The economy may be slowly recovering, but that’s in spite of — not because of — the recent orgy of federal spending. Two economics professors, Tim Conley and Bill Dupor, concluded this month that the $800 billion stimulus package wiped out a million private-sector jobs, destroying a net 550,000 jobs. (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus package, created 450,000 government jobs, partly offsetting the million private-sector jobs it wiped out.) “The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries,” they say.
The stimulus package was earlier criticized by many leading economics professors, like Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron, Robert Barro, and Martin Feldstein. Professor Barro called it “the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.” Nobel laureates Gary Becker and Vernon Smith have also criticized it. 200 economists signed a statement publicly opposing the stimulus package.
While pushing the stimulus package through Congress, Obama cited claims by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that it would save jobs in the short run, while ignoring the CBO’s own conclusion that the stimulus package will actually shrink the economy over the long run, by increasing the national debt and thus crowding out private investment. Contrary to the CBO’s findings, Obama claimed that “irreversible decline” would occur if the stimulus was not enacted into law.
Obama has run up the largest budget deficits in history, running monthly deficits that are bigger than Bush’s entire annual deficit for 2007, after the economy started to go south.
“Stimulus” packages that increase government spending don’t work, notes Harvard economist Robert J. Barro in the Wall Street Journal.
The administration claimed that Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.
Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worse in the recession.
Obama claimed his stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from falling into an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly admitted that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package subsidized lots of government waste and corruption.
Obama’s welfare-filled stimulus package largely repealed welfare reform. That will result in lower employment and a smaller economy over the long run.
Earlier this year, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, affecting his access to stimulus money.
The stimulus package imposes on state governments wasteful racial set-asides and union-backed prevailing-wage requirements. The prevailing-wage requirements will cost $17 billion. Racial set-asides are very costly.
Economies are like children: they naturally grow, unless they are subjected to especially severe abuse and neglect by the government. So the U.S. economy will turn around by November 2010, despite Obama’s economic mismanagement and wasteful spending.
But long-run economic growth is likely to be much slower thanks to his harmful economic policies, which will massively increase the national debt even while raising taxes.
The Washington Examiner today declared Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, a top adviser to Obama and likely future Assistant Attorney General, to be the “dim bulb” of the day for his racially-charged remarks branding America as a racist country:
“During an Oct. 25 panel discussion on race at Harvard, this top Barack Obama adviser said the U.S. should still be considered a racist nation even if the Illinois Senator is elected to the White House because Obama ‘happens to be biracial.’ So even if a majority of Americans vote for him, it won’t count. WHY IT’S DIM: Ogletree’s comments conjured up the discredited ‘one drop rule’ laws adopted by many Southern states during the Jim Crow era that were used to segregate the races. CURE: Take Martin Luther King Jr.’s advice and judge people by their character, not their color.” (Washington Examiner, Oct. 31, 2008, at page 15).
Even if you vote for Obama, you’re still probably a racist, according to Professor Ogletree. White America won’t vote for blacks, Ogletree argues, and Obama’s election is possible only because he’s partly white. Even Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in his endorsement of Obama, was more optimistic about race relations than Ogletree.
The ABA Journal predicts that Ogletree, who has long advocated race-based reparations, will be the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration.
Ogletree is controversial for his history of plagiarism and association with Al Sharpton.
Even if you vote for Obama, you’re still probably a racist, according to Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, in his remarks at recent events like a panel discussion at my alma mater. Ogletree, Obama’s top advisor on race issues, explains that since Obama is “biracial,” his election won’t prove that racism has receded. White America won’t vote for blacks, Ogletree argues, and Obama’s election is possible only because he’s partly white. The ABA Journal predicts that Ogletree, who has long advocated race-based reparations, will be the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration.
Ogletree has blamed America for 9/11. Legal commentator Walter Olson notes that Ogletree has attracted controversy over his association with Al Sharpton and history of plagiarism.
On October 31, the Washington Examiner declared Charles Ogletree a “dim bulb” for his racially-charged remarks.
Ironically, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has effusively praised Obama, had a different take on Obama’s white ancestry.
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