My Beauty Best Teacher

Here are my notes and thoughts as I watched President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address:

• All of the conversation on the channels prior to the address centered on how this address is going to be used as a way to launch the President's re-election bid and as a taxpayer financed campaign speech. I've been watching these things for years and although past incumbents running for re-election have used this speech to speak about all their accomplishments, President Obama appears to be the most brazenly partisan in using this speech as a campaign speech.
• I found a list of past 'special guests' who have been invited by the President- Lenny Skutnik in 1982 (saved passanger from drowning plane), Sammy Sosa in 1999 (relief efforts in Dominican Republic and home run chase), Hamid Karzai in 2002 (Afghanistan President), Julie Aigner-Clark in 2007 (founder of Baby Einstein)... and now Warren Buffet's secretary in 2012 (prop to use to try to bring up point of taxing the rich more). Whereas once President's (both Republican and Democrats) celebrated people who had done things, President Obama celebrates someone who has called on other people to do more things (pay more money) and yet has no real accomplishments of her own (no offense- I'm sure she is a fine person).
• It was amazing and wonderful to see Congresswomen Giffords there- she has made such a great recovery and I wish her the best on her future.
• President Obama begins with his foreign policy accomplishments, which he can take credit for, although he should share this credit with George W. Bush, who put in place the foundations and background for many of these accomplishments (the pull-out in Iraq, the groundwork for catching Osama, drones and catching terrorists in the War on Terror, etc).
• Obama next suggests that private citizens should be more like the military and act as soldiers for the state. Citizens should stop fighting one another, stop disagreeing about the direction of the nation, stop pushing for their individual rights and liberties, stop trying to keep their property and the fruits of their labor, and instead citizens should serve the state, citizens should put aside their differences and just follow orders, and people should give up their wealth and property to the state so that it can redistribute it to those people who it favors. This all sounds vaguely familiar and has strong echo's of fascism in it, although I could sugar-coat it if you'd like.
• In 2008, the 'house of cards collapsed'- banks made loans they shouldn't have (which he pushed for a community activist), regulators didn't do their jobs (which they were not held accountable for), bonuses were paid to these banks and government agencies (to which they were never held accountable for)... he is on the wrong side of the ledger here- he was pushing for the collapse and after the collapse did not hold those people accountable.
• "State of the Union is getting stronger"- as if the mounting US debt is to be ignored and we're all just to pretend that trillions of dollars in my children's spending is not damaging the foundations of our nation and creating a time-bomb that will destroy America.
• President Obama says that he can't get anything done without control of every single aspect of our political system- he decries the 'obstructionism' of the GOP controlling one single house of Congress. No one- no one- should ever be elected President who says that he can't get anything done unless he has total power- that is bad for America and bad for democracy.
• "What is happening in Detroit can happen in other industries"- what happened in Detroit was that the auto companies were bailed out, costing taxpayers $80 billion in loans, debts forgiven, pensions guaranteed, and other loans. GM made $6 billion last year in profits- taxpayers should get that back, plus the next $74 billion in profits, and then we'll claim success in saving a company at no cost. Imagine if he were to bail every unprofitable business out at massive losses to taxpayers- what would that sort of economy look like?
• Proposes new tax on multi-national companies, to be redistributed to companies that 'hire here in America'- some sort of new loan to be administered by Obama officials based on conditions that he'd set. The increased taxes on MNC's will be sure to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods and services, causing inflation and hitting the poor especially hard. Why does Obama hate poor people so much?
• "We brought trade cases against China at over twice the rate as the previous administration"- but the Chinese just laughed at us because Obama bowed to the Chinese President and begged to borrow trillions more of their money so that he could blow it on his wasteful spending. It's nice that he's suing China though- I'm sure that's employing lots of lawyers.
• President Obama is mystified on why employers don't hire workers- perhaps if he would have had some sort of a job at some point in business or in the private sector or in some sort of productive economic enterprise he'd know that increasing regulations, fees, requirements, red tape, and the such encourage employers not to hire.
• Obama proposes starting a temp agency company... with taxpayer money. This government financed and supported company will compete with all of these Michigan companies.
• Obama is right- good teachers like me matter, and also he's right that teachers like me are attacked all the time- I'm bashed by liberals and progressives who call me all sorts of names. The President's other education policies are pretty- they are nice words that mean nothing since the federal government isn't supposed to be involved in education in any way other than making sure that there is equality in education for different races and sexes (Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).
• It is almost as if the right answer to everything that Obama says is the opposite of what he says. He says that it is wrong for taxpayers to be giving illegal immigrants a paid education and then sending them home at the end- he suggests we should make these people here illegally citizens after investing all that money into them, while I kind of think that taxpayers shouldn't be investing money into people here illegally. Get a work or education visa or something to stay here or pay your own way.
• President Obama attacks inequality in pay between mean and women in work- that's right Obama, tear this straw man up! That straw man can't fight back- I suggest he go after those who want children to work in coal mines next!
• I followed this line... "need more bullet proof vests... computers chips... innovations... industries... energy..." what???
• President Obama claims that our nation needs an "all out all of the above strategy"- it's double-speak though, because in his next line he clarifies that this strategy means less oil, less natural gas, less coal, and less drilling. His 'all of the above' strategy is going to include additional fees, regulations, and rules on companies that he doesn't like. So, in summary, he is pitching a "some of the below strategy".
• On to exploding batteries discussion... Bryan (the guy Obama referenced) used to build luxury yachts, but when government policies that Obama supported (he wanted a higher tax on yachts) destroyed Bryan's company and industry, Obama was there to throw taxpayer dollars at him to get him restarted building taxpayer subsidized wind turbines, and now Obama is some sort of 'good guy.' He's the bad guy in the story, kiddies. Holland-based Energetx Composites LLC, you just got mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union address- that's the kiss of death.
• Proposed more small fees and regulations and burdens on businesses... I missed what sort of scheme it was supposed to pay for in order to be 'budget neutral'.
• I'm caught up now... "we need smart regulations"... "we need rules"... these rules and regulations "make the free market more free"- LOL. Did he just say "I've ordered thousands of federal agents to spend thousands of man-hours to search for useless regulations that waste taxpayer money"- I must have heard this wrong. He's moving on though to proposing new rules and regulations- I guess he was done with the part about getting rid of regulations and rules after he threw the joke out there. Listening to him talk, I feel like he's a joke of a President.
• Someone add up how much all these regulations, agencies, bureau's, rules, and investments are going to cost America... I'll have to look at the transcript, but I'm pretty sure all he does is to propose these things without any sense of cost. A man (or woman) could spend a hundred years undoing all the damage that this guy is doing to our Republic.
• "The recovery is still fragile"- but earlier he said the "State of the Union is getting stronger"- let's square this round issue, folks.
• Did you know that President Obama has cut the deficit $2 trillion? And not raised it $5 trillion like what really happened? BIZARRO WORLD!
• Let's not forget this people- President Obama hates people earning millions and wants to go after them and confiscate their income redistribute it to people making less. Those who are already wealthy can keep it, those who are on the bottom might like it, but there will be no more moving between classes in Obama's America. This guy wants to slap class systems on us and turn our nation into the rich- those who already made their wealth and who have connections with government- and the rest of us poor. "You can call this class warfare all you want" he says- it's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare...
• The partisan divide is getting worse every year he says... especially over the past 3 years. It must be George Bush's fault or something, right? Or maybe it's because you President Obama are the most bitterly partisan figure in the history of our nation and is tearing our nation into serfs and masters. President Obama attacks running a 'perpetual campaign'- but yet he is the worst offender in this, running continually for office in a way that no President in history has ever done, running campaign commercials a year in advance of the general election, and even trotting out his wife to make frequent partisan attacks.
• He just said-"With or without this Congress I will keep implementing laws and putting in place policies that I want, but if Congress went along with what I was already doing it would give me cover and get us all involved." This guy is a bully and a dictator. Maybe I heard him wrong though; I'll go back and re-read the transcript, maybe I got it wrong.
• The speech must be coming to an end- after spending a couple minutes in the beginning to address our military and veterans, we're now going to end with a couple minutes at the end about the military and veterans- I though think that the military shouldn't just be props in Obama's game of 'we're all in this together' meme; maybe he should talk about military programs in the body of his speech that he wants to cut or increase, about what he's been doing as commander-in-chief, etc. The military is not simply there to make Obama look good. "No one thought about politics on that day" Obama says- but yet the photo of Obama in the war room was staged. Nice words Obama, but in your mouth, they are just words, merely words.
• President Obama says that as long as we are all commoners, living like peasants on the land, serving our masters like serfs, than our nation will be strong. He said 'common' several times at the end- but private property, liberty, and protection of life wasn't mentioned.

UPDATE III: Thank you for linking to this article The Western Experience, The Bitter Americans, and others!

• Report calls for investments in STEM education, broadband - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

  New report just released from the US Commerce Department this past Friday. You can expect even more investment in STEM.
  
  “Underinvestment in sectors like STEM education, high-tech research, and 21st century infrastructure has diminished the nation’s competitive edge. Sustained federal investment in these sectors will not just help grow today’s economy, but it will also lay the groundwork for generations to come.”

  tags: education news stem

• Seth's Blog: Simple thoughts about fair use

  Seth Godin writes about fair use. Whether you claim fair use or not, give credit. That is the right thing to do.

  tags: education copyright fairuse news

• Microsoft Research and National Center for Women & IT Announce Winners of Computing Higher Education Seed Fund - Press Release - Digital Journal

  I'm glad all of these organizations have received money to recruit and retain women in computing and technology fields of studies, but I sure would like to see some online initiatives, campaigns, and social media type things being done. This approach seems a bit traditional to me.

  tags: education news

• 35% of Child Sex Abuse Caused by Minors - TIME

  We have a hidden problem. Is it lack of supervision? How is it that 1/3 of sexual abuse of children is by other children?
  
  "Recent high-profile cases of child sex abuse have roused national revulsion against the adults who perpetrated them. Rarely mentioned is the sobering statistic that more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America's children is committed by other minors."
  
  Time Magazine

  tags: education news abuse children

• The Human Anatomy, Animated With 3-D Technology - NYTimes.com

  NYU Medical students wear 3-D glasses and dissect a virtual cadaver projected on a screen. The professor says "it's like a living digital textbook." I do, however, really hope my doctors have experience with the human body and don't do like a kid who has practiced basketball and never played in the game - bumble the ball as they start. No one wants to be a practice dummy - in this case a practice cadaver.
  
  Yet, do you realize that we could now add human dissection to anatomy class? In 3D you could dissect the human body? There are very exciting things coming in this area.

  tags: news science 3d science_health invention

• CBAL ELA Competency Model and Provisional Learning Progressions - home

  This is interesting. ETS has launched a website about:
  
  "Educational Testing Service (ETS), the world's leading measurement and research organization, has launched a new website to stimulate discussion, debate, and promote empirical research to help teachers and students meet the goals of the English language arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards." but this is most definitely a wiki (looks like wikispaces.) I find it fascinating that a company would use a wiki because so many have resisted this. I wonder who can join and who can edit. Interesting.
  
  It says you can join. It will be interesting to see what they are doing with this. Perhaps some of you common core experts should join.

  tags: education commoncore engchat news composition

• Mystery Apple event to focus on education, iTunes U, digital publishing? | ZDNet

  The end of this month we'll get a new kind of Apple for the teacher. Apple has a big event planned in New York (publisher central) that is rumored to talk about iTunes University, and textbook publishing. It willbe big news as this is a topic that is said to have been "dear to Steve Jobs."

  tags: news education apple

• Kno Adds 15 Publishers to its Catalogue -- THE Journal

  Textbook app, Kno, adds more publishers to the app.
  
  The publishers include a range of diverging specialties, from humanities publisher Hackett to scholarly publishers such as The MIT Press, University of Nebraska Press, and Indiana University Press as well as more general publishers and Norton Publishing, producers of the long-time campus standby Norton Anthologies. Other recent additions include Morton Publishing, Oklahoma Career Tech, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, and AVA Books.

  tags: education news ebook

• Alfie Kohn: The Risks and Potential of Required Community Service

  Requiring community service. I do this in National Honor Society. They have a certain number of hours to earn, however, they choose what they do. Serving and helping others is part of what we do. However, I see the points he makes in this article, particularly if a competition or reward is put in place.

  tags: education communityservice news

• Tom Vander Ark: How Intelligent Scoring Will Create an Intelligent System

  Yesterday a competition to improve automatic scoring of essays kicked off and computer scientists are invited to join the competition to "best well known testing firms including AIR, CTMMcGraw-Hill, ETS,and Pearson." The Open competition runs through april.
  
  This is an effort to grade essays without a human grader involved.Personally, to me, writing implies audience and to not have a human read the writing of these students is problematic to me.

  tags: education news writing

• Here we go again: Congress considers blocking government's open access policy

  Publishers don't like the Federal government's open access policy that requires that research funded by government-sponsored grants be released to the general public a year after publication. I cannot believe how the publishers are continuing to try to shut down the flow of information. This is as infuriating as SOPA.

  tags: education research news

• Make a Local Backup Of Your Gmail Account - Wired How-To Wiki

  How to make a backup of your gmail account. (I may have to do this to archive old emails as I am beginning to get a full inbox. Just don't know that I need things from 2007.)

  tags: education news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The coming year will give voters a real choice of visions- divide up the wealth in our nation differently or grow the amount of wealth in our nation.

A a recent article that Charles Moore wrote, I think he put his finger on exactly what is going on today- the success and advance of the twin threats of fear and doubt. Moore, who is a British journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, in an article about Margaret Thatcher, wrote that after the long boom and success of capitalism and free market economics that "the worm of doubt entered the system":

You borrowed all the money needed for the price of a house. This made you, in your mind, though not in full fact, an owner. Because the value of the house was rising, it also made you, again in your mind, richer. The bank, which actually owned the house, found clever ways of mixing and selling on the loans it had granted so that it, too, felt richer. Governments, happy at rising revenues, thought it was their business to make sure that when the symptoms of high risk began to present themselves, they were suppressed.... (then) the roof fell in... (and now) when people now hear words like globalization or capitalism... they feel slightly sick.

Free market economics and capitalism did not lead our nation to failure- rather, during its wild success at making millions around the world more prosperous over the past centuries, communism and socialism and fascism latched on to it, sucking from its prosperity to feed its sick aims like parasites, and over time, many smart people began to become confused and unable to see the parasites from the concepts that they latched on.

Where free markets and capitalism created wealth and encouraged personal responsibility, governments and elites put in place rules and regulations which weakened the foundations of the system, subsidized risky behavior such as sub-prime mortgages and leveraging investments, and gave out handouts to favored industries and distorted the market by doing so. When banks, businesses, and corporations operated in a free market of capitalism, they could succeed or fail based on their own efforts and innovation; but in the new markets, which were no longer capitalistic or free, government subsidies and spending and lobbying and regulation and rules determined whether or not a business, corporation, or bank was successful or failed. And although this was no longer capitalism or free markets, but rather markets once free now twisted to the aims of elites and socialists and communists and fascists, many smart people became critical of the markets or capitalism because of the failures of the government bureaucrats who were twisting and corrupting the system.

And then the parasites of leftism began to weaken and kill the free market and capitalism, and the people cried out 'capitalism and free markets are failing us'- when it wasn't the free markets and capitalism that failed, but rather the people who failed the system.

They were led to this failure by fear and doubt- they did not believe in the hand of the God and the freedom of individuals and life, liberty, and the protection of private property.

The people (or The People, as leftists call them) feared that although they were becoming prosperous and their lives were rapidly improving, they were somehow falling behind others who were advancing more rapidly. Rather than looking at why they were successful in the free market capitalism- because of their hard work, innovation, and yes, luck- they instead demanded government policies to hold back others and help out themselves, corrupting the very system that had brought them so far. They doubted that if people were free and made free decisions, they would make 'the right decisions'- that is, the decisions that they would make if they controlled the other people and had power over them (their definition of 'right decisions').

Rather than just letting go and trusting that the unseen hand of God, trusting to the thousands and millions of individual decisions, and working to ensure that private property rights are strengthened and respected, they doubted that this giant experiment of capitalism and a free market would work, and feared that they would somehow fall behind others in material wealth if they didn't vote for and support people who promised to corrupt the system and abuse the system and circumvent the system. Many people trusted and believed in the power of men to control other men and redistribute property to other men, and in so doing rejected free markets and capitalism.

Fear and doubt came to the people's mind every time there was a recession, or even during periods when great wealth was created but wasn't immediately distributed evenly. The people reacted to the Great Depression by doubting that the free market would correct (as it had done in the 1920's and dozens of times before in the 1800's) and feared that he return to prosperity wouldn't come fast enough- and so they worked to destroy the system, corrupt the system, and make the market less free- and the results were a slight recession during into a decade long destruction of wealth.

And today, government policies and regulations and taxes and laws which corrupted the free market and corroded private property rights have let the worm of doubt creep once more into the people's minds, and in their fear that maybe they won't get to loot the dying Republic of its wealth they vote for Democrats who promise to manage the downfall and distribute the ever-decreasing wealth in the system to their supporters and voters and friends.

To return to success and advance again as a nation in wealth and happiness, we must reject doubt of the free market system and capitalism and trust the people- we need to trust and believe again that the thousands of decisions of free people will create more wealth and make more people happy, and reject those who suggest that having a smaller number of elites make those decisions for us is better. We need to let go of our fear that if we don't control the market and the system that you'll lose out, and instead work hard, innovate, save your money, and invest wisely.

UPDATE 12/7/11: President Obama delivered a major speech today on the economy, in which he expressed his doubt that the capitalist system could continue to provide wealth and prosperity for many and work to make society more equal, and from this place of fear he instead wants to trust himself and his fellow men to run a better system that will somehow do a better job of creating wealth and distributing it than having free people make free decisions.

Via memeorandum, in his Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas, we read the following fear and doubt from US President Barack Obama, one-term Democrat. These are selections from the speech- (you can read the whole thing yourself here if you want):

My grandparents served during World War II. He was a soldier in Patton’s Army; she was a worker on a bomber assembly line. And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried -- no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out.

And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known. It was here in America that the most productive workers, the most innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth. And you know what? Every American shared in that pride and in that success -- from those in the executive suites to those in middle management to those on the factory floor.

In this passage, Obama communicates to us that his parents believed in capitalism and free markets and personal responsibility and liberty and protection of property. And furthermore, Obama knows that this system worked. But yet, he has this nagging doubt and fear...

But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments -- wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

He doesn't BELIEVE in capitalism. He has no faith in people, freedom, liberty, and rights. It's clear he doesn't have any hope that people will make the 'right decisions' (the decisions he would make) and he wants to therefore control other people. He continues:

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. (Applause.) He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. And today, they still can’t.

We simply cannot return to this brand of “you’re on your own” economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.

And it is around here that we get to the heart of the matter- in the last quarter of his speech, after ripping on capitalism and freedom for 3/4's of the speech, that we finally here what he wants to do...

So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy? Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is we’ll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who’s best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages, who’s best at busting unions, who’s best at letting companies pollute as much as they want.

We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools. Of course, those productive investments cost money. They’re not free. And so we’ve also paid for these investments by asking everybody to do their fair share. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices.

So, in summary, here is Obama's alternative to free markets and capitalism- give him more power. Give him the power and authority to tell employers what to pay their employees, give him the power and authority to combine big government with big business and big labor (ie, fascism), give him and his cronies the power to give money to favored constituent groups to fund pet projects of vanity (palaces, statues, etc), and the power to demand that all of these decisions are paid for by someone else who does not want to pay for it- to use the power of guns to the head to make people give up cash to Obama and his people to feed their wrong ideas about the power of men to control others for their benefit.

Obama is wrong. He needs to be defeated- not just politically, but his ideas and beliefs need to be rejected by all good people and good citizens and patriots and he and his policies need to be forever rejected in decent society. We must instead look to capitalism and freedom and liberty and property protection to our future, and not look backward to the sort of tyranny that Obama is proposing.

Jennifer Granholm, the Democratic former Governor of Michigan, is exactly right- the United States can learn a lot of lessons from Michigan's government- lessons on what not to do.

Before the Obama years, many looked back at the Bush years and talked about how bad 4% GDP growth and 6% unemployment were, but to be honest, those numbers were never that good in Michigan, which suffered under a single state recession for much of the 2000's and had low GDP growth rates, high unemployment, and bad numbers on everything else. For many years, the people of this great state were told that the reason why Michigan was doing so poorly was George W. Bush's fault- but from 2009 to 2011 Bush was gone and yet Michigan still led the nation in all of the wrong numbers. The reason why Michigan did poorly as a state from 2003 to 2011 was because during this time our state had a progressive Democrat as Governor who put in place the same policies at the state level that have failed so miserably at the national level as well.

Governor Granholm believed that the government should take money from those who are successful and then use that money to pick and choose winners and losers in the marketplace. Her administration decided that what made a company or an industry a 'winner' was not whether or not it was profitable, whether it provided a good that was valued by society highly (as determined by private investment), or whether it was a stable and sound investment. No, under Democratic officials and Granholm, the decision to use the power of government to anoint an industry a 'winner' was made based on political decisions of whether or not that industry or company donated to the Democratic Party, the decision was made based on whether or not the industry or business was deemed 'cool' and 'hip', and whether not the business or industry provided a good or service that the ruling powers liked, whether it was 'green products' or movies.

Using the power of the government to transfer wealth from savers and producers and successful people to those who are spenders and wasters and unsuccessful has a decided effect on an economy, whether at the state level or the national level- it leads to less economic success, more waste, more inefficiency, less jobs, less tax revenue, and a thoroughly lessened society on almost every level. When property is taken and corrupt decisions are made in the government, a state and a nation are not successful.

Michigan showed the entire nation what would happen if those same policies were enacted at the national level- it was a lesson of what not to do. And yet, in spite of this, much like our national leaders that continue to press on in the face of failure, those who inflicted this awful economy on us have no apologies and hold true to their course. President Barack Obama, much like Jennifer Granholm, will not change in any substantive manner and will not alter his policies if he wins a second term.

Jennifer Granholm is coming out with a new book, "A Governor's Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Economic Future," and in it she gives our great nation of how not to run a state or government or anything at all.

As is typical in a government which inserts itself into the marketplace and plays political games with citizens, the book talks about all of the political gamesmanship and behind-the-scenes deal-making and continual crisis that marked the Granholm years in Michigan. The book argues that government involvement — tax payer money given away in the name of green jobs and pork programs — is essential to economic growth, in spite of the track record that that philosophy has had whenever and wherever it has been tried. They attempt to argue that because another government has (the Obama administration) has awarded tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money borrowed on credit from China as loans to various industries in Michigan over the last couple of years, this is some sort of an indication of success for their method.

Granholm says "Smart and active government is really what's needed"- as if a small elite class of unconnected politicians working in a capital will be smarter than the thousands of decisions that free citizens make every day in a free market, and as if a more active government will not crowd out investment and decisions freely made by businessman and force them into making unwise and bad investments.

"If you place no bets, you will lose every time," she said, suggesting that the government should use its extreme lack of information about the market and rely on its lack of personal investment in the situation to gamble away taxpayer money at every political or 'cool' industry or company that comes along. Oh, a couple of those bets will win- even a Democrat finds his way out of a recession every now and then- but on the whole, taxpayers will take it on the chin many more times than not, and Granholm and her cronies will walk away with pensions, paychecks, a nice university position, and a new book.

United States, be prepared- Michigan has shown the nation the way, and don't ever forget- Granholm won a second term of office after her disastrous first term saw her destroy Michigan's economy and ruin many lives.

Detroit News provided quotes and source information.

Stimulus I not only didn't work, it probably made the unemployment rate go higher by transferring available funds from private investment and savings to spending by government, making the marketplace more uncertain, preventing the free markets from self-correcting on bad investments, and discouraging savings and efficiency gains.

Democrats promised that if this one-time only trillion dollars in spending was enacted, it would prevent unemployment from going above 9% and would shorten the length of time of recovery. But the spending was permanent and unemployment went above 10%, sharply increasing shortly after the passage of Stimulus Bill 1, and has now settled into a new post-stimulus normal unemployment rate of 9%.

So, in light of this epic failure and waste of money, what President Barack Obama, the nominee in 2012 for the Democratic Party, suggest, supported and applauded by Democrats in Congress? More of the same! So, taking the lessons that we learned as a nation from stimulus bill I, I have projected the likely courses for unemployment if we don't pass the stimulus bill II and if we do pass stimulus bill II. Feel free to share:

The President of the United States fills a lot of important roles in our political system- Commander-in-Chief, Chief Executive, Chief Legislator, Chief Jurist, Chief of State, Chief Diplomat, Head of Political Party, Popular Leader, etc- and to the list of these roles we now apparently must add 'Investor-in-Chief.'

Head of executive branches, whether at the state level as Governors or at the national level with our President, increasingly believe that it is part of their job description to take the money that taxpayers send to them to perform important government functions and instead gamble that money away on risky investments- the more risky and uncertain the investment, the more it seems that these executives are likely to dump precious taxpayer money into them.

Here in Michigan, we had a Governor that won a second term of office believing that she was a good Governor because she dumped taxpayer money into 'green energy' and 'cool cities' and the movie industry; upon further review and looked at with a true eye for costs and investment gains, these investments all turned out to range from bad to poor to horrible. Taxpayer money was distributed in a corrupt manner based more on political favors and little to no lasting gains came from these investments, certainly not enough to justify calling these schemes 'investment' in the private marketplace.

At the national level, Barack Obama believes that one of his major roles as President is to direct investments for the future, in spite of his lack of experience, training, or record of success in investing. No one would ever hire him to direct their personal investments, and yet as President he is doing just this with our public money at a time when public money is in short supply and needed ever more vitally. And the process that these investments are awarded are corrupt, filled with political considerations and backroom deals that would put any private businessman in prison for their actions.

The Washington Post writes about this role of the President in its article Barack Obama, investor-in-chief. From the article:

Would you buy a used car from Barack Obama? Or would you want him managing your 401(k) investment retirement plan at work? The president, of course, isn’t in that business specifically, but in a larger sense he’s been investing our money, picking the businesses he thinks will fuel economic expansion, new jobs and the technology of the future, and rebuild the nation’s fraying infrastructure.

All it takes is money - ours - he says, and he’s been spending it as fast as he can in a failed attempt to get the economy growing again. The economic policy term for this is “central planning,” wherein the government tries to pick the winners and losers and dumps hundreds of billions of dollars into various business sectors in the belief that it will pay off in the long run.

The government isn’t very good at this business, as we’ve seen in the disastrously ineffective $825 billion spending stimulus plan that President Obama and the Democrats shoved through Congress in 2009. Much of that money went into the budgets of countless federal departments, agencies and other programs that spent it. Still more went to states, counties, cities and towns for infrastructure programs or to keep public workers employed. A lot of the money was given to businesses that Mr. Obama thinks will be good for the environment, though his investment decisions didn’t always work out the way he hoped.

Consider the White House-backed solar energy firm Solyndra Inc., which declared bankruptcy this week after pocketing a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. Critics called the deal a “stimulus black hole.”

When Mr. Obama visited the Solyndra factory in May 2010, he called the company a success story that was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”

He was quite proud of his investment, boasting at the time, “Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot,” but now here was this shiny, new factory that “is the result of those loans” backed by his administration.
It was later learned that the White House fast-tracked Solyndra’s loan application, rushing Mr. Obama’s pet project through without a lot of serious checking. Federal investigators said that the administration had bypassed procedures to safeguard the taxpayers’ investment.

Mr. Obama is big on the solar-panel industry and under his policies, the government has dumped a lot of our money into it in the past three years. But it turns out that the U.S. industry has not turned out to be the bonanza that he sold to the country. Prices for solar panels have fallen because of strong competition from China, making the fledgling industry precarious at best without heavy federal subsidies.

Evergreen Solar Inc. filed for bankruptcy last month after being forced to close its plant in Massachusetts that was built with state and local government subsidies.

Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Democrat, says the loan guarantee program “has not worked as well as we had hoped.” Sounds like a Wall Street investment banker defending a fat bundle of subprime real estate securities that went bad.

The solar-panel industry is not the only “investment” Mr. Obama has sunk a lot of our money into. While the plants build with his loans make for great campaign photo ops, the costly reality is that government is trying to pick the winners and losers in our economy instead of the private sector.

But Mr. Obama thinks he’s good at this investment business and now he is trying to convince us to buy into to a new federal “infrastructure bank” that will make off-budget grants and loans to rebuild “roads, bridges and ports and broadband lines and smart grids” with $30 billion of our money.

The bank would put “all those [unemployed] construction workers” back to work, he said. And it would provide Mr. Obama with lots of photo ops at jobsites, saying “look what I’ve done for you.”

If this sounds familiar, it was sold to us in the guise of the 2009 job stimulus bill that was supposed to put the construction industry back to work. Some short-term jobs were created but when the building projects were completed, the jobs ended. The construction industry today is in a recession.

Making Mr. Obama the investor-in-chief, deciding how and where the nation’s capital resources should be spent, hasn’t worked and isn’t going to work. Ask Japan, which has gone on a public-works spending binge though its economy has been in a slump for two decades.

Better to shift federal public-works spending decisions to the states, along with the gas tax money for highways, and let them - not remote federal bureaucrats - set their own priorities. Broaden the tax base by eliminating dozens of loopholes, then cut business and individual tax rates, and slash the capital gains tax to unlock needed, job-creating investment capital.

Let the marketplace make the investment decisions that have made America the largest and most successful economy in the world. Mr. Obama has got better things to do with his time, like trying to figure out why his job approval polls have fallen to 39 percent.

The title of this post isn't mine- Ralph R. Reiland came up with it in his post which I will talk about. But it's a great title- in my mind, I see the American economy hitting an iceberg around 2007 and start taking on some water, enough that it badly listed by 2008 and went into a recession. The iceberg was too much federal spending that soaked up savings and investments, too many federal government policies that encouraged bubbles in investing and housing, and increasing regulations that choked off economic growth, especially in small businesses, and signaled to business owners that now was the time to play it safe and not take risks and create jobs. The tip of this iceberg of federal policy ripped a large hole in the Titanic of the US economy, and soon the boat started to dangerously take on water.

Although I'm no expert of this, I imagine that once your boat hits an iceberg and takes on water, you have two options. Option one is to continue moving forward and patch the hole- in other words, keep America's booming private economy and remove the harmful regulations and policies that caused the damage. Option two is to stop moving and widen the hole, by which I mean to attack private business and those who are successful in it and put in place more harmful policies. Oh, I guess there was a double-secret third option too, and that is to turn the boat around and try to ram the boat on the iceberg again, this time with the intent on sinking the whole thing. For a while, I thought that Obama and the Democrats were just intent on going with option 2, but it looks like they are honestly considering circling back on that iceberg with the goal of sinking the economy of the United States for good.

President Barack Obama was once named by me as Captain of the US Titanic Spending (see my complete list of Obama nicknames)- and now he's going after that iceberg again!

Here are some parts of the article by Reiland called Obama: Circling back to the iceberg:

Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove. That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.

The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.

"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work." "Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation. The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.

First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.

In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.

Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent. Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring....

...Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).

In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.

Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.

For those who want to see which way the United States is going under President Obama and his progressive policies supported by the new progressive Democratic Party, watch this movie- Titanic (10th Anniversary Edition).

The good thing about having a record is being able to run on it, and I have a track record of posts on my blog that make Obama pretty jealous. In November of 2008 I pointed to an interview that Obama gave where he said that as part of his 'green energy' policies he intended to use the power of the federal government to bankrupt all coal producers in the United States. As I quite accurately wrote:

Obama is telling anyone that uses any energy at all that he intends to drive up the price of it. Combine this with his anti-drilling stances for oil, and get used to an economy that is starved for energy- high inflation, low growth, unemployment, and bad times.

This recession is not 'Bush's fault'- it is the result of government policies that Obama put in place that have led to a rise in prices for energy, and when it becomes more expensive to produce energy, the result is as predicted. As I wrote in Democrats Energy Policies Continue their Assault on Wealth and Jobs:

Our economy is struggling for a reason- Democrats and their policies are crushing human liberty and freedom, attacking wealth and wealth creation, freezing in social and economic structures, limiting mobility and change, and disincentivizing economic growth. Their policies are quite clear- these energy policies are a great example of how Democrats are increasing 'safety' or 'environmental' regulations that will drive US companies under, kill jobs, and drive business to other nations which have lower standards (thereby causing more harm to people or the environment), resulting in a net loss for society and America. Similar policies are found in healthcare, defense, education, etc.

This is not just fun and games people- these are real policies being put in place by real people that are having real job-killing and wealth-destroying effects. Democrats might want to run next election by churning out negative attacks and finding the one bad thing that their opponent did in the past, but that's just a side-show to distract you from the real results of their policies.

And the energy policies of the Democrats in the House, Senate, and Presidency are bad policies. They are not resulting in any sort of 'safer' environment. The man-made caused global warming that was going to destroy the world in the near future has been proven to be an utter myth promoted by corrupt scientists and 'green energy' producers who both live on kick-backs from the government. And it appears that under Obama and the Democrats administration, oil spills and mining disasters are getting more common and having worse effects. This isn't a shock- being safe is more about kicking back money to the right people now and much less about everyone following the law. And there attempts to kill coal production and mining in the United States just means that an unsupervised and unregulated communist China will produce and mine for more coal, doing far more damage to the environment than if it was done in the United States.

And the negatives of the energy policies of the Democrats in the House, Senate, and Presidency are becoming more obvious. The latest example of their bad policies is the latest rules that the EPA has put out on 'pollution' and energy production. These rules are draconian in nature and by design are supposed to be as unfriendly to energy and business as possible- the exact opposite of flexible and smart policies that allow businesses to thrive in a creative and business-friendly environment.

These new EPA rules are designed to choke job creation, especially in rural areas and states that produce coal, but these states don't vote Democrat and don't give the Democrats lots of wealth, so they think it is okay to hammer those states and punish them for their sense of liberty and freedom and equality.

These new EPA policies are also designed to ensure that consumers are stricken with higher utility bills. Oh, your Al Gores and John Kerry's and John Edwards and Barack Obama's will be able to pay those higher utility bills, but the middle class will be hard hit by these policies and driven into poverty and become a serf to the government system.

Coal plants will soon be forced to install new scrubber equipment that provides marginal improvement in air quality at tremendous expense. Producers of this new scrubber equipment will benefit and thousands of unionized bureaucrats who will be hired to ensure that these new standards are met will benefit, but the quality of air will see little improvement and the costs associated with installing and running these new energy-eating scrubbers will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher costs, or the company will absorb the costs by delaying investments in improvements in technology or safety, or the company will be forced to become more efficient by laying off many workers and employing more automation (they'll also save money by laying off workers because they won't have to pay the ever increasing costs of employing people that Obama and the Democrats are piling on). Or the company will go out of business.

The Washington Post reports that electric bills will jump 12 percent nationally by 2016 to comply with these new policies that the Democrats are putting in place, with residents in areas such as Kentucky and Tennessee seeing a 24 percent increase in their utility bills. These policies are project to eliminate 1.4 million jobs, and those people will no longer be paying taxes any more and will now be sucking down government benefits, all thanks to these policies pushed by Democratic bureaucrats employed by a Democratic President supervised by Democrats in the House and the Senate and supported by Democratic unions and a Democratic media. They are responsible for these bad policies- these aren't Republican or conservative or Bush or tea-party policies that are killing jobs and destroying the middle-class- they are Democratic policies.

When a party pushes for policies that achieve little good at the cost of a great number of negatives, it doesn't matter how much spinning they do and it really doesn't matter how good or bad the individual candidates are who they are running against- that party needs to be thrown out of power until they learn just how much damage their policies do to the life, liberty, and property of the great people of the United States of America.

President Barack Obama raised $86 million last quarter in fundraising- and over 40% of that was from bundlers. Twenty-seven big-donor bundlers each collected more than $500,000 in contributions- the list of these donors demonstrates that Obama finds most of his support with celebrities and the well-connected. Another 200 people scooped up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each in contributions for the president, collectively amounting to at least $35 million, and these ranks are filled with lawyers and lobbyists.

You see, the Democrat Party has increasingly become a divided party- super rich politically connected elites who have already made their wealth, and those who they want to control. It is a party of elites who deliver goods to others and others who receive goods from elites- the modern day Democratic Party has become exactly the sort of thing that our nation rebelled against.

This probably explains why the 'Tea-Party' movement has exploded and is marked by symbols and discussions of our founding- the direction that the Democratic Party has lurched under Obama and Pelosi and the other liberal Democrats is a direction that goes directly against the traditional nature of our nation and attacks everything that our nation was born into.

The modern-day Democratic Party seeks to rule over us as lords and nobility- for our own good, we are told. But they are not lords and nobility- those don't exist in America- and so they need to take this following advice from Billy Hollis in his post Eat my peas? Screw you, Obama – I’m not a child for you to raise:

• We need to be responsible for our own retirement. We don’t need to be treated like children who don’t understand the value of money, can’t see the future, and don’t have the self-discipline to save.
• We need to be responsible for our own healthcare. We don’t need to be treated like children who must be told what to eat, when to exercise, and what treatment they are to get when they are sick, without any thought to how to pay for it.
• We need to be responsible for our own businesses. The vast majority of business owners are adult enough to know what safety precautions to take, and what accounting standards to use. The small minority that doesn't understand safety should have their butts sued off and lose their businesses when they are negligent. The tiny minority that commits accounting fraud should be put in prison.
• We need to be responsible for our property. That starts with allowing us to keep our own money, and spend it as we like. It also implies some stability that is not currently in evidence, so that we don’t lose huge sums in real estate and stock investments because of governmental incompetence and cronyism with the executives of large companies.
• We need to be more responsible for our own safety. Sure, there’s always a need for law enforcement, but it can’t be the first resort for personal safety. Any law enforcement that could do that would be indistinguishable from a police state. Therefore, we need the right to buy, possess, and use the weapons that provide that safety.
• We need to be responsible for raising our own children. We need to have more influence over their education, and we particularly need to stop wasting our time reversing the indoctrination they suffer at the hands of the educational bureaucracy.
• We need to be responsible for treating other people appropriately. If we are stupid or obnoxious in our treatment of others, we need to suffer social consequences, not legal ones.

From Powerlineblog:

The Obama administration's energy policies have been a disaster, assuming that American decline is not your objective. We have written many times about the administration's efforts to suppress development of our oil resources, but coal is equally important. The United States is blessed with extraordinary deposits of coal, but Obama is determined to prevent us from using it to generate cheap and plentiful electricity. Obama wasn't kidding when he said, as a candidate, that his policies would cause electricity prices to "skyrocket."

U.S. News reports that Obama's EPA is promulgating regulations that will cause hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs:

Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data.

Overall, the rules aimed at making the air cleaner could cost the coal-fired power plant industry $180 billion, warns a trade group. ...

Referring to the analysis of the EPA regulations from National Economic Research Associates, Miller said they would be the most expensive rules ever imposed on power plants.

That was yesterday. Today, American Electric Power announced that it will close down five coal-fired power plants and spend billions to comply with the EPA's proposed regulations:

Utility giant American Electric Power said Thursday that it will shut down five coal-fired power plants and spend billions of dollars to comply with a series of pending Environmental Protection Agency regulations. ...

The company, one of the country's largest electric utilities, estimated that it will cost between $6 billion and $8 billion in capital investments over the next decade to comply with the regulations in their current form.

The costs of complying with the regulations will result in an increase in electricity prices of 10 to 35 percent and cost 600 jobs, AEP said.

In total, AEP estimated it will have to close five coal-fired power plants by the end of 2014. Six additional plants would see major changes, including retiring some generating units, retrofitting equipment and switching to natural gas.

Of course, the administration is trying to block development of natural gas, too. Of all of the Obama administration's perverse economic policies, its anti-energy agenda is most likely to make Obama a one-term president.

Our economy is struggling for a reason- Democrats and their policies are crushing human liberty and freedom, attacking wealth and wealth creation, freezing in social and economic structures, limiting mobility and change, and disincentivizing economic growth. Their policies are quite clear- these energy policies are a great example of how Democrats are increasing 'safety' or 'environmental' regulations that will drive US companies under, kill jobs, and drive business to other nations which have lower standards (thereby causing more harm to people or the environment), resulting in a net loss for society and America. Similar policies are found in healthcare, defense, education, etc. Although Republicans are not perfect- in fact, they are far from it because they are not conservative or libertarian enough- they are usually the better alternative to Democrats in the 2012 election, in Congress, for President, and at state levels.

UPDATE: My buddy conservativesonfire asked "Where is the outrage, CT. Dose nobody pay attention to what is happening and what it will mean?"

The Cloward–Piven strategy and Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals both teach that change should not come slowly to America and should not come in measured amounts that are brought before the light- rather, Obama and the Democrats believe that change should be rapid, hidden, and such an overwhelming onslaught of liberal policies that one blends into another in a sort of rapid-fire radical agenda that shocks and awes all opposition and collapses resistance to its agenda. Obama typically drops the worst policies on Friday, when the media doesn't cover them, and by Monday, there is yet another crisis or bad policy or scandal to distract America from the radical agenda of Obama and his Democratic allies.

On this blog and around the internet, 'The People" is one of the most frequent justifications that are provided by liberals and Democrats for taxing the rich, forcing people to join a healthcare plan, stopping a mining company from mining for minerals on land that it purchased, and generally controlling people's choices and taking away their property.

So just who exactly are 'The People' who benefit when those who are successful are forced to pay higher tax rates when their investments do well or who gain when oil companies are not allowed to safely drill for oil?

I'm sure they don't mean that humanoid extraterrestrials who have paranormal powers will benefit- that would just be silly. (Zenna Henderson?)

What these liberals and Democrats usually mean when they cite 'The People' is that the so-called national community will benefit when the state gains the power to take away peoples property and choices, and that for the good of the people we need to return back to the land through green living and urban farming, lead more self-sufficient lives, and fight back against Big Business which is grinding us under its crushing foot of industrialization. Liberals and Democrats believe that 'The People' will benefit from an enlightened government that helps to progress society, and if this means that the principles of the free market or even popular elections are broken, than so be it- the People are more important than these concepts.

To liberals and Democrats, 'The People' mean the proletariat and traditional middle classes- union workers- who will benefit from a more government that is more progressive and friendly to workers.

As someone famous once said, when liberals talk about 'The People', they are talking about the basic ideas of a national government based on building social safety nets for 'The People' because 'The People' are the national government of progressive socialism.

The way that liberals throw around 'The People' is not new- in fact, the concept was pretty well established by the early 1900's. The German's called the concept of 'The People' the Völkisch movement, and it was one of the motivating factors behind Adolf Hilter and his fascist Nazi national socialist progressive party, which attempted to co-opt private industry for the good of 'The People' in order to provide national socialized healthcare, make people eat healthier food, make industries produce goods for the good of the state, and support the workers with strong union rights in a Big Business-Big Union-Big Government partnership.

What is old is new again, and we have been down this path before, so just be careful that you know what you mean when you start throwing around the term 'The People' in the future.