Tag Archives: Politics

“What?!” The basackward economics of President Obama.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

The great American Middle Class is shrinking? Are we each, individually getting smaller? No, although there are some days lately when it feels like it. We’re losing income and wealth. While the precise definition of “Middle Class” is a bit fuzzy, what is clear is that this protracted recession is hurting everyone, some more than others, but everyone. And the effects for many of us are serious and long-lasting, the kind that take years, maybe even a generation or more, to reverse.

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The Alchemy of Stimulus Job Numbers: Spinning wishful thinking into election gold.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Ever wonder how it’s possible that stimulus spending has created so many jobs, and yet unemployment seems stuck above 8%? There are many reasons, of course, but one of the more obvious is that the President is overstating the number of jobs he claims to have created or saved.

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“Obamanomics.” Wishful thinking, positive spin or outright lies?

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Obama and Putin with ChartsWednesday, August 15, 2012

The next time the President or anyone running for high office drops a big number, would someone please ask him or her, “How do you know?” It’s a simple, entirely reasonable question. “How do you know?”

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 5: What can we do to encourage a recovery?

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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The nerve of me. I’m nobody, and yet here I am telling you that monetary and fiscal policies, the traditional versions of them, don’t work. I might as well be telling you that prayer may make you feel like you’re doing something, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything, that any sense that it does is just wishful thinking and, in any case, impossible to prove. It is, of course, a flawed analogy, used only to make a point. The difference is that prayer is a matter of belief, while the efficacy of monetary and fiscal policy is science, social science, but science nonetheless. We don’t want elected officials who believe in the power of government. We want a President and legislators who understand the science of using government resources for the common good.

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 4: What’s wrong with tax-related fiscal policies?

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Sunday, August 13, 2012

Hi. You don’t dare start “Part 4” of anything without a summary. Like they say at the beginning of new episodes when the show’s storyline is complicated, “Previously on Next Contestant, …”

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 3: Why don’t President Obama’s fiscal policies work?

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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Fiscal policy is the use of government spending and taxation to influence the economy. Increases in government spending can create jobs that are needed to produce the goods and services the government buys, and then some through what are called “multiplier effects.” Reducing tax rates, to businesses and people, gives them more disposable income to spend. The more goods and services they buy, the more people that will be needed to make those things. That’s it in a nutshell.

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 2: The Impotence of Monetary Policy

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Ben Bernanke, 14th Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Ben Bernanke, 14th Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Thursday, August 9, 2012

The really great thing about writing your own blog is the boldness of it, the way you can say things – talk about big, important ideas that other people, professional politicians in this case, and their advisors, have spent all matter of time thinking about – as if you really know what you’re talking about. I love it, and I do. …Actually, I’m nowhere nearly as confident as what I write sometimes sounds. My primary objective is to get our elected representatives and their challengers thinking, to open up their minds and focus on solving problems rather than just bickering about them. If I make some headway toward that end, then I did good and “The Next Contestant” wasn’t a waste of time.

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“Unnamed sources have told me that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is an idiot.”

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Friday, August 3, 2012

As you may have already heard, Senator Harry Reid told the Huffington Post the other day that an unnamed Bain Capital investor told him that Mitt Romney has not paid taxes for 10 years. That, according to Senator Reid, is why Mr. Romney doesn’t want to release his tax returns prior to 2010. Mr. Romney has vehemently denied the story and has challenged Senator Reid today, in no uncertain terms, to “put up,” the name of the informant, “or shut up.”

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So just who, exactly, do our 9 incumbents represent?

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Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In three months, we Maryland voters have the option of re-electing or replacing all 8 of our Representatives and one of our Senators. Elections being a really big deal, I thought it appropriate to ask myself, “To what extent is it necessary for someone to be representative of the people who elected him or her in order to represent them?”

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