Archive for the ‘property values’ Category
November 14th, 2011 | 
Author: Early Jobs Projections Could Haunt Obama in 2012 – NYTimes.com
thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com11/4/11
Friday's tepid jobs report brings a fresh reminder of the stubborn difficulty President Obama and his team face in overcoming the argument that his administration has failed to address unemployment.
Droves Of Democrats Balking On Obama 2012 | Politicons
politicons.net11/14/11
Radioactive Obama… Politico has a piece highlighting the droves of Democrats that are refusing to back Obama in 2012. …
Just one year from the 2012 election and President Obama is in an extremely perilous political situation.
The poor economy he inherited hasn’t recovered and has most likely worsened.
Published unemployment is stuck above 9% with real unemployment being around 18.5%
Long-term unemployment is at record post-war levels.
The housing sector, where most people’s personal wealth was and is concentrated, remains mired in deep recession.
The scandals surrounding Republican-led investigations into Solyndra and Operation Fast and Furious are deepening.
Obama Had Overwhelming Majorities In Both Houses Of Congress
Although the President had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress in his first two years, he has only two major legislative achievements to his credit:
The stimulus bill.
And Obamacare.
The stimulus bill is generally perceived as having been worse than a total failure, because it’s perceived as having been motivated more by politics than economics, and because much of the $800 billion was directed towards public service union members and liberal causes; i.e. "green energy", rather than real economic recovery.
Obamacare also remains deeply unpopular with the general public and is headed for the Supreme Court, which could well find its key provision unconstitutional next summer, just as the election gets into high gear.
The Economy And America’s Status
Budget deficits soared during the Obama years, with three trillion-dollar-plus deficits in a row.
And this has caused the national debt to swell to a level that, relative to GDP, has not been seen since the end of World War II and for the first time ever, the United States lost its AAA credit rating, which was a deep embarrassment for the country and also the administration.
Obama’s Ratings
So it shouldn’t be surprising that under these circumstances, that the President’s approval ratings have been in sharp decline, with some of his key supporting groups, including the youth and Hispanic voters to a greater or less degree abandoning him.
Obama’s Re-electability
No recent President was re-elected with unemployment above 7.8%, and that was in 1984, when unemployment was falling rapidly as a major economic boom accelerated.
So What Happened?
How did a man who three years ago won a higher percentage of both the popular and electoral vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide almost fifty years ago find himself fighting such uphill odds to keep the White House?
The answer to that seems to lie in the somewhat exceptional circumstances that existed during the 2008 election, and Barack Obama’s personality which fitted the times.
In 2008, the American electorate was thoroughly tired of both the Bush administration and the Republican Party, which had lost its majority in Congress in 2006 for the first time in twelve years.
The Republican field of presidential candidates in 2008 was a weak one, with the eventual winner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, widely perceived as being too old for the job.
So Obama, who was only forty seven years old, seemed in contrast, like a breath of fresh air.
He seemed personable, articulate (nobody had yet focused on his TelePrompTer) and he was the first ever bi-racial candidate for a major-party nomination with any serious chance of winning.
His biggest opposition was Sen. Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate who also had a serious chance of winning, but she was already well known to the American people, having been First Lady for eight years; and she carried a lot of baggage from her husband’s administration.
Obama, in contrast, was a blank slate and to some extent still is because of the main stream media which is still protecting him.
Obama Hid His Tracks
Obama only served a little over three years in the US Senate, where his record was thin, and he mostly voted "present” rather than take a stand on issues.
Which we can now see was because he didn’t want evidence that could later be used against him.
How Obama Won
The Obama campaign used his lack of Washington experience to the fullest, much like Herman Cain is using his now.
They cultivated an image of a new kind of president, one who would cut through the old Washington merry-go-round of partisan bickering and special-interest pandering.
He would be post-partisan, a President who would throw the special-interest moneychangers out of the temple of the nation’s capital.
Obama’s biggest advantage in the 2008 election however, was that the mainstream media, failed to reveal any of his major negatives, such as having been and active member of the New Party (communist) and promoted all of his seeming positives; simply because it so desperately wanted to see an extreme left-wing, bi-racial candidate elected.
So What Happened To Candidate Obama’s Promises?
Running for President and being President, are two entirely separate matters however, and once in the White House a new Obama emerged, one who was quite different from the post-partisan, special-interest-bashing one.
What metamorphosed, was a hyper-liberal ideologue who attended to his special interests, such as labor unions, as assiduously as any other Washington politician had ever done before.
And what’s more, an arrogance and a rigidity that had not been seen in the candidate before, became increasingly evident, and expressed itself in such things as his State of the Union speech in January 2010, wherein he publicly criticized the Supreme Court, many of whose members were sitting in front of him for one of its decisions, which was totally unprecedented behavior.
Soon Gone Was The Bi-Partisanship
"I won the election”, he bluntly told Rep. Paul Ryan when the latter tried to negotiate regarding Obamacare, and it resulted in his two major pieces of legislation passing with almost no Republican votes in either house.
The Tea Party
What happened next was a groundswell of opposition to the Obama administration’s big spending ways which quickly became known as the Tea Party, and it’s something that Obama naively or arrogantly ignored for too long.
Obama Vainly Ignored The Clear Writing On The Wall
Republican candidates did extremely well in the off-year elections of 2009, winning the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia with control-the-spending campaigns, and even greater evidence of voters’ dissatisfaction was when Scott Brown, who was a little known Republican, won the special election to fill the Senate seat of Democratic icon Ted Kennedy in deep-blue Massachusetts in January, 2010.
Obama Has Been Slow To Learn
Obama simply made a few token political adjustments, and in November, 2010, a tidal wave election gave decisive control of the House back to the Republicans and added seven Senate seats to their column, with Republicans also winning races for governor and state legislative seats across the width and breadth of the country.
Obama did admit that he had taken a shellacking, but he seems no more willing to change his ways than before because his latest plan to stimulate the economy is little different than his first one, and it has no chance of being enacted.
Can Obama Win Reelection?
Unlikely unless:
The economy turns around.
The Republicans nominate another weak candidate, which is possible.
The Supreme Court upholds Obamacare, or avoids making a decision before the election.
Obama’s biggest problem however seems to be that he’s totally egocentric and believes that his way is the only right way.
It’s highly unlikely that he’ll change, and increasingly likely that he’ll be a one term president, which is something that he said that he’d prefer.
"I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president".
And if that comes to be, then he’ll be able to say that he was right about that too!
Posted in 'bad bank', 2012, administration, bailout, banking system, congress, crisis, deficits, economy, environment, financial system, government, Hilary Clinton, job losses, jobless benefits, jobless rate, jobs, layoffs, Lobbying, paper trail, politics, polls, president, presidential elections, property values, recession, Senate, stimulus package, transparency, Unemployed, Unemployment, unemployment rate, US banking, US banks, US economy, Washington, welfare, White House | 
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Herman Cain's 999 Plan Draws Praise, Skepticism – Finance – CBN …
Cain's 999 plan is part of what's propelled him to the front of the GOP field. Although the plan is resonating with voters, it's drawing criticism from economists.
Publish Date: 10/15/2011 2:00
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/finance/2011/October/Herman-Cains-999-Plan-Draws-Praise-Skepticism/
Herman Cain's 999 plan sounds catchy, but where does healthcare …
medcitynews.com10/14/11
Herman Cain wants to allow health insurance premiums to be tax deductible; he also wants a 9 percent tax for individuals. Read more on healthcare in politics.
Herman Cain is the only GOP presidential candidate that wants to do it, and he’s rising super fast in the opinion polls!
The 999 Plan Isn’t Perfect
But like they say,
"Good should never be the enemy of the perfect" – Voltaire
and Rep. Paul Ryan just gave the plan a thumbs-up!
Art Laffer agrees and says,
"It would be far, far better than the current system".
*Arthur Betz Laffer is an American economist who first gained prominence during the Reagan administration as a member of Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–1989).
And Chris Chocola, the president of the free-market Club for Growth, calls it,
"A truly revolutionary tax reform that would amount to a massive job-creating tax cut on investments, savings and income".
What Is Cain’s 999 Plan?
A 9% income-tax rate.
A 9% value-added net sales tax rate on business.
And a 9% national sales tax overall.
The sales tax part has come under attack from both sides of the political spectrum with many conservatives worrying that it will start at 9% and gradually get raised, whilst a good number of Liberals oppose it because they say its regressivity will hurt middle- and low-income people.
* A regressive tax imposes a greater burden, relative to resources, on the poor than on the rich because there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer’s ability to pay as measured by assets, consumption, or income.
Cain’s Rebuttal Of Sales Tax Criticism
Everybody below the poverty line will be exempt from the sales-tax and the sales of existing goods will be exempt.
The sales tax will pick up revenue and help to lower the rate for everybody, especially the middle class.
And Cain’s economic adviser, Rich Lowrie says that.
"The sales tax is a replacement tax, not an add-on tax like you’d find at the state level. This is a key point. All we are doing is pulling out taxes that are invisible. We’re cutting the rates. We’re putting them back in at lower rates".
Lowrie is referring to the payroll tax, which in the Cain plan will go from 15% to 9% which constitutes a net tax cut and a good deal more transparency regarding costs and prices that are embedded in the current code.
"The 9-9-9 plan will add $2 trillion to U.S. gross domestic product, create 6 million jobs, increase business investment by a third and lift wages by 10%. And if you fold all that growth together, federal revenues go up by 15%", said Lowrie,
Would It Work?
Such a gigantic drop in marginal tax rates for individuals, 35 to 9%, or to 18% including the sales tax, and for businesses also from 35 to 9% would supply an incredibly strong economy-wide growth incentive, and if you’re looking for proof, then you need go no further than the Harding-Coolidge-Mellon tax cuts of the 1920s, the John F. Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s and the Ronald Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s.
Remember, too, that the Cain tax plan would eliminate the double-tax on saving and investment by removing capital gains, estates and dividends from the tax code.
Given the current economic malaise, which in large part can be traced to the weakened balance sheets and net worths of families suffering from the multi-year slump in stock prices and home values, increasing returns to saving and investment through a much lower marginal tax rate should boost asset values, and might be just what the doctor ordered.
As for businesses, not only would they get a globally super-competitive 9% tax rate, but they’d receive 100% expenses for new purchases of capital equipment.
Gary and Aldona Robbins who once worked at the treasury priced out the Cain plan on a static basis and discovered it to be revenue neutral.
And the models suggests a $26 trillion tax base yielding $2.3 trillion in revenue for a 9.1% overall rate.
No Federal Or State Tax But Just A Sales Tax
I’ve personally yet to have anybody to explain to me why simply having a sales tax instead of ALL the other taxes wouldn’t be fairer.
The rich would spend more than the poor and therefore pay more tax, and what could be simpler than that?!
Tax preparers understandably hate the idea of course because simply having just a sales tax would put around 100,000 out of work.
Posted in 2012, administration, bubble, budget, business, crisis, depression, economists, economy, finance, financial, financial crisis, financial system, government, Herman Cain, politics, polls, presidential elections, property values, recession, retail sales, statistics, taxes, US economy, Washington |
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