Economy, Soc. Sec. & Retirement, Taxes & Government
Today’s employment report, in combination with the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, should raise alarm bells in Washington.
Instead, I’m afraid that the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, as well as the people at Obama campaign headquarters, are raising champagne glasses.
These folks aren’t just talking the economy down; they’re taking the economy down.
They’re the ones who have created what I’m going to start calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.
Please, I know it’s hard for some of my readers to do this, but just try to imagine that you’re an employer, especially one who runs a small business — y’know, one of those eeeeee-vile people that just so happens to keep the economy going.
You’re now facing the following realities:
* Record-high energy costs.
* A Speaker of the House who insists that we can’t drill our way out of our problems — so we shouldn’t drill at all, while everyone else drills merrily away. * A Senate Majority Leader who says that we have to get away from coal and oil ASAP because they’re “making us sick.” So, again, we can’t drill at all, and pretty soon we won’t be able to dig at all.
* Thanks to a Supreme Court which actually believes that the junk science known as “globaloney” is real (”globaloney” is my term for the ludicrous notion that earth is warming dangerously, that it’s our fault, and that only drastic reductions in energy consumption, reductions in worldwide living standards, and the perpetuation of Third-World poverty will prevent Armageddon), new coal-fired plants are being stopped, the latest being one in Georgia. Gleeful enviros are demanding “an end to conventional coal” — NOW — and appear to have the means to enforce it.
* A presidential candidate with a shot at winning who thinks it’s okay that energy prices are at record highs, but just wishes the increases would have been more gradual. Too late — he’s got ‘em where he wants ‘em.
* A presidential candidate with a shot at winning who wants a windfall profits tax on the energy sector.
Thanks to all of these things, you pretty much know that energy costs aren’t coming down, and may very well keep going up.
And if that weren’t enough, there’s this:
* An impending tax hike in 2009, targeting only the most productive, that will suck about $160 billion a year out of the economy if Congress takes no action.
* A presidential candidate with a shot at winning who thinks that even more money ($40 billion or so) needs to be sucked out of the economy (again targeting only the most productive) so that the mother of all intergenerational wealth transfers can be kept afloat for another decade or so before the mother of all train wrecks arrives.
* A presidential candidate with a shot at winning who advocates massive government interventions in the economy that haven’t worked elsewhere (health care, “green” energy), and won’t work here.
In this business climate, are you going to hire more people? Replace employees when they leave? Expand your business? Even if demand for your products or services is strong, which is still the case in many sectors, you’re going to try to get through with the resources and facilities you have.
Perhaps some of these employers and entrepreneurs are considering voting with their feet (I’d guess that Costa Rica’s starting to look pretty good to some), or just getting out or selling out.
Make no mistake: Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama are the people who are making the economy sick. Don’t even try to push this off on George Bush.
If the Pelosi-Obama-Reid (POR) Economy has slipped into recession or negative growth, and I’m afraid that it has in the past few weeks, it’s because the congressional majority and its party’s presidential candidate have made it crystal-clear that they don’t give a damn what ever-higher energy prices and the prospect of punitive taxes are doing, right now, to the economy and the stock market. I’ve never seen anything even remotely as irresponsible as this in the US economic-political arena.
The only thing that could mitigate or prevent the recession or continued negative growth that I’m afraid has begun is whatever juice is left in President Bush’s supply-side tax cuts and the economic stimulus checks. At best, they’ll keep growth barely positive; I don’t seem them helping the job market much, if at all.
This POR Economy is an advance demonstration of what four years of an Obama administration would be like. Perhaps enough voters will recognize this and reject it — and, just as important, the congressmen and senators who support him.
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Related Ohio Item: In February, Harry Reid “accused the coal industry of using ‘the old Hitler lie — when you say things long enough people start believing them.’”
The subject was “clean coal.” In a speech that day, he said that there’s no such thing as “clean coal.”
Do the folks in Columbus, and in the Ohio leftosphere, realize that Reid would prefer to nuke, if you excuse the expression, the primary element (about $150 million) of Ted Strickland’s $1.7 billion bond program?
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