Why Obama Can't Create Jobs (or Money: It's Not Just for Democratic Fundraisers)

Sometimes clarity comes at the strangest hours. Tonight it happened when I fell asleep after enjoying a few libations while watching Anthony Bourdain's entertaining travel + food + booze show on the Travel Channel. If you've ever watched Anthony Bourdain's show before, you know he has a way of speaking plainly and saying exactly what's on his mind. Abrasive? Sure. But that's how the truth rolls sometimes.

Taking a cue from Mr. Bourdain's style of breaking down basic absurdities, I began to dissect President Obama's speech in Kansas the other day, you know the one where he said the economy has gotten too efficient to employ human beings and blamed the internet, ATMs, and technology in general for his three year reign over the worst streak of unemployment since the Great Depression, pining instead for the days of elevator operators, full service gas stations, and switchboards.

The president delivered his words where Teddy Roosevelt gave a famous (and often misunderstood) speech over 100 years ago, but I don't think we were expecting Mr. Obama to also champion the technology from that era. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn Osawatomie was Native American for "Soviet style economic planning." So much for winning the future.

As Pundette eloquently pointed out, Obama basically spent 30 minutes "lamenting that unions aren't strong enough to force buggy whip manufacturers to give raises to their employees." And who doesn't wonder what happened to all those great buggy driving jobs? They must have gone overseas to cheap labor.

If his speech clarified one thing, it's the president's complete failure to understand job creation. Having never worked in the private sector, he has no idea why jobs exist in the first place. Seriously. Someone should ask him - what is the point of employment?

If you listen to Mr. Obama, you are likely to think the purpose of a job is to provide someone with work. It's not. Nor is it to provide someone with benefits or to ensure every family gets to own a house. The point of a job is to make money, usually for someone else, and unless you are self-employed, that usually means a corporation. If the employer can't make a profit as a result of your labor, they won't hire you. If your labor loses them money, you aren't worth employing. And if government regulations make hiring more expensive, fewer jobs are created. It's really that simple.

But when the leader of the free world demonizes profits, when successful businesses are called greedy, when corporations that do most of the hiring are told they are not paying their fair share, when the private sector is told there will be a time to profit later, you end up with a business environment that stinks. Obamanomics discourages job growth and encourages stink. Period. Unless the government is doing all the hiring (and that's called Communism), you need profitable companies to hire productive workers who will increase profitability, allowing for the creation of even more corporations.

Computers, technology, ATMs, machinery, and the internet all increase productivity. They make businesses more productive and hence, more profitable. Therefore, "greedy corporations" can grow and keep hiring. I know, how dare they. Today's progressive, not too far removed from Marxism, will tell you corporations should only exist to serve at the government's whim.

Jobs aren't just for keeping people busy. The fact President Obama fails to grasp this simple economic reality is why we have a failing economy with such an anemic recovery. Mr. Obama can't create jobs, because like most leftists, he's never understood the purpose of work in the first place. He thinks hiring 10,000 people to dig a ditch and handing them all a spoon is the key to full employment. That's how we got a trillion dollars of wasted stimulus.

A president who values employment has to value profit, and Mr. Obama has proven himself incapable. There will be no job recovery until he is out of the White House.

Too Green to Fail: Crony Capitalism in America II

Since President Obama came into office, the Department of Energy has become a piggy bank for some of the wealthiest venture capitalists in the world, a money-pumping machine that rewards the richest of the rich with multi-million dollar grants and loans under the guise of green energy. So far the DOE has awarded $20 billion in government handouts, far exceeding what the private sector spent on green energy according to the DOE's own website, and plans to hand out as much as $38 billion.

While most people recognize the potential benefits of green energy, dispersing billions to billionaires to create "green jobs" has failed to live up to any measurable standard. In fact, when government intervenes in a crowded industry of for-profit startups and strips away risks for some investors at the expense of others, that's the very definition of crony capitalism.  Even more troubling, it suggests corruption by an administration that is willfully using taxpayer money to only prop up businesses with ties to the president.

Everyone is familiar with the case of Solyndra, which we already covered in detail, but Solyndra isn't an isolated incident. As government auditors pointed out last summer, The Energy Department's loan guarantee program "has treated applicants inconsistently, favoring some and disadvantaging others." At what point do we start to recognize a pattern of corruption and call out the president for these continued conflicts of interest?

Take the Sunshot Awards. On September 1, the DOE announced $145 million dollars in government grants awarded to companies with investments in solar energy. Being grants, this money that does not have to be paid back. It is, in essence, corporate welfare. Winners of the Sunshot Award this year include GE, Solexel, and Dow Chemical. All three have strong ties to the Obama administration. GE, in particular, has been under the spotlight recently, given a NY Times article reporting that the multi-billion corporation paid no federal taxes last year despite earning billions in profits.

GE is led by Jeffrey Immelt, who also heads President Obama's Jobs Council and has a cozy enough relationship with the commander-in-chief to indulge in international travel on Air Force One. So it was no surprise to see Immelt sitting in the House Chamber as a special guest of the president when he touted his second stimulus, or $447 billion jobs bill, which promises to send more grants and corporate welfare Mr. Immelt's way.

President Obama, of course, has spent the better half of the year criticizing those who make hefty profits for not paying their "fair share", but apparently GE gets a waiver from this administration, just like all those waivers being handed out by the HHS to exempt companies from complying with the egregious costs of Obamacare. If the president is upset GE didn't pay more taxes given their profit margin, the least he could do is stop handing them free money. And yet the DOE awarded millions in corporate welfare to the under-taxed GE, collected, ironically, from American companies and individuals who did meet their tax obligations and pay their "fair share."

Dow Chemical is another Sunshot grant winner with deep ties to the Obama administration. Their CEO, Andrew N. Liversis, has been labeled "Obama's Aussie" and sat on the president's Export Council before being appointed co-chair of the president's Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (which brings with it another $500 million of U.S. government investment). He has visited the White House at least 18 times. As a token of his appreciation, Andrew Liversis has already endorsed Obama's $447 billion Baby Stimulus (or Porkulus II), one of the few CEOs to do so, and just weeks after receiving his company's grant.

Cynics may shrug their shoulders at these instances of cronyism and insider deals, but it's important to recall President Obama ran as a different kind of candidate who was going to "lead the most transparent administration in our nation's history." Even now, the president continues to blast special interests and lobbyists who demand special deals, but as Solyndra, GE, and Dow Chemical have proven, the president is encouraging these very deals behind closed doors. This administration is bought and paid for by Big Business, and vice versa.

All of which leads to Solexel, another California solar company like Solyndra. Solexel received $13 million from President Obama's DOE, which is fine and dandy except that surprise! the investors behind this company include two of President Obama's biggest fundraiser, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (which also has ties to Al Gore), and Steve Westly of The Westly Group, who bundled half a million dollars for the president's campaign and sat on the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Panel.

Steve Westly wrote about the underlying spoils of his privileged position on his website in 2010, bragging, "We believe that with the Obama administration, and other governments … committing hundreds of billions of dollars to clean tech, there has never been a better time to launch clean tech companies. The Westly Group is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this surge of interest and growth."

Uniquely positioned indeed. Like Mr. Liversis, Mr. Westly has also vocally supported the president's $447 billion "jobs plan", no doubt expecting billions of the second stimulus to land squarely where the first stimulus did - in his wallet. Mr. Westly has already pocketed $500 million from the Department of Energy for his investment in Tesla, which manufactures and sells high-end electric cars to millionaires.

If you want to see what greasing the wheels of crony capitalism will do for a president's re-election efforts, just watch the clip below as venture capitalist Steve Westly gushes over everything Obama has done for him. This is a man who won't give an on-camera interview to ABC News to answer questions about how so much taxpayer money just happens to find its way to his pockets, but he certainly isn't camera shy when it comes to praising his sugar daddy in the White House. Heck, he can probably even afford to throw some of that free government money back at the president's re-election campaign. What? You say he already has? No kidding.

None of this is by accident. It's a pattern. And not surprisingly, it's terrible for the economy, as those with rich connections get richer while an increased regulatory climate squeezes small businesses and entrepreneurs from hiring and investing. Meanwhile, private sector dollars follow the path of least resistance, investing where government protects them from risk - i.e. inefficient government projects.

We are now on the brink of a double dip recession. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is asleep at the wheel while President Obama and his cronies take the rest of us to the cleaners.

President Gutterball

In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama showed off his bowling skills on the campaign trail by scoring an embarrassing low 37. Granted, he gave up after the 7th frame or he might have broken 50. But even more telling were the words he used to shrug off his performance, reassuring voters that he did indeed know what he was doing:

"My economic plan is better than my bowling," Obama told fellow bowlers at the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center.

Three years in, the results say otherwise. His economic policy, which is nothing more than borrowing obscene amounts of money to throw at government, has been one gutterball after another. Here is an up-to-date snapshot of the president's economic scorecard:


Unemployment: 9.2%
Underemployed: 16.5%
Total Debt Added: Over $4 trillion
Current GDP Growth: 0.9%
Debt to GDP Ratio: 90%
Average Annual Deficit: $1.4 trillion
Credit Rating: Downgraded (first time in U.S. History)
Dow Jones: Negative for the year, Down 19% since April
Budgets Proposed: 1 (Defeated 97-0)


None of this has stopped Barack Obama from squeezing in 80 rounds of golf or his wife from taking lavish vacations while the American worker watches their retirement savings go down the drain. I don't suppose they'll be any bowling at Martha's Vineyard next week, do you? Lawn bowling, perhaps?


Barack Obama pretended to be a bowler and failed. Now he pretends to care about spending and deficits, pretends to want to compromise, pretends his stimulus saved and created jobs, pretends the government made money on the auto bailouts, pretends to want a military victory in Afghanistan, pretends to have quit smoking, pretends to be from Ireland, and generally pretends to govern (although apparently he has given up pretending to care about the economic damage being done by his policies).

President Obama is as ineffective leading our nation as he was at rolling strikes.

The Debt March: A Dialogue in Absurdity

Setting: Anywhere in America where Fact Robots are prevalent.

Lefty: These terrorists are out to destroy America.

Fact Robot: It's true radical Islam poses a threat to society.

Lefty: What? No, you Islamophobe. I'm talking about Republicans and the tea party.

Fact Robot: I do not understand.

Lefty: These teabaggers are holding America hostage, refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

Fact Robot: America is running $1.5 trillion dollar deficits. Why would they want to borrow more money?

Lefty: If they don't, we can't pay our obligations. There could be a financial meltdown.

Fact Robot: Isn't $15 trillion dollars in debt already a financial meltdown?

Lefty: No, you don't get it. This is domestic terrorism. The markets will crash. Investors will lose confidence. The rest of the world will see America as a banana republic.

Fact Robot: You are saying America has to go further in debt in order to show that they are fiscally responsible?

Lefty: Exactly.

Fact Robot: Let me ask the question differently. You are saying America has to approve borrowing trillions of dollars more that the government can't afford to pay back to prove that the nation is serious about getting out of debt?

Lefty: Yes.

Fact Robot: That is illogical. Didn't you also say America had to pass the stimulus to keep unemployment below eight percent?

Lefty: The stimulus was a huge success.

Fact Robot: Current unemployment is 9.2% and has reached  as high as 10%. That does not meet your own criteria for success. Do you think it would be fiscally responsible for America to pass a budget?

Lefty: Of course.

Fact Robot: But America has not passed a budget in two years and the president's budget was rejected by the Senate 97-0.

Lefty: That's because the teabagger Republicans won't agree to tax increases.

Fact Robot: I don't see what tea bags have to do with it. Last year, Democrats refused to vote for these same tax increases, which would have kicked in automatically if they had not extended the Bush tax rates.

Lefty: The Bush tax cuts only favored the rich. Republicans are the party of millionaires.

Fact Robot: Then why did Democrats and the president pass legislation to keep them from expiring?

Lefty: To help the poor.

Fact Robot: Have you ever listened to your own arguments?

Lefty: The debt wasn't as large then. Now we have to raise taxes to shore up America's finances.

Fact Robot: If the president didn't pass the stimulus, the national debt would be reduced by one trillion dollars. This is the same amount of revenue Democrats are trying to raise with proposed tax increases on millionaires who make $250,000. One might conclude from this data that the president doesn't understand basic math and the stimulus hurt the American economy.

Lefty: No. The stimulus wasn't big enough. The poor are suffering while the rich get richer and all Republicans care about is fat-cat corporations. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to attend a $35,000 a plate fundraising dinner for President Obama, paid for using stimulus dollars he kindly granted my company.

Clinton's Phony Legacy

It certainly seemed strange this week to see Bill Clinton pressing for a tax compromise (along with President Obama) that prevented the tax rates from his presidency from coming back to fruition. After all, all we’ve heard for years from the center-left media and the Democratic Party is how great the economy was in the 1990’s as a result of Bill Clinton's tax hikes.

Well, with the tax rates expiring and going back to Clinton era levels without action by Congress, don’t we have a chance to test that very hypothesis? If it was the tax rates under Bill Clinton that led to good economic times (and a budgetary surplus), then why is the former president so dead-set against allowing them to go back to 1990 levels? Why is Bill Clinton avoiding the tax rates he put into place to instead endorse the tax rates created by George W. Bush? Will any Democrat remember this in a year and a half when they start clamoring for tax increases again?

I think we all know the truth. Bill Clinton’s economic legacy is a fraud. He got lucky in that 1) Republicans came to power in 1994 and forced spending cuts and welfare reform (I do give Clinton credit for signing that legislation) and 2) the dot.com bubble took place as the internet was developed and companies like google, yahoo, and amazon were created. Of course, the tech bubble later burst, but that was in the final four months of the Clinton presidency, overshadowed first by the Florida recount in a razor-close election and a year later by the tragic events of 9/11.

President Clinton is petrified of the truth, that his tax increases had nothing to do with the booming economy of the 1990’s, and he knows it’s a media myth that would be exposed by raising taxes in this economy with an attentive voting public. During bad times, the damage caused by tax hikes on families and businesses becomes evident. People feel the pain. In a good economy (and especially a bubble economy), the pain is camouflaged. In fact, there may be enough economic momentum to outlast the negative consequences of tax increases in the short term. In the long-term, however, tax hikes still aren’t good – even if they erase the deficit, because tax hikes stunt future growth and punish productivity.

The big news isn’t what Democrats or Republicans gained or gave up in pushing this tax compromise forward. The big news is President Obama and Bill Clinton endorsed George W. Bush’s tax rates over the Clinton tax rates. Incredible, if you think about it! For Obama, it improves his chances of getting re-elected, and for William Jefferson,  it protects his phony legacy.

If anyone is enjoying a “comeback” in Washington, I’m sorry Mr. Krauthammer, but it’s not President Obama. It’s George W. Bush.

Creating an Economy of Abundance

We live in an economy of attrition brought on by a progressive and abusive income tax scheme. The average American goes out and creates wealth, either by working or starting a business, and before he or she can even bring home the fruits of their labor, the federal government steps in and takes a huge chunk. They force us to pay off the special interests in the swamps of D.C. before we are even allowed to take care of our own families. What we are allowed to keep is often a third less than what we earned, meaning we take home no money for almost two full days of work each week. In return, the government creates more entitlement programs that are guaranteed to cost us more in the long run, creating runaway debt and ensuring that funds are at a minimum when it comes time to collect our share of benefits.

This is not the freedom our founding fathers promised us. This is indentured servitude. This is why our economy is mired in anemic growth, high unemployment, and stagnant wages. We have constricted free enterprise with a bureaucratic empire of red tape and a tax code that's over 78,000 pages long. One in three dollars spent by businesses today goes toward paying accountants and lawyers to meet the onerous rules and regulations created by Washington. Many large corporations move overseas or find a way to pay smaller taxes in other countries rather than face the huge burden placed on their fiscal heath by Uncle Sam.

This ultimately leads to an attrition of wealth, and the evidence of this attrition in the United States today is everywhere. Fewer entrepreneurs create businesses, fewer venture capitalists take risks, fewer companies hire, fewer banks lend, fewer families spend money out and even fewer have savings left over, fewer nonprofits raise money, fewer churches build hospitals, fewer tax revenues come in locally, and fewer of the downtrodden receive the help they need. The more the government is allowed to confiscate, the more selfishly people hang on to what they have. The more laws that are created to seize assets, the more everyone finds tax shelters to skirt the letter of the law.

Possessions become more valuable in an economy of attrition. At the height of the Soviet Union, formed with the naive goal of creating a Worker’s Paradise where everything belonged to everybody, it became common for citizens to hide their most prized possessions from even their relatives, to steal from the state factories and farms where they worked, and even rarer to offer a helping hand to one’s neighbors, an act which could only arouse suspicions. 

Granting the state ever-increasing power to take more of our private property and to have a larger stake in the fruits of our labor is not only a peril to our freedom, but it costs us in goodwill towards men. To continue down this course is insanity. What we need, in fact what America once had as an advantage over the rest of the world, is an economy of abundance. An economy of abundance is built on the idea of free enterprise, private property free from government seizure, allowing the individual to keep more wealth with the understanding that he or she is more likely to share it, either by spending it in the local economy or donating it to the causes closest to their heart.

Imagine if you could create a permanent stimulus in which 30% more dollars circulated through the U.S. economy. This is not a pie in the sky idea. It’s the economy of abundance that would be created by abolishing the IRS and switching to a FairTax, and it’s the fastest, freest way to permanently jump start the economy to deliver an increase in real wages to workers. 

President Obama and the Democrats printed and borrowed a trillion dollars to pump into the economy in hopes of boosting GDP and easing us out of a recession. The idea of this so-called stimulus was more money circulating through more hands and businesses would create jobs. The reason it failed so miserably isn’t because a trillion dollars was pumped into circulation, but because it was pumped into pet projects and left wing causes by politicians completely detached from anything greater than their own self interest.

What if that same trillion dollars wasn’t steered from the government downward to the select few with ties to the ruling class, but instead flowed upward from the people? By taxing individuals on what they consume voluntarily, rather than confiscating what they earn, the FairTax pumps more money through the economy. Instead of the current tax system sucking a trillion and a half dollars out of circulation and into the hands of government bureaucrats, removing money from the pockets of wage-earners and businesses before it can be spent, we let all that currency enter the market and exchange hands freely before we tax it. In doing so, we have created a permanent stimulus without the government having to print dollars or borrow money from China.

The FairTax usually gets a bad rap because it’s easy to mischaracterize and it takes more than a sound bite to explain. Thus, you get wild claims from career politicians addicted to exploiting the current tax scheme to curry favor with voting blocs and lobbyists that a FairTax will add 23% to the cost of everything you buy. This is completely bogus. Besides ignoring the advantages of workers getting to keep every dime they earn, this claim ignores the embedded taxes currently configured into the price of goods and services, which amount to approximately 22% of the cost. By abolishing the IRS and eliminating corporate taxes, you drive the cost of all products down. It's a win-win situation for everyone except the politicians.

We’ve only had an income tax in this country for the past 100 years, and it took a constitutional amendment to institute such an invasion of privacy and abuse of power. It was not part of the vision of our founding fathers, and for good reason. To argue its existence as necessary would suggest America couldn’t succeed and thrive for our first 140 years. But of course we did just fine, and states like Texas continue to prove that not having an income tax leads to a more accountable government, higher quality of living, job creation, freedom to innovate, unprecedented population growth, and a general abundance of wealth.