With presidential election season upon us, I thought I’d start a series of blog entries about it. Today it’s installment one of what I think will be a frequently revisited topic, “bullshit.” That is, things the election should not be about, but that seem to be getting a lot of attention.
President Obama apologizes for America when overseas.
Mitt Romney likes “being able to fire people.”
Obama thinks owners of successful businesses “didn’t build” them.
Mrs. Romney refers to Americans as “you people.”
All of these are bullshit. Various kinds of gotcha-isms. Not worth your time. Forget them. They may seem reasonable, even insightful, to some partisans, but not us, dear reader. We’re better than that. There are plenty of good reasons to vote for Mitt Romney or for Barack Obama–but these are not among them.
Undoubtedly new bullshit talking points will come up between now and November. Here’s a challenge: see how quickly you can spot them.
Upcoming posts may include more bullshit, but there will be other topics, too. After all, once we’ve identified what not to base our decisions on, we’re free to explore more substantive issues. Look for all of them under the tag “election 2012.”
How about calling both candidates, and all their promises, bullshit? Really. Does it matter if either of these guys wins?
Think back to four years ago:
Proponents of McCain warned that we’d basically be taken over by Muslims and that taxes and confiscation of private property would rise to something like old Soviet Union era.
The pro-Obama crowd promised that we’d overcome the recession, take the bankers to task for their actions, pull out of both wars, bring the troops home, all children would receive top notch educations, and nobody would ever go without health care again.
Obviously none of the above happened.
Voting for either of these guys will not make much of a difference in anyone’s life – no matter who wins. The hardships and triumphs of my life have had absolutely nothing to do with who was in office. I believe it’s this way for most people.
For rich folks to think they’ll be in the poor house because Obama wins, is just as absurd of a notion as poor people thinking they have no shot at a happy and productive life if Romney is in office. Believing otherwise strikes me as a really depressing way to live.
Does it matter if either of these guys wins?
I feel ya, David. Really. But the answer to this question is still yes.
I hoped for more from an Obama presidency, but his political style and the grave nature of the recession make the presidency of my dreams impossible. Still, we got movement on health care reform. And we ended the war in Iraq. We ended DADT. Feeble as it was, the Recovery Act saved millions of jobs and almost certainly saved us from a second great depression. The fact that he’s still raiding medical marijuana facilities and hasn’t given up any of the weird presidential powers grabbed by Bush and we don’t have a FDR-style jobs program is regrettable in my liberal mind. But I’ll take what I can get. It’s more than I would have gotten under a president McCain.
Besides, Romney scares me a little. He’s not a radical idelogue, that’s for sure. But he certainly is a political chameleon of the first order. I fear what today’s Republican party will do through him. He’s certainly not the kind of leader who’ll stand up to them or chart a new course for his party. The crazies will be in control once again. Last time we elected an innocuous-seeming Republican we got Bush. I rest my case.
Scott – Let’s look at some facts, no bullshit, that you can verify with a little online research, so I’m not providing all the sources. Below is Obama’s Economic Record for his first three years thru 12-18-2011. “Today” refers to an effective of 12-18-2011 and “Inauguration Day” refers to Obama’s first day in office. I believe some of the numbers have actually become worse since 12-18-2011 (i.e. gas prices and Federal Debt).
Unemployed Americans : Inauguration Day-12 million, Today-14 million, Change-Up 2 Million
Unemployment Rate: Inauguration Day-7.8%, Today-9.1%, Change- Up 17%
Gas Prices: Inauguration Day-$1.85, Today-$3.43, Change Up 85%
Federal Debt: Inauguration Day $10.6 trillion, Today-$14.7 Trillion, Change-Up 39%
Debt Per Person: Inauguration Day=$34,731, Today-$47,047, Change –Up $12,316
Misery Index: Inauguration Day-7.8, Today-12.9, Change-Up 65%
Food Stamp Recipients: Inauguration Day-32 million, Today-42 million, Change-Up 41%
Health Insurance Premiums: Inauguration Day-$3,354, Today-$4,129, Change-Up 23%
Home Values (Avg): Inauguration Day-$193,400, Today-$172,600, Change-Down 11%
US Global Competitiveness: Inauguration Day-1st, Today-5th, Change-Down 4 Places
Americans In Poverty: Inauguration Day-39.8 million, Today-46.2 million, Change-up 6.4 million
Many economists and financial forecaster are predicting a deeper recession next year. You may say that Obama inherited a really bad economy from Bush. If you are old enough to remember, Reagan inherited an equally bad economy from Carter; interest rates above 15%, etc. Reagan’s recovery produced job growth in 81 out of its first 82 months, with 20 million new jobs created over those 7 years, increasing the civilian workforce at the time by 20%. Even George W. Bush oversaw 52 consecutive months of job growth, including nearly 8 million new jobs created after his 2003 capital gains and dividends tax rate cuts became effective (which Obama is dedicated to reversing).
In a Wall Street Journal article on 7-30-2012 titled “Obama is obscuring the worst recovery since the Great Depression”, Edward Lazear, former Bush chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors notes “A graph titled ‘Private Sector Job Creation’ on the Obama-Biden campaign website… announces proudly that 4.4 million private sector jobs have been created over the past 28 months.” But that factoid is meaningless out of any context, more like a pediatrician boasting to you that under his care your 16-year-old son has grown to 4 feet 4 inches. At the same point during the Reagan recovery, the economy had created 9.5 million new jobs.”
Moreover, Lazear correctly adds, “there hasn’t been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office. That’s right, contrary to the Obama campaign’s misleading claim of 4.4 million new jobs created, total jobs today are still half a million less than in January 2009 when Obama entered office.”
Lazear continues, “Moreover, the unemployment rate, which we were told would not exceed 8% if we enacted Mr. Obama’s stimulus package…has never fallen below 8% during his presidency. The rate has averaged 9.2% since February 2009. In sharp contrast, after Bush’s tax rate cuts were all fully implemented in 2003, the economy created 7.8 million new jobs over the next 4 years and the unemployment rate fell from over 6% to 4.4%. We won’t see that again until Obama is out of office.” The real unemployment is closer to 10% if you include those who have stopped looking for jobs. If you include under-employed it’s closer to 14%. Ironically, double those numbers for the black community and triple the numbers for teenage and young adult black community.
Obama’s jobs record reflects the poor economic growth under his administration’s throwback, Keynesian economic policies. For all of last year, the economy grew by a paltry real rate of 1.7%, only about half America’s long-term trend. The average so far this year has been no better and predicted to be 1.5% or less for 2012. That dismal growth is further reflected in the Census Bureau reports of falling real wages under Obama, kicking median family income back over 10 years, with more Americans in poverty today than at any time in the more than 50 years that Census has been tracking poverty.
In contrast, in the second year of Reagan’s recovery, the economy boomed by a real rate of 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Real per capita disposable income increased by 18% from 1982 to 1989, meaning the American standard of living increased by almost 20% in those first 7 years of the Reagan boom alone. The poverty rate, which had started increasing during the Carter years, declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one-sixth from its peak. That is the proper comparison for Obama’s economic performance.
It is clear that government cannot spend its way out of recession (as already proven by the prolonged recovery created by Roosevelts Keynesian policies during the great Depression). The private sector, not government creates economic value adding jobs.
Obama is deflecting focus to class warfare and Romney tax returns, since his economic performance is is so terrible. If he was a CEO running a business he would have already been fired by the board of directors.
Let’s cut through all the bullshit on both sides and focus on how one of these candidates will get our economy back on track. If past performance is an indicator of future capability, Obama is definitely not the person.
Pretty much everything you just wrote is either wrong or misleading, Bill. I don’t accuse you of doing it deliberately. You’re just listening to people who are steering you wrong. My guess is you’ve been reading freerepublic.com–or the Romney campaign web site.
Your comments are quite lengthy. I’ll just pick a few items as examples.
First, “inauguration day”? The president’s actions and new policies could not possibly have been in place and having an effect until months months after this date. Unemployment claims have been dropping pretty steadily since February of 09, the most dramatic drops beginning in April. This is what I’m talking about:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/assets_c/2010/04/Unemployment%20Chart310-thumb-454×321-17963.jpg
The economy was shedding well over 700,00 jobs in December of 08 alone. You can’t turn a disaster like that around in a few weeks, man. But it did start turning around. Largely due to the president’s stimulus bill. Which, it goes without saying, could not possibly have had any effect until many months after his inauguration. Months in which the economy was in complete freefall through absolutely no fault of his administration or his policies.
Many economists and financial forecaster are predicting a deeper recession next year.
“Many”? How many? Not most, surely. The estimates I’ve been hearing are between 25% and 30% chance of another recession, no word on it being “deeper.”
You may say that Obama inherited a really bad economy from Bush.
“May”? Dude, he inherited the worst American economy in living memory.
Reagan’s recovery produced job growth in 81 out of its first 82 months, with 20 million new jobs created over those 7 years, increasing the civilian workforce at the time by 20%.
The economy in 1982 wasn’t nearly this bad. He didn’t inherit an economy that was losing 700,000 jobs per month. Obama did. And one important thing you’ll notice is that total government employment showed great gains during Reagan’s recovery. Not so, today. We’ve been laying off state and local government employees left and right because state tax revenue isn’t nearly enough to meet payroll–and the federal stimulus grants have run out ages ago. Public employment is down, private employment is up. If only we could have deficit-spent our way into increasing public employment the way they did in the 80s, we might have had that kind of recovery today.
the unemployment rate, which we were told would not exceed 8% if we enacted Mr. Obama’s stimulus package
The 8% thing was a prediction, not a promise. And it turns out the economy was far worse than anyone realized at that time.
contrary to the Obama campaign’s misleading claim of 4.4 million new jobs created, total jobs today are still half a million less than in January 2009 when Obama entered office.”
Contrary to Republican rhetoric, the economy has been losing fewer jobs–and then gaining them–since Obama took office. Think about what that means. It means the economy was still losing hundreds of thousands of jobs per month when he was sworn in. You don’t post job gains the very next month. Not unless you’re a magician. You continue losing jobs. You get some laws passed. Maybe they take a while to actually be put into effect. Maybe they take longer still to work. Then, the best you can hope for is that you’re losing fewer jobs. Then hopefully you’re losing fewer still. Finally you’re gaining them. And this is exactly–exactly–what the record shows. See the graph above.
It’s funny how all the numbers you have about the economy and employment, at no point do you seem to understand that Bush’s record on jobs is worse than Obama’s.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/the-drywall-chronicles/
It is clear that government cannot spend its way out of recession (as already proven by the prolonged recovery created by Roosevelts Keynesian policies during the great Depression).
Nonsense. It isn’t “clear” or “proven.” The reason the economy is growing so slowly, the reason we aren’t adding enough new jobs, is because demand is down. Mostly consumer spending, which constitutes over 70% of the economy. The reason people aren’t spending is because they’ve either lost their jobs, are afraid they might do so, and/or their debt has climbed sky high because their mortgage is underwater. If people can’t or won’t spend, you can’t fix it by giving tax cuts to wealthy people or by offering businesses super low interests rates with which to expand. They’d expand at any rate at all provided tehy had customers to sell to, which they don’t. The government must in this situation be the spender of last resort, propping up demand until the private sector sees a reason to hire to fill that demand.
I have tons more to say, but it’s very late and I have a 7:30 flight to catch in the morning. Rest assured I’ll be writing much more about the issue in the near future. I look forward to your thoughts on those posts.
Scott – Thanks for the in depth reply. The problem is we are both quoting sources biased towards one side the other (i.e. Washington Post = liberal, Wall Street Journal-conservative). You and I do not have the raw data, and the saying goes the third type of liar is the statistician; both sides are going to skew the numbers for unemployment. The Washington Post graph only goes out to Mar 2010. What are the numbers for 2011. I seem to remember a number of disappointing employment growth figures last year in the main stream news. Your other source (Krugman) looked just at the first quarter for Bush and Obama, what about the remaining 11 quarters for comparison? Neither is including the number of people that are no longer looking for jobs and the under-employed.
Some points
–“inauguration day” is a base point for comparison to three years into Obama’s term. I do not expect anyone to produce major results on day one, but Obama has been at it for three years!
–I lived, worked and looked for employment during the recession of the early 1980’s. The unemployment numbers were just as high, interest rates killed the housing and auto market. I remember new suburban homes in various stages of construction that were abandoned by developers and eventually boarded up and fenced off by the local municipalities. Owner financed contract mortgages were the only way to sell a house since mortgage rates were 14-17%. Detroit automotive barley survived, Iacocca brought Chrysler back from the edge with the K-frame. One the largest farm equipment and truck manufacturers went under – International Harvester after 125 years in business. The automotive industry survived only because they were still cash rich and at the beginning of their long decline with little foreign competition. The only difference I see in this recession was the near melt down of the US and global banking system from sub-prime derivatives. Reagan’s policies resulted in significant improvement after three years. JFK also followed the same policies (tax cuts) and his inherited recession showed major improvement before he was shot.
–I really don’t see what the stimulus accomplished other than balloon our federal debt. Please show me direct evidence that stimulus dollars increased permanent jobs, other than government employment and failed green start ups.
I do agree with your analysis- the reason people aren’t spending is because they’ve either lost their jobs, are afraid they might do so, and/or their debt has climbed sky high because their mortgage is underwater. There is little velocity in the money supply just for the reason above. The artificially low interest rates are not stimulating spending or capital investment (major part of job creation) and is killing the senior segment of our population living off interest bearing, low risk accounts. I still do not believe that imposing more taxes on the job creators (business and wealthy) is going to motivate them to invest their wealth. If you had $100M, would you want to take the risk to expand production or start a new business, especially with uncertainty surrounding the direction of the economy, the election and potential tax outcomes? It’s just safer to sit on the cash at a low but safe return for now. That’s exactly what Apple is doing.
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on your site. Unlike many other sites, you keep your replies civil and intelligent. We may not agree, but I enjoy the exchange!
Really? You? Starting a post to call out bullshit propoganda? Hardy har har har.
Heres my contribution – all that is left to add to your propoganda schtick are the pom-poms. The fact that you of all people want to start a thread on calling out bullshit would be funny if it werent sick.
Spin away Sir Top.
I’m not sure I understand, Merritt. Who exactly am I waving my pompons for in the above post? Obama? I specifically called out two bullshit memes on the left as well as two on the right. How exactly is this not the epitome of evenhandedness?
LOL. Wow, a harsh comment from me for sure. Goodness. I can be downright mean. Well, all I can say is your thread asks for no-bullshit and you caught me in a no-bullshit moment. We also got a new espresso maker. My comment is in the context of all I have read in your blogs, not just this small thread of truth. And to be nice, you deserve credit for making an effort despite your history of bias.
Now c’mon. Epitome of evenhandedness? Tell me you chuckled when you typed that.
Yes, I chuckled. Who wouldn’t!
There’s a time for partisanship. Most of the time, actually. And you know I don’t shy away from it at all. But this theme is different. It’s a general lament about human nature and about how politics is so very far from the rational, fact-based enterprise I think it should be. And to be clear I don’t think you can blame politicians. One should, after all, hate the game not the player. I guess it’s just an artifact of how people are wired.