA tax. However, one must recognize that those taxes fund both Medicare and Social Security. Both programs are running colossal deficits and creating cost overruns that threaten their very existence. That simply means that they are generating less revenue than they require to issue their payouts to retirees (who are supposed to be the intended recipients of those funds). That also means that more of the funds that haven’t been touched yet and are withheld in the Treasury will have to be cashed in at some point.

The news gets worse than that. I should note that the Treasury is already plagued with a $1 trillion-plus deficit. That means more money will be extracted from the already-weakened, highly-regulated productive private sector to reimburse the Social Security and Medicare monies. That will be so unless the President chooses to radically alter the tax code to make up the lost difference. But it will not be so. The money will be coercively taken out of private capital markets in the economy and shifted right back into those sectors in the appearance of higher taxes under the guise of a payroll tax cut. In Obama’s Bizarro World, that’s expected to boost the economy.

The plan unsurprisingly subsidizes small firms in the form of a doled-out $4,000 tax credit as a condition to hire more employees who have been out of work for six months or more than it would otherwise. This is giving employers an incentive not to hire workers because of the additional costs that this requirement would impose on businesses, considering this is not done in real demand but on political gimmicks and musical chairs. It sounds great to hire employees with this tax credit, but with other regulatory, tax, and other expenisve burdens imposed on businesses, this is, as I have stated before, just merely window dressing to shore up political votes for his re-election.

This is the liberaltard logic to which we are all subjected. My head won’t stop spinning right now.

Reality or Alarmism?

Democratic operatives and mainstream media shills and apologists for the Obama administration’s just-passed and enacted medical-care overhaul are now accusing the rank-and-file Republicans and their cronies who oppose the much-touted yet highly-unpopular “reform” and warn people of dire medical and economic consequences of being alarmists. The standard argument now being offered goes like this: “You and your ilk made the same claims about Medicare when it was passed in 1965.”

That is quite a hilarious contention, come to think of it. When Medicare was passed and enacted into law, opponents of the program at the time predicted that it result in the state’s greater control of the medical system than ever.

Here’s a couple of fair questions to people: does anyone now believe that Medicare was such a good idea to create? And while we’re at it, does anyone now think that was a horrible prediction at all?

Medicare, as it stands, has an unfunded liability — that is, empty promises — of $37 trillion over the next 75 years, the insolvency of the program notwithstanding. To give the devil his due, Obama at least admits that Medicare is a major reason for the federal deficit, which creates the massive national debt. To rectify the problem (namely the out-of-control budget), coverage for a handful of services are being denied. Doctors are now routinely being prompted to stop accepting new Medicare patients, thanks to the insane bureaucratic burden imposed upon them.

All in all, the government medical program has stimulated supply and demand of services, thus propping up prices for everyone across the board by subsidizing medical care for the retirees. Costlier medical care results in costlier medical insurance. Medical insurance companies are soon priced out of the market, thus becoming wiped out of existence after the price of insurance skyrockets. That certainly adds to the number of people who are uninsured. (Although this is not the only factor of inflation, it remains a relatively large one.)

With prices rising higher and the number of uninsured growing larger (all because of the government product known as Medicare), there is no question that all this has energized the government’s attempt to increase its power over the medical system.

Now, in the present day, the predictions made about Medicare have come true, not to mention legitimate. It has opened the door for more state intervention in our medical-care choices — meaning us.

The question that needs to be asked is this: is what we’ve warned about ObamaCare making us alarmists or talking about reality?

The Moral and Economic Bankruptcy and Ignorance of Real Time Host Bill Maher

Statist liberal and Barack Obama shill Bill Maher, host of his populist HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, fired a rant that contained a series of smears and ad hominems at the Republicans who are up in arms over the passage and enactment of ObamaCare.

Here’s a YouTube clip* of Maher making his speech on the March 26, 2010 episode of his show:

The Need to Excommunicate Bill Maher

Limousine left-wing socialist and Obama shill Bill Maher, who is also the host of the highly-rated show Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, went on a rant against Obama last Friday night, excoriating him for not “standing up to the energy companies and corporations” and for not socializing the health care industry like how the comic thinks it ought to be socialized.

[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles and The Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity Movement website.]

Penn Jillette on Larry King Live: "I Think The President Should Have Much Less Power…"

Libertarian magician/TV personality Penn Jillette was on Larry King Live last night, with leftist talk radio show host Stephanie Miller, leftist Clintonite James Carville, and conservative and former RNC advisor Terry Holt, in which he points out that Obama “should have much less power.” Collectivistic liberal Miller rebutts his argument by saying:

STEPHANIE MILLER: Penn, we got to have, you know, help around the world with the War on Terror. I mean, I know, after the Bush administration, it’s kind of a low bar for an overseas trip [to London for the G20 Summit]. Uh, as long as, you know, he didn’t throw up on someone, uh, chew with his mouth open, or give someone, uh, an unnecessary back rub, I guess we’re happy. But, I do think his popularity around the world is really going to help us. You know, I mean, he said something starting for an American president. He said, “I’m gonna listen … I’m here to listen and not just talk.” And I think, I think that’s really important.

Jillette responded with the following:

PENN JILLETTE: I was just going to say Bush didn’t say the opposite. I mean, it’s not, uh, that’s not a very profound to thing to just say that you’re going to listen. I mean, yes, people like him more. He’s better looking, he’s a better speaker, and I guess that’s okay. But the whole country rallying behind somebody is always a bad idea.

And the following exchange between Miller and Jillette occured, especially given her smug remarks:

MILLER: Listen, Penn, the only people that are in bad shape after George Bush is gone are the people in the effigy business, because he was burned in effigy more times when he went on overseas trips…

JILLETTE: You can’t, you can’t, you can’t I pretend I’m pushing for Bush. I’m not. I’m just saying the President shouldn’t have that much power.

Right on, Penn! That statist scumbag Miller, whose demeanor on the show is atypical of a limousine leftist, thinks that the American people shouldn’t be exercising individualism whatsoever. And not only that, she claims that we must “have help around the world with the War on Terror.” But wait a second! Aren’t Democrats for civil liberties? Aren’t they for ending the War in Iraq? Aren’t they against the War on Terror?

The answers to those questions are no, no, and no. It certainly proves that the Democrats were never against the War in Iraq; they were against Bush’s handling of the war, because, had they had the White House for eight years after the attacks of 9/11, they would have launched their own invasion and occupation of Iraq. It proves that they are not for civil liberties, as they are not for releasing the inmates of Guantanamo Bay into civilian custody, even though Obama allegedly ordered an end of the detention center. It also proves that they are not for ending the war in Iraq, despite the fact that Obama claims that military operations will “cease” in Iraq on August 31, 2010.

The fact that Miller takes a hostile position against Jillette shows the Left’s hypocritical nature and its vile, repugnant ways.

King himself arrogantly says, “You can be individualistic as much as you like. Someone’s gotta think for the masses.” Excuse me? Someone’s “gotta think for the masses”? This sheeple mentality is indicative of the statist mind, including the limousine leftists like King, Miller, and Carville.

Can someone please remind these clowns that America was founded on the ideals of individual liberty, personality responsiblity, and limited government, not collectivism of the tyrannical kind, protection from personal responsibility, and limitless, out-of-control government?

Watch the video of the chat if you dare:

[Cross-posted at the Freeman Chronicles.]

Update: I was told by a fellow libertarian (a big LRC’er) that the conservative guest Terry Holt under Penn Jillette “was also okay but not as forceful.” He also said that Holt was “more of a conservative” and had embraced “too many of the democrat premises and terms.” For once, he’s right. The conservative clown seemed to be more in agreement with Carville and Miller than with Jillette, although he did side with Jillette by saying that the government creates a system of “winners and losers” via the tax system. But, as a typical right-winger, he refuses to call for ending the state’s control over the individual, especially by ending the federal income tax and other vile, diabolical government machinations.

They’re Smearing Obama Like They Smeared Ron Paul

Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo on the pro-state sycophants who smeared Ron Paul are now after Barack Obama. More than that, they’re doing it for the same reasons as they did with Paul.