The problem with Democrats is that they don’t understand how things work in the world of business. They are too engaged in class warfare to actually tell the truth or to do things that are good for the country. Democrats believe that they should tax the living hell out of the so called rich and while they claim it is because the rich need to pay their fair share the reality is that the Democrats want to create envy among the have nots. Make the middle class believe that the rich are getting over and gain Democrat voters.

The absolute fact that the rich pay most of the income taxes in this country is lost on those who play the class warfare game. The bottom 47% of wage earners pay absolutely NO federal income taxes and many of them actually get money back. They owe no taxes and get a refund while the wealthy foot the bill for the cost of government in this country. The top 53% of wage earners pay the money that runs the country.

Democrats want to tax the people who create jobs. Remember folks, government does not create jobs. It can only create an environment favorable to job creation or one that hinders job creation.

Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader and world class moonbat Democrat has stated that millionaires (the latest group targeted for a tax increase) who produce jobs are like unicorns, they do not exist. He then narrowed it down to some small fraction (two opposing views, either they do NOT exist or they are present in a small percentage).

Both statements are incorrect. Wealthy people create plenty of jobs. In fact, we can shoot down the do not exist argument in one shot. Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs, and the founders of Google are all extremely wealthy and they all create thousands of jobs. Not only are they creating jobs at their companies but their products create jobs down the line in companies that produce computers and those who install software. These millionaires (plus) have created plenty of jobs so the argument that they do not exist is gone.

But are the millionaires who create jobs a small fraction of the total number of millionaires or are they, as Reid claims, hedge fund managers and rich lawyers (like a lot of members of Congress)?

Paul Roderick Gregory of Forbes puts the Reid claim to the test and it looks like Reid told a whopper.

The number of millionaires who create jobs is significant and way above what Reid claimed. One would think that Reid would have some fact checkers doing some work to ensure he did not make such outrageous claims but that would assume that Reid did not want to make the mistake. He did not care. The truth was not his goal.

His goal was to create another myth and to perpetuate the class warfare that Democrats are known for. He wanted people to believe him.

It is like the myth that Warren Buffett pays less in taxes (as a percentage) than his secretary does and that he wants Congress to fix that because it isn’t right. The man avoids taxes (even while calling for higher rates) and the comparison he makes is invalid.

The whole story is bogus but people, supposedly intelligent people, keep using it to justify taxing the very people who pay the most in taxes (top 10% of earners pay 77% of the taxes).

That was Reid’s goal, spread a lie and have it multiply geometrically so he can continue to whip up class envy.

It is what Democrats do and this will never be different.

It is up to intelligent people to cut through the BS and come up with the truth.

We will never find unicorns but we can easily find millionaires who create jobs.

Reid lied. A truthful Democrat is like a unicorn…

ADDENDUM: While Reid is playing class warfare the wealth of members of Congress has tripled in the last 25 years while the wealth of the average American has decreased. Imagine that, their wealth has increased and they do not create ANY jobs and I don’t doubt they avoid paying higher taxes as well…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

I received a message via my contact page from someone using the name L-Dog. The message came from an Alaska.gov server. More specifically, it came from the Department of Administration (or through their server, anyway). This is the message I received:

So if tax cuts create jobs, where are they. We have 7 or so years of the bush [sic] tax cuts and no job growth. So stop lying.

A lie, by definition, is a deliberate attempt to deceive. Since I did no such thing, then it is not a lie. But let us explore.

The Bush tax cuts took place in 2003 and went into full force in 2004 so yes, it has been about 7 years though there were earlier tax cuts. After the Bush tax cuts, 5 million jobs were created and the revenue to the Treasury increased. This is not to say things were great because Bush was a big spender. He and Congress spent far more than we took in though now those numbers pale in comparison to Obama.

The linked chart shows that from about 2000 to 2003 revenue decreased. There are a number of reasons including 9/11 and a recession. The Clinton tech bubble was bursting as well and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 6 times from 1999-2000. From 2003 to 2007 revenues increased as a result of the tax cuts. In 2007 Democrats took control of Congress and revenues again began to decrease. We were also heading into another recession. It is also important to note that the first tax cuts of 2001 were to be phased in over several years and the economy and job production lagged in the early years.

Heritage published a report about the tax cuts and this, in part, is what that organization had to say:

In 2003, capital gains tax rates were reduced. Rather than expand by 36% as the Congressional Budget Office projected before the tax cut, capital gains revenues more than doubled to $103 billion.

The CBO incorrectly calculated that the post-March 2003 tax cuts would lower 2006 revenues by $75 billion. Revenues for 2006 came in $47 billion above the pre-tax cut baseline.

Here’s what else happened after the 2003 tax cuts lowered the rates on income, capital gains and dividend taxes:

• GDP grew at an annual rate of just 1.7% in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the six quarters following the tax cuts, the growth rate was 4.1%.
• The S&P 500 dropped 18% in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts but increased by 32% over the next six quarters.
• The economy lost 267,000 jobs in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the next six quarters, it added 307,000 jobs, followed by 5 million jobs in the next seven quarters.

The timing of the lower tax rates coincides almost exactly with the stark acceleration in the economy. Nor was this experience unique. The famous Clinton economic boom began when Congress passed legislation cutting spending and cutting the capital gains tax rate.

In late 2007 the economy began to cool. By 2008, it entered a recession. The housing bubble burst, precipitating a financial crisis. But after 50 months of unimpeded growth, it is ludicrous to insist that the tax cuts caused the recession, let alone the global financial meltdown. Even after the Fannie and Freddie Mac-induced bust, there were still one million net jobs created during the Bush years.

So L-Dog of Alaska, the Bush tax cuts did indeed create jobs. The net gain was 1 million after a 5 million increase that was mostly wiped out by the government (read Democrat) induced trauma known as Fannie and Freddie.

Revenue increased, jobs were produced and the unemployment rate was in the 4-6 range. This happened despite a massive blow we took on 9/11.

Tax cuts, long term ones, create jobs because the private sector employers (government DOES NOT create jobs) know what to expect and are able to run their businesses accordingly. They can hire because they know what their tax burden will be. Uncertainty leads them to stop hiring and take a wait and see approach. Ronald Reagan cut taxes and he had tremendous job growth as well as increased revenue to the government.

If we could get government to stop spending what they take and then some we could get our house in order.

So, if tax cuts do not produce jobs why is Barack Obama running around claiming to be a tax cutter (he has raised them, not cut them)? Why did Democrats fight to keep the Bush tax cuts last year? They cited the problems with increasing taxes in a bad economy and how it would harm job growth so if tax cuts do not equal jobs why would they fight for the tax cuts enacted by a man they absolutely hated? Additionally, why did the Congress cut payroll taxes last year (the Social Security tax) if they thought it would not help.

A lot of things are working against any tax cuts and a major part is the out of control spending and the Keynesian economic policies that Obama embraces. You can’t keep spending money we don’t have to cure a spending problem. Tax cuts with discipline in DC will solve the problems.

When producers are taxed more it leaves them less capital to run their businesses and that means they can’t hire. When the tax situation is uncertain they are afraid to act.

So L-Dog, I hope this clears it up for you. I won’t call you a liar, just misinformed.

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was busy spinning the propaganda today and he told one whopper of a lie. He said that Barack Obama is dedicated to deficit reduction.

“I think that has been proven again and again, White House press secretary Jay Carney said of President Obama’s commitment to reducing the deficit. “Most recently by the continuing resolution negotiation that averted a government shutdown earlier this year with Republicans that tighten deficits significantly in this fiscal year by the Affordable Care Act, which is a long term deficit.” Real Clear Politics

Since Obama has been in office the deficit has nearly quadrupled. It is around $1.5 TRILLION this year alone. Obama’s last budget increased the deficit and the negotiations that took place did absolutely nothing to tighten deficits significantly. Additionally, Obamacare will not reduce the deficit. It will, according to a number of sources, increase the problem by as much as $2.5 TRILLION.

Obama has been too busy passing expensive Socialist legislation and playing golf to do anything that deals with reducing the deficit. He is only interested in raising taxes and spending more money.

But, this is what passes for dedication in Obamaland. Hell, this dedication to reducing the deficit is producing similar results as his laser beam focus on jobs.

Since Obama focused like a laser beam, the unemployment rate rose and has been high the entire time. There is no end in sight.

It would appear as if Obama’s idea of dedication and laser beam focus is different from those who inhabit the successful world. Successful people who are dedicated and laser beam focused achieve positive results.

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Looks like Obama was right when he said the stimulus money would allow Caterpillar to put people to work (though the leader of the company denied he made that claim). Caterpillar is building a new factory to build mini hydraulic excavators.

The only problem is that Caterpillar will be building the factory in China.

I wonder if Obama will add all the Chinese workers who are employed to build the factory and those who will be employed to work at it in his jobs created number.

I mean, this is Obama, the master of double talk, and he did not say that the jobs the stimulus would create would be in America…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Barack Obama is putting pressure on Congress to pass a 30 BILLION dollar package designed to jump start job creation. Obama’s administration has lost millions of jobs (net) despite the bogus “saved job” category used to deceive people into thinking that taxpayer money has saved jobs and without it unemployment would be higher.

President Obama Friday repeated his call for Congress to pass a $30 billion package to foster hiring and help tackle painfully high levels of unemployment.

“I’m hopeful the House will pass these measures next week and that the Senate will follow as soon as possible—with support from both Democrats and Republicans,” Obama said in remarks delivered in the White House Rose Garden. CNBC

Obama passed a 787 BILLION dollar stimulus package that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8% and was supposed to jump start job creation. Obama said the number one goal of his economic plan was to create 3 million jobs in the next two years (MSNBC 16 Jan 2009).

The stimulus was touted as a job creator and was needed to keep unemployment from rising. Unemployment has been stagnate at just under 10% for most of the time since the stimulus was passed.

When things kept going bad the regime told us that things were worse than they thought or that no one knew how bad it was. We were then told that this was a slow process and that the stimulus needed time to work. But we are not on the track that was spelled out in his economic report. We are well behind what they predicted.

When this has been pointed out the Obama apologists tell us that the stimulus will take time and was never intended to work quickly (despite the initial claims and the report). The Obama regime told us that it would take at least until the end of 2010 before we saw improving jobs results.

Well which is it?

In either case, Obama’s request for more money to stimulate jobs is an indication that the stimulus is a failure.

If it was supposed to work more quickly, as was initially reported, then the 30 billion dollar request is an admission that it did not work as sold.

If it was anticipated that the job growth would be slower and that we would not see results until the end of 2010 at the earliest then why ask for more money now? Let’s wait to see if it works as stated when the time frame was revamped before we throw more money into the black hole.

The fact that Obama is asking for more money now is an indication that he does not believe that his stimulus will work. He knows that things will not get better as a result of his plans and he wants to appear as if he is doing all that he can because it is an election year and he knows that his party stands to get trounced.

The request for this money to stimulate jobs is an admission by Obama that his stimulus did not work as planned and that he does not expect it to work as planned.

It is a political move to throw good money (if the US actually has any good money) after bad during an election year.

The stimulus is a very expensive failure.

How many times will Obama go to the well before people begin to see this?

Related:
Retail Sales Slump

Never surrender, never submit.

Darrel and Mike, two commenters at this site, have been having a debate about a chart that shows the number of people losing their jobs. There are still jobs being lost but not as many and these two gentlemen are discussing if losing fewer jobs is good or if it is still bad because we are losing them.

Harry Reid has settled this and it would appear that losing jobs is a good thing as long as it was not as many as before. Reid tells us today that the good news is that only 36,000 people lost their jobs last month.

That is great news, unless you are one of the 36,000.

The administration was preparing us for bad numbers by telling us that the numbers would be bad because of the snowstorms in February. That is a bogus claim. I can’t see how the storms resulted in people losing their jobs. But if I concede that the storms caused job loss I would have to say it was a wash because a whole lot of people became employed clearing snow. The labor report (linked below) addresses how people were counted with regard to the storms.

In order for severe weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll employment, employees have to be off work for an entire pay period and not be paid for the time missed.

It is unlikely that people would lose their jobs over bad snowstorms. They might get time off without pay but that is about it. But then again, that counts as unemployed to the BLS.

Now the progressive pundits, in response to an unemployment rate that held at 9.7%, are claiming the numbers would have been better if we had not had the storms. Once again, not credible (especially considering the definition of unemployed due ot severe weather). Also, when discouraged workers are counted, the number rose:

The U6 alternative gauge of the unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time, rose to 16.8% from 16.5%. Market Watch

The government has boosted the number of jobs by hiring for the census. Thousands of people have been hired to work for the government. Those people will lose their jobs once the census is completed.

So remember, it is good when people lose jobs so long as it is fewer than before (progressive mantra). It is certainly a positive trend but it is not good news. These numbers do not indicate that jobs are being created, just that fewer people are losing them. We will not see job creation until jobs are being added to the numbers. In other words, the graph has to rise above the zero line.

It is also interesting how we continue to have jobs being lost, albeit many fewer than before, and yet the unemployment rate dropped from 10% to 9.7% two months ago and has held there. How can this happen?

No job loss is good news despite what Harry Reid believes.

Well, maybe there are a few exceptions…

Looks like the 95,000 jobs a month the administration is predicting hit a little snag:

The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance surged to just below the 500,000 level last week, and have climbed more than 12% over the past two weeks, the government said Thursday. Money.CNN

Obama and his mouthpieces keep saying they “saved” or created millions of jobs.

The only thing I can figure is that they saved or created them in states 51 through 57…

Then again, if the White House can create ZIP codes and Congressional Districts out of thin air then it can certainly create jobs numbers the same way.

It all depends on who you ask:

Axelrod, on CNN’s State of the Union: “But understand that, in this recession that began at the beginning of 2007, we’ve lost 7 million jobs. Now, the Recovery Act the president passed has created more than — or saved more than 2 million jobs. But against 7 million, you know, that — that is — it is cold comfort to those who still are looking.”

Jarrett, on NBC’s Meet the Press: “The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs. There are schoolteachers and firemen and— and— teachers all across our country, policemen, who have jobs today because of that recovery act. We’re investing in infrastructure. We’re investing in public education so that our kids can compete going forth into the next— generation.”

Gibbs, on “Fox News Sunday”: “Well, Chris, let’s take for instance the example you just used of the stimulus package. We had four quarters of economic regression in terms of growth, right? Just last quarter, we finally saw the first positive economic job growth in more than a year. Largely as a result of the recovery plan that’s put money back into our economy, that saved or created 1.5 million jobs.” Politico

It would seem that Obama’s people don’t actually know how many jobs have been created and the idea that saved jobs can be measured is bogus. The administration dreamed up this category to tout success that can’t possibly be measured. The guidelines used to indicate a “saved” job are nonsensical and were dreamed up to give the appearance of success.

Jobs are counted as saved if stimulus money went to them even if they were not in danger of being lost. The formula originally used allowed for more jobs saved than actually existed in the companies. If any stimulus money is spent on a job (like giving a pay raise) then it is considered saved. It is a sham.

Now the administration spin masters are out talking up the numbers in an effort to show some kind of success even though the stimulus has been a dismal failure.

I would think that if they were all going to go on different networks to discuss this they could all coordinate their lies.

The government is working on passing a health care takeover package that will cost upwards of $2.5 trillion over the actual first ten years of its life. They claim it will cost less than a trillion over ten years but they do that by counting ten from the passage and taxing people from the passage but only providing care four or five years after passage. They will get a four or five year head start on the money in order to pay for it. You cannot sustain a program where you have to tax for ten years to provide for five. The first ten years where actual health care is provided will cost at least 2.5 trillion dollars. They are using budget voodoo to fool the public.

The government claims it will save money by eliminating fraud in Medicare. If they could eliminate the fraud why have they not done it up to this point? How about they take a few years and eliminate the fraud and let us see the results before they try to get us on board with their health plan? The government has 98 billion dollars of fraud this year (and it is not over) with most of it being in Medicare.

Shouldn’t we expect them to have concern for this and to be addressing it with or without the reform they want?

Regardless of the costs, government cannot run the health care program because it will be a disaster. We already know that they cannot run Medicare and that it is rife with fraud. They have admitted that the fraud is there but they have done nothing to end it in the entire time it has existed. This is because government is wasteful and is not very good at oversight.

Case in point, Recovery.gov, the website that was designed solely to track the stimulus. It was supposed to be a transparent way for Americans to see how the money was being spent and how many jobs are being created. I know they claim to report jobs saved but that is a nonsensical item that cannot be tracked or quantified. There is no way to determine a “saved” job. I discount any saved job as a lie.

The government website is full of inaccuracies and probably lies. I say lies because all of the errors that have been caught were errors of over reporting. If there were mistakes one would expect that some of them would be under reporting. After the initial issues with the site the government spent 18 million dollars to revamp it. For 18 million dollars they should be able to buy a server farm with enough bandwidth to stream a concert to 1000 people and still have money left over to pay someone who knows how to be accurate when reporting. That seems like an awful lot of money for a website. Do they have the entire graduating class of MIT working on it?

The government could not get the website to work (which might mean they could not hide the lies well enough) so they spent 18 million to make it better. It still is not working because they are reporting jobs created in districts that do not exist. The reports of jobs created are being shot down time and again by the likes of ABC news and the entire project has done nothing to instill confidence in the government’s ability. One would think that with the kind of money they spent and the talent they can hire they would get it right.

But they did not. So they did what government always does when a plan fails. They threw more money at it and it still failed.

If the government is unable to spend 787 billion dollars on a stimulus and track that money as well as the jobs created then how are they going to run health care? The stimulus program has fraud that has been reported, fraud they acknowledge is inherent in a program of this size. The size pales in comparison to the health care takeover so how much ineptitude and fraud will that have? I know that Obama and his party claim they will end the fraud but they have failed to do so thus far with Medicare and they could not stop it in the stimulus. I have read they are considering another stimulus. Like with the website, they will throw more money at a failed program.

Imagine the amount of fraud that will accompany their health care reform. The reform will be much larger than Medicare and it has billions in fraud. The reform is much larger than the stimulus and it has billions in fraud. How many billions of dollars in fraud will result from their health care takeover plan?

Government is not able to run a simple website that it spent a whopping $18 million on and it is unable to stop the fraud in Medicare. It is also unable to track recovery money accurately or to prevent fraud in that program.

What moron believes that government will do better with health care?

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.

Those three words more accurately describe nearly all government programs. Why would any sane person put one sixth of our economy in their hands?

I encourage you to visit Recovery.Gov. You paid over 18 million for it, you own it, so you might as well use it.

But don’t believe anything you read there.

**I incorrectly stated that the website cost 18 Billion dollars when it was Million. Each occurrence was changed. Thanks to commenter Mike for pointing out the mistake.

Oh Boy! How’s that stimulus working out for all you Americans out of work? Seen any “created” jobs lately? Not many, unless you are Chinese- they are getting a large part of stimulus cash to make wind turbines and sell them to the “Gwai-loh”, or barbaric Americans. That’s right, instead of keeping the manufacturing jobs of building the wind turbines and blades here at home, where jobs would actually have been created, (can’t have that- how are you supposed to keep people believing that they are victims, if you help them?), the administration has chosen to send all that money and jobs overseas, where it helps us not at all.

A consortium of Chinese and American companies announced a joint venture Thursday to construct a massive 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using wind turbines manufactured in China.

$1.5 billion wind farm would be funded largely by Chinese financiers, with an assist from the United States government in the form of loan guarantees and grants from the federal stimulus package.

“This wind farm project came about thanks to the openness of the United States for investments in the field of renewable energy,” said John Lin, the chief operating officer of Shenyang Power Group, an industrial group in China focused on renewable energy projects.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

No, actually the project came about because our feckless leader is a traitor who lies as easily as waking up- all of these jobs could have stayed here in the US, but since we (actually Nobama’s administration) owe China sooooooooooooooo much money, the pressure was applied, and everyone in the WH began learning Mandarin- all the better for talking whilst being bent over and driven to Shanghai by the Chinese.

“Created or saved jobs”- the big lie. There are no jobs created here by this venture- certainly no manufacturing jobs. I would think the unions would be howling with outrage- they certainly would if this was done by Dubya. But since they have been getting stroked by the WH for the last several years, like lizards rubbed on the belly, it may take them awhile to wake up.

According to a recent article in The New York Times by Keith Bradsher, China required 80 percent of the materials used to construct its first solar power plant earlier this year come from China.

Foreign manufacturers of wind turbines have struggled to gain entry into the Chinese market, Mr. Bradsher reported.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

Well, in this instance, it is not the Chinese market that we are trying to “enter”- it is our own, and we should be able to do this better, with more innovation, and keep the jobs at home. We could do this, but noooooooooooooo.

Instead, (perhaps because all the WH loves Mao) the Chinese get the lion’s share of the work. And as for jobs, well, I will let this article say it all-

The project would mark the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States market, according to the vice mayor of the city of Shenyang, Yang Yazhou, who spoke at a news conference announcing the joint venture.

The farm is to be built on 36,000 acres in western Texas — an exact location was not specified — and will use 240 2.5-megawatt turbines manufactured in China. Construction is expected to begin next March. The project will create an estimated 300 temporary construction jobs, and 30 permanent jobs.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

300 temporary jobs and 30 permanent jobs. Somehow, I believe if we were manufacturing these turbines ourselves, there might be more than just *30* permanent jobs. That is not very many, even by the White House’s dubious accounting methods of “saved” jobs. And you know that a bunch of the 300 temporary jobs will go to illegal aliens- that’s a given, considering who is in the White House.

All in all, this deal benefits a select few, most of them either Chinese, or the leeches in the administration, like Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of GE, who gets a cut of this deal. 

The turbines for the Texas wind farm, although slated for construction in China, will use technology from the United States and Europe, including a turbine designed by German wind power manufacturer Fuhrlander and gear box design by General Electric.

greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com

Yes, in most logical societies, Jeffery Immelt’s being inside the WH should disqualify him and/ or his company from deals involving him and the government- a conflict of interest, you see. If this was Haliburton and Cheney, the howls of outrage would be heard coast to coast, but not from this liberal crowd- they can’t see the hypocrisy here.

When it comes to liberal hypocrisy, they are blind, deaf, and dumb.