HOPEY-CHANGEY: Under Obama, only the richest 10 percent saw incomes rise. “Under President Obama, the richest 10 percent were the only income group of Americans to see their median incomes rise, according to a survey released this week by the Federal Reserve. . . . The survey also found that family in the middle income bracket (40th to 90th percentiles) saw “very little” change in average real incomes and still have not recovered losses from 2010 and 2007. Families at the bottom of the income distribution continued to see ‘substantial declines’ in average real incomes.”This savior of the middle class can't even get redistribution right.
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Friday, September 05, 2014
Is He A Liar, Or Just Incompetent?
I don't think he's smart enough to have planned this all along, so I'm going to go with incompetent.
Okay ... I think he's both incompetent AND a liar ...but to lay blame for the economy not rebounding under just regime is just as silly as blaming Bush for the crash, or giving Clinton credit for a good economy. The President has virtually no influence over the economy at all ... he can suggest things, but it's Congress that needs to enact them. So sure, Obama supported the ACA (which I believe will be very harmful to the economy), but Congress voted it in. And ... we complain about Congress, yet we keep re-electing the same people. For me, the deciding factors for President are foreign policy (where he has proved himself to be both a liar and incompetent), nomination of Supreme court Justices (and I've hated his choices, but ... I also hated Bush's), and general oversight of the executive branch (where the IRS, DOJ, and ICE problems once again show both lies and incompetence ...). So, while your premise is correct ... I think, in this case, you may be overestimating his powers.
ReplyDeleteThe president has no levers he can pull to make things happen, it's true, but he has a vast federal bureaucracy at his disposal that can. While presidents in general don't have *much* power to improve an economy, they can certainly do a lot of harm.
ReplyDeleteMy point in this post, which I stand by, is that his rhetoric isn't matched by the results--which anyone not blinded by his skin color and "lightbringer" status would have known would be the obvious result. But his results, in *every* facet of his job, have been disastrous. I'm hard pressed to think of one area in which it would be reasonable to say he was right or has done a good job.
He's an incompetent failure. His "fixes" haven't worked, and in fact have made things worse.
Max.
ReplyDeleteOne, please call it what it is. It's Obamacare, not the Affordable Care Act. Orwell is smiling. So if B Hussein Obama has not pushed this disaster he never read, if he had not signed it, it would not be an issue. So it's all his fault.
Two, the first two years of his regime he had supermajorities in both houses. That way be pushed in his "Stimulua Act" for "shovel ready jobs", of which 7% went for actual construction. The rest went to upgrade union pensions, study sex procedures in Africa, etc. And it also increased the base line of all these federal agencies. So he just blew trillions of dollars for nothing. Again, his fault. Don't forget Dodd-Frank, the beginning of the federalization of the banking industry. And the federalization of the student loan industry. And nationalization of the auto industry. Did I forget anything? Sorry, B Hussein has deliberately damaged the US economy and he really don't care.
Darren: ". I'm hard pressed to think of one area in which it would be reasonable to say he was right or has done a good job."
ReplyDeleteGetting elected is the one thing that comes to my mind. Getting re-elected could be an example, also.
Getting elected isn't one of the responsibilities of being president. If that were the standard, *every* president is a good one.
ReplyDeleteIf that's all you've got, you kinda prove my point.
Mike ... actually, it is the ACA, but I'm all in favor of mocking it by calling it Obamacare ... but that's more typing. Personally, I enjoy using ACA, because it highlights the irony that it actually ISN'T.
ReplyDeleteDarren, PResident's can propose things which do harm, as Obama has clearly done with the *ACA* but it still take Congress to enact it ...the only things I can think of in my lifetime, at least, that a President has done to directly benefit the economy are 1) the appointment and reappointments of Alan Greenspan to the Fed ... who did a consistently great job, and Bush coming out after 9/11 with his request for tax credits ... (enacted by congress) and his request that people spend them rather than save ... that move likely staved off a recession.
As to re-election ... yeah, he did, but he ran against yet another Republican cardboard cut out who couldn't even pronounce "Benghazi," apparently ... and ...most polls show that a large number of those who re-elected him have serious buyer's remorse...
I got a fantastic job during the Obama administration following the longest period of unemployment (16 months) that I have ever experienced in my life. Did I get the job BECAUSE of Obama? Hell no. I got it because a) I am a skilled professional and take pride in what I do, b) because a really rich man bought the company I would eventually go to work for and expanded the company, opening up over 100 jobs that did not previously exist. It had squat (no, make that less than "squat") to do with anything Obama did. Certainly not from any tax situation.
ReplyDelete